This Van Could Be Your Life by Mishka Shubaly

Author:Mishka Shubaly [Shubaly, Mishka]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2020-01-21T08:00:00+00:00

After a few awkward days, I got Tashina to ride in Lucia with me for a little while. It was nice to have her there, and I was able to make her smile a couple of times, but it was too loud for us to really talk. Too loud for me to get out the apology I knew I owed her for not going to Edward’s funeral.

In the same way that I don’t remember meeting my mom or dad, I don’t remember meeting Uncle Ed. He just always existed, and in that way, he felt eternal. He lived with us for a while in our first house on Dalton Street in Canada when I was really little, maybe three or four. I remember him baking bread, and I remember him taking us sledding, and I remember him waking us up by tickling our feet, something I relish doing to just about anyone to this day. It’s annoying-to-creepy when I do it now, but when he did it, it was just sweet. Edward was my godfather, and he always reminded me of that. Even the last time I saw him, when I was thirty-eight, a grown man, Ed made it clear that there was a special bond between us, that he had a responsibility to me that ran even deeper than blood. I can’t think of one time he was anything less than totally kind to me.

Later in life, he struggled with type 2 diabetes, obesity, blindness, and the depression that comes with being in general ill-health. He died slowly, and then in awkward, abrupt jags like a bird with a broken wing fighting to stay aloft as he suffered through congestive heart failure, then strokes, seizures, and comas. He kept dying and being brought back to life, posting cryptic messages on Facebook, then dying again. Each time, less and less of him remained. By the end, I think he knew what he was facing. One message just said, “Pray hard for me.”

Just before Ed spiraled for the final time, I fell while running in Atlanta with Mattie. My entire right side locked up, from my right calf to my neck. Even lying in bed on ice packs or heating pads, swallowing handfuls of Advil, there was no way to arrange my body that didn’t hurt. I told my family I couldn’t make it to his funeral on account of my back. My mom was worried, but I told her I was fine, that I would be fine—years ago I’d made peace with his impending death. Then I lay in bed and cried for three days. Death is always sudden, always shocking, always a surprise.

Even if I had been healthy, I wouldn’t have gone. I was mad at Ed. His diabetes was a condition he could have prevented, and then a condition he could have managed. Instead, it led to his catastrophic seesawing in and out of death. The last time, he came back a vegetable. Tashina had to make the

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