Reverend William Roger West died on December 23, 2005. He had suffered a long and hard battle, but to be around him you would barely know it. It seems impossible to me that he has been gone for three years now. As a matter of fact although the picture above is old, it doesn't seem like that long ago to me that it was taken. At the time my aunt marrie
d Roger I was a young girl. I was very thin at that time and very energetic. My uncle use to tease me and call me a little "Jib". Jib is what my aunt goes by. Her name is Arlene, but she has been nicknamed Jib every since I can recall. My mom said it had something to do with her jibbering when she was young. Now for those of you that don't know my family is from the south. A town called Pippa Passes, Kentucky to be exact. Jibbering (Northerners would probably pronounce it jabbering.) means constant chatter that is sometimes meaningful and sometimes without much meaning at
all. I take it when she was a child she must have been quite chatty. I recall a time when my aunt was in the hospital and I was helping out and my uncle came by to eat at our house. I was on a low salt kick and I made him a hamburger and didn't salt it. He didn't let me hear the end of that one for a long time. In his younger days he played and sang in a band in bars. He was quiet a romeo too from what I have heard, but my aunt stole his heart and in the last decade of his life he devoted himself to God and his family. I can't say there was a total
change. I mean the uncle I loved was still in there. Maybe more so than ever. The biggest changes I saw in him were his changes towards people and life. He loved his life more. He was more tolerant of people. More loving and kind. Whatever he was to me it was always obvious from very early on that he loved me and that he accepted me for who I am. He didn't ask me to change or even to try to be someone I wasn't. He was someone I felt comfortable around. Someone I felt understood that side of me that no one else could see. The side that simply wanted to be accepted without restrictions. There are so many memories over the years. I remember going to visit him the in VA hospital a few years back. No one was in there with him at the time I went to see him. He told me he had been in a lot of pain but he didn't want his "Jib" to know that. He was tired, but he would stay around for her, for his family. They weren't ready for him to go. A couple of years later I went to see him in Lutheran. He was asleep when I went in his room. Again, just him and I. I sat with him for a few minutes. I didn't want to wake him. I knew his battle had been long and hard. I also knew at the time his journey was coming to a end. This time when he was released to go home from the hospital he didn't go back to the old normal. A hospital bed, oxygen tanks, a power chair all went with him. A local charity group built a ramp to his front door. Hospice started making visits. He tried to be jovial that
fall. Money was tight and we gathered stuff and had a garage sale at their house to try to help them. I remember watching him make the most of it and riding outside on the sidewalk talking to people. The light of his light Katie with him at times getting a ride from Grandpa. He was making the most of every moment he had left. He was swollen in the face and you could tell he was weak, but there he was talking to neighbors and customers and doing his best to have a good time. Katie really was the light of his life. He loved his grand daughter and she loved him. She thought there was no one like her grandpa. It broke my heart when he was too weak to go to her first birthday party. The day of her party they had started him on Morphine. I took lots of pictures and made sure I printed the album in a hurry and took it to him and my aunt so he could see how her party went. I was afraid to wait too long. I was afraid he wouldn't make it. At that time his oldest son Matt was still hanging on so tightly. People started coming in to see him from far off. On my uncles birthday my ex sister-in-law and I took him a cake. I thought it miraculous that he had lived to see Thanksgiving. He grew weaker and weaker and I grew
sadder and sadder at the prospect of what could happen any day. I remember the day he died very clearly. I had gone through Wendy's on my way to work to get myself some lunch. My mom called my cellphone to inform me of his death. She told me of how
my cousin Matt had held his hand and told him it was OK to go. After hanging up the phone I sat and cried. I threw out the food. Didn't have the stomach for it anymore. The feeling was a mixed emotion of missing him and glad he would no longer be in pain. Since it was the holidays the funeral wouldn't take place until Wednesday of the next week. This was a Friday. I remember thinking how long that is to keep someone up. By the time the funeral came around I had the flu. I was coughing my head off and was hoarse. I also had cried so much up to that day that I couldn't cry at the funeral. I remember thinking I hope no one thinks I'm cold. I love him. I'm just numb. I've cried since that day. We all grieve in our own way. You never really get over that missing someone when they hav
e had such an impact on your life like he did mine. He impressed other people too. He never complained to people about his illness or misfortune. He talked about what he had, not what he didn't. He died too young. He was fifty-two years old.
I know his wife and his kids still miss him so very much. At Katie's fourth birthday party this year my aunt commented on how much she missed him and wished he was there. She was also worried about his grave since she had hurt her leg and couldn't get out there. I went by after the party and took pictures and checked on it for her. It's just a grave though. I know we get comfort sometimes in going to the resting place of the body, but I don't think the person's soul is there anymore. Either way I wanted to take a moment and remember my Uncle on this third anniversary of his death. I suppose we should celebrate his life more than his death. Both impacted me in a large way. I also have taken so long putting this together that it is now Christmas Eve so we can also now celebrate the Eve of Jesus birth. However you celebrate may you find joy and love this season.
Do you think bears come out of their long winter nap to celebrate a day that falls in the middle of some of the most miserable weather one could possibly have in the state of Indiana? I personally have never been a fan of this holiday. It seems most people soul intent on New Years is to see how wasted they can get and whom they might even go home with. Now I have an occasional drink and in my younger days I did the party scene and the bars, so I remember it well. What I remember was feeling like crap and wasting a bunch of money I didn't need to on mindless guzzling of a product that basically poisons your system. I remember being at a party on New Years where I was totally uncomfortable because drinks were not the only item there and as much as I have done things in my life, coke on a mirror ain't one of them. I remember another New Years where some friends and I were driving home from a party and someone shot at the car we were in. Yeah that was fun. Yet another where the guy I was out with was so drunk he threw up in his car and on the side of his car. Hum... more fun. Oh and then lets not forget the New Years I went out with what I thought was a friend because she didn't want to be alone. Now some years back I vowed to be either at work, at home or with friends playing cards on New Years. The rest of it I had decided I wanted nothing to do with. So I agreed against my desire to go out to go to a movie with this girl. I picked her up and we headed to a movie. Everything I said, she corrected me or told me it was some other way. Then she started complaining about this guy she's been after for more than a couple of decades and how he is choosing to spend the evening with his friend Jeff instead of her. (I have told her on multiple occasions this guy is gay.) I had saved some money for popcorn and food and stuff because I knew this girl would be broke as usual, but on the ten minute drive to the theatre she complained so much that when we got to the movies I bought myself a kiddie popcorn and pop and stood and waited for her. Somehow the desire to feed her had left my thoughts. So she chose the movie. Dollar theatre. It was an OK movie. We didn't talk much during it. Then after the movie I told her we could go back to her place and talk if she wanted and I could buy us a pizza or if she wanted to go out to eat we could do that. I proceeded to tell her what was open. She complained the whole way there too. 
We went to IHOP and our waitress's due date was January 2ND and she was ready to pop and looked exhausted. I felt very sorry for her. After we ordered this woman showed me a diamond ring that this guy had given her for Christmas. I said oh, is that an engagement ring? She said he didn't say and he didn't answer when I asked him. I dropped that conversation right there. No guy is going to give you a diamond ring and not say something, but I wasn't going there. I figure this guy is just keeping her around for his family to think he's straight. The ring was just a little bling bling to keep her hooked. The whole time we sat there she complained about everything and made the poor waitress's life more miserable than it all ready was. I wanted to sink my head in the sand and I couldn't wait for the night to be done. So finally our bills came and she said the oddest thing: "Ha, my bill is cheaper than yours." I ignored it and got out the gift card my dad had given me for Christmas. She had picked the movie, and she had picked the place we ate and now she was pissed at me for having a gift card. She said quote: "I would have picked somewhere else if I had known you had a gift card." She was mad because my meal was being put on a gift card I got at Christmas. She wanted it to cost me money. I was dumbfounded and I tipped the waitress well. I drove this woman back to her house and haven't spoken to her since. As a matter of fact if I see her in stores I avoid her. So my run with this night is not a very good one. There is also the fact that I don't' get why we celebrate it. Who cares if the year on the calendar is changing? Every day you live is another year that has gone by in your life from the last time you were on that calendar date. Another calendar year for you personally would be called your birthday. The calendar year we are celebrating is a man made calendar to keep track of time. So I don't understand the holiday. I'm sure it has some significant meaning that I have no idea about, but to me it's just another day. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate and thank God for each and every day so being just another day is an important thing to me. Whatever your take, may God smile on your life with each new year or new day that you live. Happy New Years!
