Even at 22 when you're preparing to meet your parents for the first time, you never remember to take into consideration the other people involved in such an event. The great grandmothers, grandfathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters... The people that would complete your very extended family.

One day, I stood 2200 miles away from everything I had ever known as home, in a backyard full of people I'd never seen before, and I experienced the most overwhelming calm I had ever felt. It radiated from the inside out and back in again.

Uncle Dave walked up to me and said, "Look at this." He opened his wallet and pulled out a picture that was taped together with bent corners, fading, and without saying anything, I knew it was me. It was me when I was only hours old. It was a me that I never had seen before and wondered if I ever would.

"It's been in here since I got it." For 22 years, my Uncle Dave, who I didn't even know existed, didn't even consider until I was standing in his back yard, carried me with him everywhere he went. Before I could even begin to process the gravity of that, he says to me...

"So I hear you're a Pearl Jam fan. Man, they're the greatest." With Vs. on shuffle and repeat, I spent the rest of the night with 20 people talking about our history as if it had overlapped all along.

I got 2 letters from my Uncle Dave shortly after my return to a place that didn't feel so much like home anymore. On the inside of the first one it says PearlDebbie with a sketch of the Vs. cover and an outline of Ohio with a star, just in case I forgot where "home" was.

In the second, he says "For Thanksgiving we are having turkey, mashed potatoes, and Glorified G on the jukebox."

On the envelope is a sketch of a plane flying from California to Ohio, the Vs. cover again and some words that resonate stronger now than I ever realized. "I seem to recognize your face... lifetimes are catching up with me..."

It's hard to understand how much you mean to someone when you don't even know they exist. But that doesn't mean you don't have an impact.

"Of all the many dreams of my life, most of which don't materialize, the meeting of you and the joy that it has become is one of the things that I will treasure as long as I realize dreams."

At 2 this morning my dad called me to tell me Uncle Dave died from lou gehrig's disease.

For as long as I realize dreams, I will cherish that September in Uncle Dave's backyard, listening to Vs. and meeting a family I'd always felt, but never knew. The last thing on the envelope that Uncle Dave wrote is "Perfect days never end."

And he's right.

Just found this. The last time I saw him...

wow.

gave me goosebumps.

RIP.

Great piece of writing. Sorry about your loss