Things that aren’t secrets but that I haven’t found the right time to say:
My uncle Scott was someone I loved very dearly. He was 46 years old when he died. He died of blood cancer when I was in 8th grade and all of my peers knew. I went to a small Catholic middle school where every grade was one class of kids and the faculty heard all the gossip.
When Scott died I felt like I shouldn’t, or couldn’t grieve loudly. It tore my mother apart. He was the brother she was closest to, until he married that woman [aunt Gale]. Uncle Scott and Aunt Gale had met in undergrad through their acting program and went on to start a theater in Chicago, which they later shut down in order to move closer to Scott’s parents [Elizabeth and Worthington Smith, my grandparents.] He had always been the favorite child. As an only child, I can half understand that. The job of an only child is balancing between being the favorite and the least favorite.