It's about 2:30 A.M. right now. My dad and my sister went out to my aunt's house to help plan for the wake and funeral (see last entry). But I can't sleep, and I don't know why. Well, I do, but I wish I didn't. My uncle's passing is nagging at something, and I don't know what it is exactly. All I know is that it's something that I wish I had asked him - something I wish I had a second chance at.

You see, my uncle had a disease known as MS. I'm not exactly sure what it is, or what it does. But even as a man in his thirties (maybe early forties), it rendered him unable to walk and barely able to talk. I remember stories my dad would always tell me about how my uncle was so athletic when he was in high school. He was in track, soccer, basketball, ping pong - and he was in a huge family in the fifties and sixties. After that I know next to nothing about his life, though.

Whenever I would go to visit my uncle, he would always have a smile on his face - DESPITE the fact that he could no longer do anything that he used to love to do. He couldn't even hold a book up to read. But he was always happy, always laughing and loving, whenever I saw him.

So the question that I wanted to ask him, today's question of the day that is more rhetorical than the others, is this: How, in the midst of such suffering, such pain and loneliness, did he stay happy and content with himself? What gave him the strength to keep going?

What made him who he was?

-Taki