It all started with the bubble machine. Our bubble machine is a dancing crab, and on Saturday morning its legs were stuck in the wire shelf behind the paper towels. My husband was getting a roll of paper towels down while he was making breakfast. As he was reaching overhead, the towels and machine got hung up together. He broke the dancing crab bubble machine. I had bought this specific one for our Surfside Beach trip in June, after the bubble machine we had in 2021 broke. In 2021 I bought a baby shark bubble machine for Naveed’s second birthday. My Uncle Tripp attended the second birthday party, and he played outside with the kids with the baby shark bubble machine on our Surfside Beach trip summer 2021. On Saturday I watched the video of Tripp holding my niece on his hip surrounded by bubbles. I heard his voice in the background. We didn’t go to Surfside Beach with my parents, Papa, and Uncle Tripp last summer. Last summer my Uncle Tripp was still alive.
On Saturday morning the $15 bubble machine triggered my grief. August had already been a tumultuous time for me, August 2022 was the last time we had all seen each other at my Papa’s 87th birthday party. My family had COVID the first week of August so we had pushed the party later. Tripp seemed relatively good that day, he had neuro surgery in April 2022 and at the time they had gotten the whole tumor out. Tripp didn’t do radiation or any follow up treatment after his surgery. In April he came to my parents’ house for Easter and my husband talked to him on the porch. He was in a dark place after his surgery, and the scarring on his shaved head was a constant reminder. But in August he seemed ok, he talked to my kids about going to Tweetsie Railroad a few weeks before. He seemed engaged in the conversation, and he seemed happy to talk to the kids. He had seemed outwardly ok at my youngest child’s birthday earlier in the summer. He bought the boys a planets projector night light, and he got Naveed “Baby Yoda” pajamas. Naveed still wears those pajamas; every time I see them I think about Tripp giving them to him for his birthday, and every time I see them I wonder how $20 pajamas could outlive a 55 year old man.
In September 2022, my family knew Tripp’s tumor was back. He was having the same symptoms as the previous spring, he couldn’t stand up, and he couldn’t listen to any music without it feeling like his brain was being pounded from the outside. My uncle always had the coolest music taste, he played electric guitar, and I always loved to see his amp and guitar in his room. He went to California in the early 90s and he had pictures of visiting Jim Morrison’s grave. When I was little, he used to play music so loudly it would shake the chandelier in our grandparents’ dining room directly below his bedroom. Tripp had the only VCR in the house so my sister Laura and I would take over his room when we visited to watch movies. He had a Twisted Sister poster and a Nightmare on Elm Street poster for years. Laura and I were a little scared of his room, but we pressed on to watch The Sound of Music every other week when we were 8. We sang The Sound of Music at his funeral. The preacher and my dad mentioned his heavy metal playing in their eulogies.
This is the week Tripp was released to hospice care. He was in ICU with his tumor bleeding. I don’t recall any notions of successful treatment once he was readmitted to ICU. I was so angry at him for not getting any of the recommended treatment post operation. My mom talked to her brother on a near daily basis. She couldn’t get through to him. When his mother died in March 2021, he lost his person. He seemed adrift. Six months after her death was when they discovered his brain tumor. Six months after her death was when my Papa started worrying about outliving both of them. Tripp could never climb out of his grief.
I have The Body Keeps the Score on my bookshelf. I haven’t finished it, its too painful for me. I have read enough to know my body remembers the trauma and loss I have experienced. This year my husband is planning a trip to the mountains with friends just as he was last year. Once again we have a birthday party on Saturday, the same child’s birthday party I was attending when my dad sent me a text that they were headed back to Pageland with Tripp. A hospice team member was coming the next day. This is the week I started the Body Well program through Fit4Mom and the first Wednesday morning workout I woke up at 3:30 am for the day and was crying through the ending meditation. We took my kids to see Tripp after school. They had just seen him in August, they didn’t understand why he couldn’t sit up now, why he was so flat in the bed. Naveed said his “Oh no, a monster!” script to start the game where the monster chases him. My boys’ particular brand of energy but especially that sentence didn’t go over too well that early evening. I wish I had some great parting story from that day. I knew it was the last time I would see Tripp alive. I don’t remember a word I said. He wanted my parents to get the kids candy and was trying to look for whoopee cushions. He was always a prankster, and he thought farts were so funny. The kids got Halloween cotton candy, and I chose to drive them to my dad’s parents’ house in Jefferson. I left my husband in Pageland with Tripp. He always seemed to be able to talk to him and relate to him. One of my last memories of Tripp at the summer beach trip in 2021 was waking up on the couch to hear my husband and Tripp talking on the screened in sun porch at 3 am. I was always happy they got along.
The last day I saw Tripp alive, my son Nemat said he was tired and needed to go home at 8 pm and by 11 he had a fever from some type of viral infection. We put him in his bed at home, and we felt that he was hot. We had just gotten bunk beds for our boys, and that day was the first time they slept in the bottom full bunk bed together. I wanted to separate them because Nemat was sick, but of course they curled into each other on the bed. Nemat stayed home from school a couple days, we went to the doctor on Sunday and he was put on antibiotics for a sinus infection. My child recovered.
My parents were in Pageland for about a month total. My Papa couldn’t lift Tripp at all, Tripp was 6 foot 6 and even at a drastically lower weight, any type of shifting or movement fell to my dad. Tripp lived another 3 weeks after I saw him. My mom said those last few weeks were awful, he didn’t seem to comprehend what was happening as his body shut down. He still expected to be able to walk around with support. His legs stopped working, his vision was diminishing. October 12 my dad called me. I had gotten a bit complacent because it had been a few weeks. My dad doesn’t call me much at night, we work together and even though he was in Pageland we were still trying to run our business as best we could. I talk to both my parents every morning, so I knew my dad calling at night was bad. He said, “You’re a smart girl,” when I answered the phone. I said, “He’s dead isn’t he?”
My anniversary is October 18. I hated that Tripp’s funeral was going to be so close to my anniversary. When he died on a Wednesday, they thought they might have to move it to beginning of the week because the crematorium was backed up. His funeral was on October 16, 2022. I had an annual legal conference with the NC Association of Women’s Attorneys on Saturday October 15 in Durham, NC. I had planned for Laura to stay with me because as mothers we are always looking for solo hotel stays. On October 16, 2022 I woke up at 4:50 am. Laura looked over at 5:15 am and saw me awake. We practiced The Sound of Music, and we recorded ourselves singing. We would have to sing a capella at graveside. We went to breakfast, and we went to Duke University Gardens to walk around before heading back to our house. We walked around Duke for 2 hours, and it was still only 9 am. We saw a nun near the Divinity School, she told us we were welcome to come to Mass. She thought we were Duke students in our Duke sweatshirts and we told her we graduated in 2010.
We drove home to make the drive with our kids and husbands to Pageland. Both of us got to the graveside only 15 minutes before the service. It felt very similar to Sassy’s funeral in a lot of ways. We were at the same church, the same plot for the Kohlers, the funeral home tent and the preacher were the same. Laura and I sang our song as the only nieces of Tripp. He never got married, he didn’t have any kids. The Sound of Music sounded the same as it did in our hotel room that morning. I didn’t cry. I introduced us and spoke about how Tripp always let us watch movies in his room, and enjoyed talking to us about music. My mom printed a collage I made for an Instagram story as the framed picture next to the urn. That collage is pictured here at the top of my post.
Yesterday on KidsGriefSupport on Instagram, I saw this post. “The one question that every child answered in the same way during my kid grief interviews…How long does someone miss their person who died? Every single child, from age 4-13, answered the same: Forever.” I will miss my Uncle Tripp forever.
My twin sister Laura and I started our susbstack newsletters mid August. We are working on an interview with each other, please like and subscribe if you want to see that update. Her substack is
. I am planning to post every Thursday for the rest of the year.
Sissy that was beautiful, and I teared up reading it!