My last update here was a short one.  I said I was taking some time away for personal reasons.

At the time, that was all I was prepared to say.

Those personal reasons were my Uncle Bill, also known as Uncle Lion.

His health had deteriorated rapidly, and what began as worrying updates from my family eventually became the kind of situation where everything else simply stopped mattering.  I traveled to Florida to be with my family and was able to see my uncle one last time before he was disconnected from life support.

I didn't have some profound final speech prepared for him.  I didn't know what to say.

So I said the one thing that mattered.

"I love you, Uncle Bill."

He passed away August 11.

Growing up, he was Uncle Bill.  Look at a picture of him when he was younger and that nickname becomes fairly self-explanatory.  That hair earned it.

Some of my memories of him aren't extraordinary stories.  They're better than that.

They're family piled all over a couch with Uncle Bill underneath the chaos.  They're wrestling with him.  They're laughing and teasing.  They're making an "uncle sandwich."  They're the ordinary pieces of childhood that nobody thinks to label important while they're happening.

Then one day you realize those ordinary moments became some of the important ones.

That's where I've been.

I wasn't interested in forcing myself to write, post, or maintain a schedule simply so everything could appear normal from the outside.  Some things still got done when my mind cooperated.  Other things didn't.  I let them sit.

Now I'm home, and I'm beginning to find my way back into my work.

And there is a lot to catch up on.

There are updates that never got posted, projects that stopped midway through, things I've been organizing behind the scenes, reading I've been tracking, and creative work waiting for my attention.  Some posts may appear with earlier dates because they belong to those dates rather than the day I finally managed to publish them.

I'm not going to try to erase the gap or pretend it didn't happen.

It happened.

I lost someone who had been part of my life since childhood.  I went home to my family.  I said goodbye.  I spent time remembering him with the people who remembered him too.

And now I'm coming back.

Not starting over.  Not pretending everything has returned to normal.

Just picking things up, one piece at a time, and continuing from where I left them.

I'm back.

And I'm catching up.

Áille