On the Eve of My Uncle's Memorial: Life is Beautiful and So Heartbreaking

 I've just finished writing a eulogy for my favorite uncle on my dad's side, my Uncle Bri, Uncle B, Uncle Brian Lovett. He died from pancreatic cancer.

October 2025: Out for ice cream with Uncle B

In writing, I am aware that I've been blessed and privileged.  Nearly all my extended family were kind to me as a child and teen, and communicated to me that I was welcome in their presence.  

My family was hard-working, Catholic, and numerous. I had six uncles and aunts on my mom's side, and five on my dad's side.  I saw them at least twice a year, Thanksgiving and Christmas, from about 1976 until the mid-nineties.

I saw them when they drank beer at every gathering and smoked.  I smoked in high school, too.  I saw them quit beer and quit smoking.  They suffered layoffs, careers that ended too early, strokes, and heart disease. My paternal grandmother Dorothy  "Dot" died of pancreatic cancer in 1975 or so.  I don't remember her.  We lost my maternal Grandpa Mac in 1981, when I was eight.  He was quite the doctor, artist, and cook, from what I understand.  I remember him guiding my hand through sketching pants on a boy.  I lost my maternal Gramma Ruth in 1998, my favorite and most precious grandparent, when I was 25. My grandfather, John William Lovett, passed away in about 2012.  He got to meet Colin and Ian, my sons. I was proud to take a photo of three generations of Lovett men together. Whew.  Big emotions writing that paragraph there.

I'm so grateful that my boys got to meet and enjoy quality time with the extended family.  Not only that, they really got to connect and talk with them.  There is great familial pride in that.  Uncle Brian was an icon of all that. I didn't see it until I took time this evening to write my eulogy and let it wash over me. Not just emotion, no... Deep humility and appreciation for the families (Lovetts and McCloskeys) of which my boys and I are a part.

I got to drive Uncle B's cool new cars as a teen. I learned to golf with him and Uncle Dan. He was so entirely fun, had a laugh that made me laugh, and he showed up.  When my wife and I needed relief, he and Aunt Pat babysat the boys so we could get away for a weekend.  He did this multiple times.  He and Uncle Bob were famous for giving away things via email, for "the family discount"...free. He liked traditions and sharing his special things, like the condo in Keystone Norma, and I stayed there in 2005.  His deck house in Kremmling. His season tickets to the Broncos.

I was more affected by his passing than any other extended family member.  The deaths are hitting close to home.  I'm not such an egocentric person.  I have more history with all my extended family now. I now have more respect for who they were and who they are.  

My extended family members are largely stoic, emotionally absent, and prickly. But I think I see a little better now.  My parents and their siblings were raised by the Greatest Generation after WWII. Feelings were a road bump.  The Greatest Generation was disconnected from their dads, who went to work at any/all hours in the Industrial Revolution under relatively new light bulbs.  My family in particular, on my dad's side, worked for generations on the railroad at all kinds of hours. Western civilization was in the middle of a revolution for sure, but not necessarily for the better; instead of working and suffering together on a farm to grow their own food, they slogged it out separately in school, in the kitchen, and at an office or factory.  I may have been critical in the past of their way, but my kids and grandkids will also shake their heads at my way as they grow up.  

I see life bends in a beautiful arc: we begin admiring our parents and their siblings, longing for connection with them, and then we get hurt or hurt them.  We moved out or move on.  We have our own kids, and we realize our parents were limited humans like us. Not towering giants, just scared parents, making it up as they go, like we do. They were young and inexperienced parents when many of us were young.  We are all doing the best we can. 

at one of many Broncos games 

Mercy starts to grow in my heart, and good memories of visiting my uncles and aunts and chatting with them as adults. But cancer grows in those I love and grew up with, too.  Sadly, infuriatingly, we only just begin to enjoy and appreciate adult friendships with our parents and extended family, and disease kicks in.  It's heartbreaking and beautiful to long for connection.  It is a basic human need from the first seconds after we exit the womb.  And it never diminishes.  It gets hurt, buried in shame, distracted, exhausted, and it takes damage, but it does not diminish one bit.  Death and loss confront us unflinchingly. Death and loss are two sadistic brothers, arms crossed, bullying us. They win a LOT of fights.  That, too, is vaguely beautiful.  In losing battles to loss and to death, we reevaluate: 

"What happened?"  

"What actually matters when cancer can just sneak up, punch a family in the gut, and pick us off one by one?" 

"If I'm not invincible, if all my elders eventually will be lost, what do I do with daily choices?"  

"Who do I need to reconcile with or better tolerate in my family?"

Uncle B photobombing

Jesus Christ promised to make all things new.  He promised eternal community.  He lived for it, touched the diseased, healed the ill, and raised people from the dead for it, and he died and rose from the dead for it.  Christ himself is part of my extended family.  Say what you will about religion, Catholicism, and scandal, hypocrisy across all Christendom.  But we long for connection.  Jesus personified that connection. Jesus of Nazareth was a good son. He called God, Daddy ("Abba").  Before time, I picture Jesus and God agreeing to the plan, to give Jesus up to unthinkable cruelty--to regain and maintain that connection for which we are all hardwired. Yes, each of us is an image of God, but our families are the plan and image (imperfect though they may be) of God's familial, communal, other-centered, agape love. We tell the story that leads to Jesus through our extended family and spiritual communities.

The last photo with Uncle Brian

I will share my eulogy here after I deliver it.  This was an emotional riff.  I hope it stirs something of goodness, truth and beauty in you, reader.  Your family loves you. God loves you. You are enough.

Thank you for reading. May all cancer everywhere end soon.

Here is the actual eulogy I shared at his memorial.