I don't understand how anyone could not take the opportunity to reconcile with an estranged family member when the possibility of death becomes a reality for one of them. I feel like I have seen enough movies and read enough books to understand the importance of making at least some kind of effort for closure when terminal illness happens. We've all seen (or read) the scene when the person dies unexpectedly, and then the family member is left wailing, "Why? Why didn't I tell him/her when I had the chance?"

I recently spoke to my estranged uncle for the first time since I was five. He lives in Hollywood and supposedly teaches acting to some famous people.
He was calling me from a pay phone. He kept having to put more change in while we spoke.
Who uses pay phones anymore? In LA?

He didn't even remember which kid I was. He was convinced I only had once sister, even though I patiently explained that I had two. I explained to him that my father, his brother, had fallen very ill and gave him my parents' phone number so he could call and touch base for the first time in over 20 years.

He flatly declined to reach out. He said he has his own problems to deal with and that their estrangement goes far before I was born, and then the phone cut out.

That was all I really got out of the conversation I had with him. That and the fact that he is very sick too. He made sure emphasize that to me repeatedly. He is not diagnosed with a terminal illness, but still. He is too busy with taking the pills for his own heart issue to want to deal with my father and their 20 year silence.

I can't believe that a man who surrounds himself with theatre, and directs plays all the time, and teaches actors to be vulnerable and emotionally available, could react this way when told his brother has cancer. How can someone see all the multitudes of plays dealing with family secrets and cathartic reunions and apologies, and not want to be open to a real live moment of that in his own life? As an actress myself, I am appalled and embarassed to call him family. To know I could share the same genes as someone so...for lack of a more potent word, FUCKED UP, scares me.

And I pity him, most of all. I pity a man whose only family in the world is my father, and us, my father's children, and he declines a chance to reconnect with us and attempt to make up for lost time.

Frankly, I now want nothing to do with him. I thought it might be amazing to share a passion for acting with someone in the family, since no one else seems to be inspired by the arts, and to pick his brain about technique or his knowledge of the beast of Hollywood. Now that I have seen so much ugliness in a few minutes of a phone call, I don't even care what he might have to say about acting.

There are some truly sad individuals out there, and he is one of them.

May I never be like that. May I always strive to be better.