one part of the problem is that - to explain that your uncle has passed away you have to explain to people that in your culture sometimes extended families live together, and that this is not the uncle you see once a year at thanksgiving - but immediate family. that i have lived with my uncle all my life, and that i spent more time in number 52 than in my own house. i played there after school every day, i often had meals with them instead of at home, and even today when i am home i still go over and spend an hour or two there everyday - and when my parents don't find me in the house usually check next door first - that if you have ever rang me up at home and i was a long time coming it was because they had to go next door to fetch me. and that even the distinction of at home and next door isn't quite the same - we live in terrace housing, and we have the house next to each other, and the external dividing walls and fences were taken down so that you could pass between the houses without going back out onto the street.

and i can imagine if my aunt were here, my youngest aunt, she would have a harder time than i - she would have had to say "my brother-in-law..." - and not be able to explain - that she was more than twenty years younger than my aunt, that she was only a child when my aunt married, and until she herself was married she lived at home with us, that my uncle was head of the household and although technically a brother-in-law was really a father figure to her.