Look outside your window on summer afternoons and life in vivid, living colors stares back in awesome splendor. For me, however summer afternoons, particularly May, June and July afternoons are marked by memories of the passing of my loved ones. My paternal aunt in May 1992, my maternal grandmother in june 1995, my paternal grandmother in July many years ago, my father in July 1986 and now my paternal uncle just last week in July 2009.

The summers have gone from being a soft, gentle time of the year to becoming the harshest, most emotionally challenging time of the year and with the recent death of my uncle, I feel I've lost the sweetness of summer forever. His passing was complicated by "family issues." He was a very wealthy man and his immediate family seemed more consumed by his status than by who he was as a person. There was no eulogy for him, the program for his funeral didn't even include an obituary, not even the date of his birth and the date of his death. At his gravesite, his rich friends blocked elderly family members from sitting down on a hot summer day because they had "reserved seats" for themselves.

It is bad enough to deal with the death of the the people we love, but when you have to process ugly memories such as these as well, it only worsens the pain. But what else can one do but accept that there are situations over which one has no control. Easier said than done though.

If things were not bad enough, on the same day my uncle was buried, my next door neighbor died suddenly, possibly from swine flu. I am a mess, the sweetness of summer gone and I have no idea how to comprehend how summer, a time when life is so abundant, could turn out to be a time marked by such tremendous personal loss. How do I put this in perspective? I am at a total loss and the darkness is closing in.