Sunday afternoons at my uncle's

I just got sad news from my sister Julie. My uncle has passed away. Not a lot of details so far. We only know that he was on a trip to Toronto. The news didn't strike me at first. Yes, of course I was sad. But we have barely been in touch with him lately. Actually, I think I saw him once or twice over the last ten years. He was a great uncle...

The next email I had was from my Australian Super provider guy. Basically, the ATO doesn't know what is the status of my application and I won't make the cut of April's 1st where the taxation rate go from 30% to 35%, even if I submitted my claim at the very beginning of March. So I was pretty mad at the situation since there was really nothing I could do. So Australian government is going to be richer of my 5% because there is no way my claim can go through the backlog of ATO and the backlog of AXA before the deadline. It is not the date on which the application is submitted, it is on which date it is processed. And the ATO is taking a pretty aggressive demarch in this area too now, asking all super providers to send back the money to the government for Temporary residents who have left Australia more than 6 months ago. That money will be sitting in governement pockets and no interests can be earned. There was not much I could do.

And that's when it struck me.

I was all upset about how ATO could do such thing instead of thinking of my late Uncle. I mean yes, what ATO is doing is pretty aggressive and nasty. It's very annoying but it's going to be a difference of maybe 500$. What's more important, 500$ or my uncle?

I was really sad about my thinking. What have I become to bleed ice this way?

I realized that my problem with ATO are very pale compared to what my uncle's wife and daughter should be feeling right now. Ashamed I was. I tried to remember what my uncle brought to my life... Because, really, I don't know what I brought to his. when our families were still seeing each other a lot, I was always happy to go his place. Usually on Sunday afternoons. His daughter was so lucky with all the books and gadgets at their place. He had the entire collection of Asterix Le Gaulois, Tintin, many more and even some Dan Cooper! Sometimes he would even let me play on his computer. He was the first one in our family to really start playing with technology. He had a Tandy at one time. I remember playing Battle chess with the strange and slow so cool animation when a piece is taken by a player. I remember his Rubik cube that we never solved. I was never ever bored when visiting my uncle. I remember him always very happy and very generous of his time. He certainly contributed to my thirst of knowledge and was gave me a first insight to computers.

Death puts everything back in perspective. Pretty obvious that when you're not here anymore, not much matters. But the worst, for me, is to go without leaving an heritage, to leave void, as if nobody was upset by your departure. And in the case of my uncle, I have nothing but great memories of my childhood. He definitely influenced me in a very good way and for that, I say thank you.

And I think that I should have been more in touch with him. I will probably send an email to my extendend family soon. After all, some of them probably don't know where I am at all...