Taking the Cake Home

Preface: My father’s extended side of the family is quite large.  One of his younger cousins was diagnosed with diabetes a few years after I was.  As a kid, he was one of the “totally super wicked cool uncles you’ll do anything to be able to sit next to him” uncles (they were in high school/early college when I was born).  His wife has also become one of my favorite people.   

At a family gathering recently, nearly the WHOLE family was there.  There were lots of laughs, smiles, tears, memories and catching up.  And the noise level just kept going up.  Oh, and food.  Every single thing on that table was bolus-worthy.  In my generation, I am the oldest, and the youngest is 4.  We’re big on spreading out apparently.  In trying to figure out who was going to take leftovers home, someone asked my aunt if she wanted cake.  And she said, “No, my husband has diabetes.”  I was standing right next to her and I’m pretty sure the hand without the wine glass went on my hip and I yelled “hey!”  At which point I heard “Briley, he’s not a diabetic like you’re a diabetic.  He’ll get up in the middle of the night and start eating it & I won’t know where it’ll send him.”  My heart broke and beamed in that instant.  It broke because I’ve been waiting his entire diagnosis for the day when I hear “your uncle is working on his diabetes” and because my aunt uses me as a level of how a diabetic should take care of themselves.