Larger Than Life

I have eight uncles-my mother's brothers. A couple I know well, a couple not so well and one or two I know just through snippets of minute flashes of childhood memories. Brief. Sparse. And fading. One thing "the eight" have in common is that even now I see them through the eyes of a child. A little girl who used to run around her grandmother's backyard as if she had no cares in the world and never would. A child who recalls the giants who would occasionally walk through that yard and into the house and the deep raucous laughter that would usually follow.
 My uncles were always larger than life in my eyes.......big,strong men with deep voices and even deeper laughs. The kind of laugh that was genuine,real,never forced and came from somewhere even deeper than their souls. The kind of laugh that grew from years of doing without and still being able to be thankful for what they had. A laugh that told you they had no regrets or feelings of having missed out on anything in their youth because of their station in life. 
So many times I can remember sitting quietly, straining to hear every single word of their stories. (They told the best ones EVER!) Little did I appreciate at the time that these weren't stories at all but memories of the moments that shaped and molded them into the men they were. Precious glimpses of time past that I was "watching" through their words and that laughter. 
That little girl was so naive. She didn't realize then that these giants were men....mortal men. Men that years later through no fault of their own would begin falling prey to an enemy that even giants cannot seem to escape or defeat. An enemy that chose to encroach on the very fiber of strength that made them giants. Like a parasite this enemy has taken up residence with six of those giants. It has so far defeated two of them. And right now it has its tentacles wrapped around another. 
The little girl in me is still watching.....waiting for that fairytale ending in which the giant defeats the enemy. The happily ever after bringing with it the roar of laughter as only they can bellow. The undeniable sparkle of playfulness and joy that shines in each of their eyes.....but this is not to be that fairytale. Because I am not a little girl and they are not giants. They are men. But in my mind, in my heart and in my eyes......they will always and forever be larger than life.