I was supposed to be home the evening of Monday the 11th.
After being grounded at the airport due to storms, consequently missing my connecting flight and having an unexpected overnight stay in DC, then 7 hours of flying the next day from DC to San Francisco and then San Francisco to Phoenix (because they didn't have any direct flights) - and all of this alone with the two kids - we were finally home on Tuesday the 12th.
I spent Wednesday the 13th recovering.
Here it is Thursday and here I am. I have to write. I have to .... *sigh* .... I don' t know.
I feel as though a piece of my heart has broken. It aches. My mother contacted me on July 31st to tell me that my cousin (her nephew), a close and dear relative and friend with whom I had grown up with, was dead.
He took his own life.
This is what hurts the most.
Chris. Why? No note. Nothing.
Depression runs in our family.
His older brother David and he were like the big brothers, or siblings, I never really had growing up. Seeing as I didn't have a sibling (my brother) until I was nine years old, my cousins were in many ways the people who fulfilled that role. After all, we were all only a few years apart. Among the cousins I counted as like siblings were Chris and David (my mom's brother's sons), and Heather (my father's sister's daughter).
They have always been an important part of my life.
And this ... taking his life.... to leave this world in this way... is devastating. And I don't intend to be dramatic. But it has shaken me.
"Cousin" is such an insufficient term to embrace our relationship. It fails miserably at defining the bond we shared.
And although I physically moved toward the tragedy to confront it back east with family, (attending the funeral, providing and seeking support amongst family), I feel that in the busyness of planning a last minute trip and occupying myself with the tasks necessary to get there, I in fact mentally and emotionally retreated from the grief in many ways in spite of my increased proximity to the tragedy at hand.
If that makes any sense.
Now that I'm home, and there are the everyday quiet moments, I find the grief sneaking up on me. And it hurts. Like a deep ache.
I miss him.
It's moments like these that I am sad we moved so far away in 2004. I can't help but wonder if we still lived in Connecticut if this would have happened; if he would have felt he could turn to me. Because he tried to reach out over these past few years from a distance, but for whatever reason, he struggled to do so.
His mother said they found my letters all out in his apartment. He had saved every one.
They were important.
And yet he couldn't reach out. Respond. Seek refuge in someone. Not just anyone. Me.
* * *
I know how this goes. Right now he permeates my thoughts hundreds of times during the day. Soon it will be dozens. Then only a few. And life will go on and the heartache will heal. Not completely, a scar will forever be there, but we will all heal from this, in our own time, in our own way.
And I must believe Chris is somewhere better now. Something I liked the idea of, from his eulogy, was entering a sea of mercy.
