MISSING MY COUSIN

Well, what the hell.  Thanksgiving is creeping up on me, as any sad anniversary is wont to do.  The twisted part is that, with holidays like Thanksgiving, there is so much to look forward to.  My friends and family will gather.  I am in North Carolina.  3/4 of the people I love most are in Connecticut.  The gap between us will be bridged and turkey will be eaten.


College is awesome, a beautiful experience and opportunity.  No complaints.  I am enjoying my absurdly expensive liberal arts education.  I am squeezing every opportunity and learning experience that I can from it.  I am getting my money's worth.

But enough about me.  This is about Katie.  I haven't written a post in a while, which is a bummer because I know people are out their grieving and feeling bummed, and I have no way to talk to them.  I hope someone is there to tell them it will be okay.  Someone there to help them taste the turkey, appreciate the cranberry sauce, and teach them to appreciate the love and family and whatever is there, around them, to be thankful for it.  If it's a dog, a TV, a stripper, I don't care.  I just hope they find that something to take comfort in, be grateful for.

I miss her, you know?  It's really a very simple emotion to babble about.  I miss her.  And she died on a day when you are supposed to have an uninhibited and well-spoken appreciation for the family, love, things that surround you.  There is so much I am thankful for.  My mom is driving down from Connecticut and she's bringing my best friends, Sami and Megan, with her,  My brother is driving to my school to pick me up and then we are all reuniting at my grandmother's house.  The very house where I was last year - on the back porch - when my father called and told my mom that Katie was gone.

I cling to her memory.  It's simple really.  She's in a lot of things.  We got matching necklaces in a seaside shop in Florida.  I have mine.  It's difficult to wear, to match with clothing, a combination of the two.  I've seen a picture of her wearing it.  I wonder where her necklace ended up.  I have mine, and when I wear it, I don't go an hour without thinking about her.  That's how it is with my aunt, I know.  She doesn't have to wear a necklace.  Katie, at least the thought and memory, is always with her.  I can't speak much on how she escapes or embraces that.

When you love someone, these are the terms and conditions of the agreement.  You love and fight with and experience everything they are.  They are a part of your life.  It is fragile.  You enter into the agreement, knowing full well that one day, one of you will lose the other.  You take a holiday to appreciate that fragility.  A holiday to embrace and appreciate the love you receive.  Thanksgiving is coming.  What am I thankful for?  A lot of things.  I am grateful for Katie's life.  The time we did share.

She was the one I looked up to.  The older I grew, the more her pedestal crumbled.  She was human like the rest of us.  But I did not love her less.  Her imperfections became like the poetry she wrote.  How much can I divulge?  How can I tell you the world she showed me, and made sense of for me.  Can I list, poetically perhaps, the details and images running through my head?  That is grief.  Sometimes you are left to assemble, piece together the beautiful things.  My aunt, Katie's aunt too, got a tattoo in Katie's honor.  It's on her shoulder I believe.  There are two dates.  There is the image of a bird I think.  The dates are, of course, birth and death dates.  It's the dash in between that I care most about.  It's the small dash in time that she belonged in my world, the time she lived, existed, a tangible, beautiful part of my life, my family tree.

She taught me the art of understanding dysfunctional families.  Loving a dog, writing, the sweet smell of rebellion in a teenager's car.  She taught me about going somewhere and nowhere at the same time.  She taught me about my brother, about forgiveness, about the movie thirteen.  She taught me about the beach, about mistakes, about the pool and partying and the slippery slope of youth in an uncertain haze.  She taught me about yes, no, and she introduced me to the art of decision making, of inclination.  She taught me to think creatively and sarcasm.  Though the latter two contributions were joint efforts, courtesy of a number of people in my life.  But her contribution was large and during my formative years.  She would always play games with me, always a playmate and a teacher and a cousin all the same.  She was beautiful, so beautiful, I looked at her face as she grew, and I loved it.  I loved what she stood for, how she looked.  I would try to adopt her expressions, learn her words.  She taught me the difference between good, better, and best.  I remember it well.  She taught me about dumb, dumber, and dumbest.  She taught me superlatives.  Literally.  I remember the lesson well, it's so strange how a memory functions - it was a summer day and we were loitering about the back yard, playing pretend games, concocting imaginary scenarios and daydreams, picking flowers and making fun of each other, of the family, contemplating dinner and mario party and soap collections.  She said, "No Sammy, there's a difference.  Dumb is just dumb.  But dumber is worse, another level.  Then there's dumbest, that's the biggest dumb of all."
     "So you can be dumb, I'll be dumber, and Zack can be dumbest?"
     She erupted in laughter, that twisted, old soul, knowing kind of laughter.  My god, she had a laugh.  I mean some people laugh, but she laughed.  She was my life in the summertime.

I dread the thought that I will never see a summer exactly like those, but my mind brightens at the thought that I am an imperfect creature, that I could be wrong.

Perhaps my children will have days like that, with my nieces and nephews.  Nieces and nephews that don't exist yet.  But I have two sisters, a brother, and three best girlfriends who are sisters to me just the same.  We will come together, perhaps in the summertime, and our days with be filled with that same childlike sunshine, that happiness.  And we will learn from eachother and laugh, and I will tell the story of my summers, of my Katie, and in that way - what is death?  But a hiccup of perception.  My memories can outlast death if I give those memories time and space and presence.

The presence, for now, is here.  Occupying a small corner of an seemingly infinite web.  It is enough for me, perfectly enough.  And in this way, grief is a dumb shadow of the best artistic creation.  Life, of course.