A Sad Story...

Through myspace I found out that my cousin Michelle is in the hospital on life support.

To be 100% honest with you, I don't know what to do with that.

I haven't seen this cousin since I was 7 years old. I remember her, but in short hazy bursts. I remember her longish strawberry blonde eighties hair that was slightly curly with heavy aquanet shine to it. I remember that her room was plastered in pictures of 80's metal bands, like Motley Crue, Posion and many other men wearing enough make up to make any drag queen proud.

I remember she ran up to me once when I was a little girl and took my small hand and made it into the sign of the devil and told me to show my mother what I could do. My mother, a product of 70's rock herself thought it was funny. I was young and stupid and had no clue at the time what I was doing. All I remember was that it made me burst into a uncotrolable fit of laughter.

I remember that in the days that followed my gradfather's stroke, that they (all my cousins and aunts/uncles) all followed us home to our house and I suppose tried to help each other gather up the pieces of all our broken hearts.

I remember that tripping over my baby cousin and eating the maple wood bedframe and with my head as I came to bed that night.(I promptly ditched the wooden frame after that.)

I remember my mom, my aunt Ginny, Jennifer and Michelle making fun of the local liquor store that was called something like, "Big 'O Bob's Liqour store".

I remember Jennifer, Michelle and my mom trying to (in vain) to sort through years years of paperwork that my grandfather never organized, looking through old photos of the family and doing what families do in ackward moments like that: just talk.

It took my grandfathers stroke to gather up my family together so we could see each other. To see how we had all evolved as human beings, or as in the case of some of us, how we were still growing up and trying to find out who we were.

Sadly, out of all my cousins, I knew Michelle the least. To this day I know nothing about her other than then I thought that she and cousin Jennifer were beautiful and for a short brief period in my early children years, I had considered them my sisters, since I had none.

And with the possibilty of a soul I never got to know, or see again, might leave us, is very saddening to me.

And it makes you think about all the other people that we love in a lifetime that somehow slip through our fingers almost carelessly.