Hold tight to those you love.

This morning, I found out my cousin died tragically and unexpectedly in Oklahoma. I keep going back to Sunday night, about 1 am, trying to remember if maybe I woke up at that time and something felt off. Because, despite the fact that I think we are science here, and that when you die, you die, there's this small part of me that feels like maybe when someone you love dies, someone with whom you share a lifetime of experience, you can feel it.

My mom called me this morning with that something's happened voice. For a split second, I thought it was Al B. Let me tell you, with all of the death we've seen in the last year and a half (and despite my own feeling of stability and strength), I don't think I could have handled it. For one moment, I was losing it.

In the end, it was my cousin. My sweet, quiet, tall cousin, who was adopted into our family 24 years ago by my aunt and uncle.

He was special in so many ways---when he was really young, they lived in a small mountain town in North Carolina. He used to ask so many questions---that's what I remember---and he had this super-country accent and speech, like, "Wah do them birds sing?" I'm not saying he is uneducated, that's not the case. I think he was in preschool with some folk and, well, that rubs off on you. He was precious.

Sometime around his ages 5-6, he was molested by a female babysitter who's father was the town doctor. This went on for a period of time and, of course, none of us knew about it until years later, when he started acting out and getting into trouble. Then he was labeled by many as a bad kid. He and his parents spent a lot of time in Utah for familial rehabilitation for people who have experienced sexual abuse. Those times were hard on them, obviously. Wore them down to the bone and drained their bank accounts. It was anything to get him better. In many ways, they've never recovered.

I haven't seen him since my mom married, largely because we don't get home much. But on my Christmas card to his family, I wrote, "Please give B___ our love!"

No one expected this. He was working a job in Oklahoma, had been there for the last four months. And then, POOF!, he's gone. That's it. I keep thinking that isn't that far away. If only I'd known. In Tulsa, of all the places. And he died without identification on him---his family was notified after he'd been dead for almost two days. They didn't even know. And he's alone, his body, dead and in Oklahoma, as we go on about our routines.

And all of that---the grief, the soul-wrenching grief of that---I'm really feeling that right now.