My cousin Shauna died very early this morning at 49 years old. She was 10 years older than me and growing up she was everything I wanted to be, but wasn't.
She was beautiful and delicate. She was always kind to me. She was artistically talented and she played the guitar. She was smart.
Once when I was about 15 or so and I was at my aunt, her mother's, house, my aunt showed me something Shauna had written for a project in high school. It was an essay about her future goals and what she'd like to accomplish over the next several years. As I read through the paper, I realized she'd accomplished everything she said she would in that paper by the time she was 25. I'd never known anyone like that. I'd never even known that was possible.
After doing well in college, she moved to New York and became a buyer for a department store (I think it was Bloomingdales?). She got married to a nice and successful man. She had a daughter. She eventually transitioned to graphic design, utilizing her artistic talent.
I always looked up to her. I was a junior bridesmaid in her wedding and I wore a flowered bridesmaid dress. I don't remember much about that day but I remember that dress and that Shauna was a beautiful bride.
On days like today, I feel like cancer, and maybe death more generally, is trying to ram the point into my thick skull that every single solitary moment has to be valued and cherished. I know that is the world's oldest cliché. Life's too short. Yes, I know. But do I really know? Are Shauna and Kelly and Wendy all reminders of that? They certainly didn't live and die to send a message home to me.
But is it, in part, a message to everyone? A lesson that we need to keep re-learning over and over and over? And what about the people closest to them? How can they learn that lesson when they are so tangled up in grief?
I don't know. I don't know.
