cousin

I reconnected with a cousin today. She lives in Arizona and was out in Florida with her husband to attend her son's wedding.

We were never close, she was 14 years older than me and I'm pretty sure I wasn't even in high school the last time I saw her. I remember her son being a toddler and now he has a teenage daughter and just got married again. Weird how quickly time passes.

Because she was going to be in the state, she contacted me last August (partly to offer condolences on the passing of my sister) to make arrangements to stop by my mother's nursing home. Basically she wanted to see her aunt one last time.

Months have passed, of course, and we haven't had any communication except in these last couple of weeks to arrange a time. Lots has happened in my life since last August that she wasn't aware of.

I realized this might be the case and yet it still took me by surprise when we were sitting there in my mother's room and my cousin says "I haven't met your husband yet, I was hoping he would be here."

Talk about feeling like a knife was plunged into my chest. I know I got a weird look on my face and I just said, "yes." For a few seconds I couldn't say anything else. So many thoughts were running through my mind. What do I say? How do I handle this? I actually thought of just saying nothing and changing the subject because it's always such a downer to introduce the subject of death.

But, of course, I couldn't do that so I took a deep breath and told her that Taz had passed away a few months ago. Of course that changed the atmosphere in the room.

I did change the subject after that because I've found, even after 8 months, I still can't talk about it without starting to tear up and if I continued, I would definitely start to cry.

I really haven't talked about it with anyone, mostly because nobody wants to talk about it, but also because I hate the whole crying in public thing. I wonder when that will stop. I don't mean when will the feeling sad thing stop, that might never end but it might be nice to not feel like bursting into tears every time the subject is introduced.

Other than that emotionally-charged moment, we had a really great visit. Her father and mine were brothers and there aren't many cousins left. Her sister died several years ago and now with mine gone, she and I are the last of the girls in our family. I'm so happy to have reconnected with her after all these years.

She and her husband live in Arizona only a couple of hours from Las Vegas and, going in the other direction, just a couple of hours from the Grand Canyon. It's one of my favorite parts of the country and recently I've begun to think that one day I might move to the Southwest because I've always loved that part of the country. 

Taz loved it too, our very favorite part of each cross country drive (we did 8) was Arizona and New Mexico and he always wanted to visit Monument Valley because he fell in love with it while watching westerns as a kid. I was planning a trip for this year but we never got to make it so one day I promise I will make that trip in his honor. We also wanted to visit the Grand Canyon and almost did on our last cross country trip but changed our minds at the end so I'll definitely visit there as well. And think of all the amazing turquoise jewelry I could find out there! I'm really quite a cowgirl at heart.

The good news is that my cousin and I had such a nice visit, she extended an invitation to come out and visit her so I do hope to make that a reality sooner rather than later.

Frankly, I would like to make any sort of trip a reality. I would really love to take a vacation to someplace completely new just to get away from my real life for a little while. But traveling by myself is no fun and I can't afford it anyway so maybe I'll just have to "travel" in my dreams for now.