Always in my heart..

Heart Shoes

February 7th.

Today is the anniversary of my cousin's death.  He died when I was 9 years old.  He was only 16 and made a decision that would cost him his life.  I remember lying in my bed and hearing my parents in the other room as they received a phone call about someone being in a car accident.  Like a good little girl, I said a prayer and asked God to please take care of the person that my parents were talking about.

The next morning my Mom and Dad came into my bedroom and told me and my brother that my cousin had died.  He was brain dead and my Aunt and Uncle had to make that difficult decision to turn off life support.  We went to my Aunt's house - everyone was a mess and people were going into my cousin's bedroom and were taking an item of his so they could have it to remember him.  I never got anything that day - not in the physical sense that is.

I still have my memories of him.  Like picking me up from school in his black Nova and doing donuts in the snow in the parking lot down the street from my Aunt's house.  And when he would stand at the top of the stairs in the house - flex his muscles - and then I would wrap my arms around one of his biceps and he would hold me up in the air above the stairs (thinking back that was probably not a good idea).  I remember the creepy glow in the dark felt like posters he had hanging in his bedroom.  And that he wore Old Spice.  I remember loving him like he was my older brother and not my cousin.

A few years before my daughter was born - I went to see a psychic.  It was the first time I had ever done anything like that.  To my surprise she was 100% accurate in everything she had told me from my past and would come to find out about my future as well.  But one of the key parts that still sticks out to me to this day - was that she saw my cousin standing over my right shoulder.  She told me how he died, about his injuries, described him to a T - and then she told me that he was standing over me and that he wanted me to know that he was always with me.

This afternoon I received a text from a friend of ours - he and his wife welcomed their first born son into their lives today.  My daughter asked if maybe it was our cousin reincarnated as this little boy.  All I could say was - I don't know...

"When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure"

Author Unknown