THREE SIMPLE WORDS

That's all it took for me to find out that my cousin was dead. "He is dead" and then I closed my office door, and cried. A lot.

My cousin was 23 years old, and a 2nd Lieutenant in the Air Force. He was a 5-year veteran of the armed forces. This is the same kid that I once locked in my locker in Grade 7, when he was all of maybe 5 years old. At 23, he still looked like that same 5 year old, but was much taller, and would probably not fit in the locker. Not that I'd be willing to try stuffing a military man into a locker.

The last time a relative died, I was 8 years old. It was my grandparents on my father's side. I really didn't know them that well, seeing them very rarely because they lived in another country. Any tears I shed back then, was probably more a reflection of being 8 years old, then actually crying from the sadness of losing people in my life. This time, I could reflect on memories of my cousin - not only locking him in a locker, but once tying him up to a chair to calm him down, to the time we kept telling him that he was going to jail because he accidentally hit a kid in the neighborhood with a plastic ski pole.

Everything is worse. I find myself moving slower than I usually do, or at least it seems that way in my mind.

When I tell people my cousin died, one of the first things they ask "Were you close?". Somehow, I don't see how that matters. While we weren't as close as we were since he'd moved away to Israel, and there was a 7-year age difference between us, fact is, he was still family, and he wasn't some distant cousin that I'd only met once or twice in my life time at some sort of family function where you meet all sorts of people that you're told by your Mom they are related to you, and you have to take her word on it because she is your mother, but also because DNA tests are too costly and take way too long for the purposes of a family gathering.

Really, I find the whole thing surreal. He's gone at the young age of 23. For the last 5 years, I've worried about hearing the news that we just got on Monday. Now, I don't have to worry. I'd much rather have to worry for a few more years. Given the alternative, that's a much better luxury.