The phone call you hate getting

You know the one I mean, as it rings somehow you know what's waiting for you on the other end. Your heart instantly goes into your throat, it's hard to swallow, hard to breath, and it's definitely hard to answer the phone. I got that call tonight ... a very unexpected call from my mom about my cousin, Chris.

"I have some really bad news about Chris, he died tonight." I was silent, I didn't know what to say, I'm not sure I could even talk! Finally I got out ... "died?" My mom went on .... "He's huge WVU football fan and has season tickets and never misses a game. Tonight they play Connicut and Chris was meeting up with a friend and they were going to go together, but Chris never showed. The friend waited and waited, he called and called, but nothing. Finally he went to Chris's apartment and found him dead on the floor." Still I'm stuttering, "dead, how?" Things going throughout my head ... drugs ... no, suicide ... I doubt it, I couldn't figure how someone at such a young age could just die. My mom said that the family thinks it was a heart attack, but nobody knows for sure, only time will tell. We didn't talk long ... I get off the phone and try to hold myself together. Of course like every other time I get this kind of news I'm home alone. So I cuddle Socrates close, and I lost it ... I burst into tears crying for so many things. Crying for his daughter, my aunt and uncle, his brother, his two sisters, his nieces, and nephews, so many people, so much pain, so many lives touched by one single person.

I felt compelled go somewhere and watch the WVU-Conn. game .... so we went to an Irish sports pub and did just that. We missed the beginning of the game, but that was okay ... I watched it for Chris, I felt peace in that for some odd reason. The Mountaineers kicked butt as always, Chris would have been happy ... the score was something like 37 to 9. I know he was smiling from where he was.

So back home we go, I'm not really wanting to go home ... that means I have to actually deal with this. My cousin was in his apartment in New York getting ready to go to a football game with a friend, and well ... you know the story.
I don't want to say I deal with death okay, because I don't. But I do deal with it. I find great peace in my belief system ... and I believe that everyone is here on earth for a purpose ... what that purpose is, we don't know. But we travel along that road of life ... eventually we have fulfilled our purpose, there is no longer a need for us to be here, our work is done. No it's not fair so many are left behind, no it's not fair you don't know it's coming so you can't say your goodbye's, but that's life ... extremely unfair. But in knowing that, is where I find my peace.

So it leaves us with our memories ... that's how we keep our loved one's alive.

"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." (an Irish proverb I believe)