My Cousin

My cousin died seven years ago, give or take a few weeks (I don't want to figure out the exact day, because that would involve going to my journal and remembering what it was like when she died, and I can't go all the way there).

C came home for lunch, told her husband she wasn't feeling well, sat down on the couch, and died. She was 52, in excellent health, and had attended her first grandson's bris two days earlier.

We were supposed to see her six weeks later. My father, my sister, my brother-in-law, my nephew, M, and I were going to Israel to visit my aunt and uncle, cousins, cousins' kids, and cousins' kids' kids. I hadn't been to Israel in ten years, and we hadn't all been together since my sister's wedding four years earlier.

When my cousin died, we debated cancelling the trip, but decided it would be better to go.

It was.

On that trip I realized how essential children are to the familial ecosystem. The adults were devastated, bereft, shellshocked, but five of us were under the age of four, and they had no idea of the sadness that surrounded them. They needed to be fed and bathed and put to bed, but, as importantly, in their oblivion, they were happy. They dug holes in the sand and blew balloons and laughed at their crazy uncle's antics. They made us smile despite ourselves, and we knew that life would go on.

One evening I sat with my cousin's husband (who is actually my cousin, but I met C when I was two, and she was my cousin too) and he talked about her. Like everyone who dies suddenly and too young, C was remarkable, except that (like everyone who dies suddenly and too young) she really was. My cousin was gaunt and unshaven, and I held his hand, and we both cried.

What I remember most from that conversation is when he said that C was always even, that she had been moody when she was younger, but she had learned to control her moods. That comment stuck with me as the epitome of what an adult woman, especially a mother, should be.

Every day I feel my failure.