When Life is More Important than Writing

The past few days, I’ve not blogged, I’ve rarely spoken (except to good friends), and I’ve been unusually uncommunicative.

Why?

Well, my cousin Jacki passed away suddenly. She was only a few years older than me, and I hadn’t seen her in over ten years . . . but I always felt close to her.

Maybe it’s strange that I’m saying that, as I hadn’t seen her in years, hadn’t even talked to her by telephone since before my husband Michael died, and mostly had kept track of her doings online.

But I’d hoped to see her this summer. . . I hadn’t yet figured out how, as money is always a problem, but I still planned to go see her and my other cousins. Didn’t tell her, or my cousins, because I didn’t want to get their hopes up —

But now, I won’t have the chance.

Jacki is dead. And now, it’s left to me and anyone else who cared about her to comfort those still alive — most particularly her sisters and brothers.

Mind you, it’s hard to know what to say at a time like this, even though I’ve been through something similar. Grief is different for everyone, you see, and it’s a journey that I’ve intensely disliked . . . I’d not wish this on my worst enemy. Much less my cousins, who are normally full of life and all its joyous exuberance.

Even so, I will do and say what I can, at least at a practical level. That’s all I can do.

But anything I say to them seems pointless right now. I know it will not bring Jacki back.

This is a time when life has trumped writing. All of my words seem without resonance, without purpose . . . without life.

I know that’s an illusion, mind. Words are all we have, and perhaps by speaking of my cousin at her funeral, and by continuing to remember her, we’ll summon up some of the good memories — of which there were many.

Even so, my heart remains troubled.

I’ve had a bellyful of mortality. I’ve lost my amazing husband Michael, my best friend Jeff, several other friends, my Aunt Micki — my grieving cousins’ mother — last year, and now, I’ve lost Cousin Jacki as well.

This just does not seem fair or just, at all, no matter what the rewards of Heaven are said to be by various religions.