Losing a cousin

I told a friend over tea that I had just lost a cousin. It sounds careless. You lose car keys, a sock, but losing a person is more than careless, it is painful. Due to family dynamics I didn’t get to know my cousins until I was an adult, and from listening to their recounts of childhood adventures, I think I missed out on a lot of fun. Despite that I have formed in-depth relationships with some of them and have built adult memories. Others are in more distance contact. The cousin I lost was a twin and it is his twin that I was closest to, close enough that he was the executor of my estate while my daughter was a minor, a decision I rethought once when standing near the edge of a cliff. He put his arm around me, led me closer to the edge and asked my daughter if she wanted a Ferrari or a Porsche. There are a lot of us cousins more in touch today because of the internet then a few years ago.

I suppose we are lucky to have reached our current ages with only losing two cousins. Still there is much greater sense of sadness then mere misplacement of items including the childhood years I never had with people I care for.