Alison

This one's for you.
With love.

A few weeks before I turned 20, while I was visiting family in Cape Town, my friend Cindy was killed in a car accident.  I never found out until I returned home several months later.

It was then that I learned how different the pain is when someone dies before "their time."
The shock.
Denial.
The pain.
(Both emotional and physical.)

While I maintain that losing both grandmothers were the saddest times I've experienced until now (Granny was 93 already - but I tell you, so much of my youth went with her) there is something so devastating about the loss of a child.

When my brother's friend committed suicide he was only a teenager.
I made a VOW to myself then and there to keep depressed/lonely feelings at bay and seek help/friendship/ANYTHING when times were bleak.
And there have been many.

Last week, my family lost someone so special and so lovely at the tender age of 16.

While most of you are shuddering - it's probably because on a subconscious level, you're recalling what a tough age that was in the first place.
The peer pressure.
The bullying.
The boys.
The bullshit.

My little cousin had to deal with all of the above plus an illness.
She'd endured multiple surgeries, hospitalization, and severe physical pain.
Suffering from colitis, she became somewhat of an ambassador for Ostomy organizations across Canada.

You can read one of the many tributes written about her here:
http://muggins7.wordpress.com/2012/07/27/a-life-cut-far-too-short-losing-one-of-our-own/

On Thursday morning, she went to hospital for the last time.
I keep waking up thinking it's a nightmare.
It
Just
Can't
Be.

I remember when I went home for Christmas a while back...
I walked into my aunt's house which of course was packed (our family is huge) Alison RAN across the house to hug me.  She were so excited that I came home.
(I remember just knowing when I walked through that door that she would greet me first)

That is my last memory of her.

Oh honey.
If you only knew how I was sobbing right now.
Maybe you do.
Of course you'd want me to stop and feel badly for my sorrow.
You were sweet like that.

I take some solace in knowing that you are out of pain and in God's hands.
When it comes to my family, I really hit the jackpot.
But oh to have one more Christmas.

It will never get old not in my soul (not in)

 My spirit keep it alive

We'll go down this road 

Till it turns from color to black can white 

~ Frank Ocean