There’s no good way to write this and no bad way to write this. There’s only writing from my heart and this topic specifically consumes most of it. In some ways I feel as though I don’t have the right to write this, which I’ll explain later.

It’s been almost two years since the 26^th of September became a whole new day for me. It’s become a whole new day for many of my family members on my father’s side and friends of the family. In fact, we could even include the days in between leading up to the 9^th of October too. On the 27^th of September in 2014 at around 11:30 am, I had one of the strangest and most horrifying phone calls ever. As I was getting ready to clock back in from lunch at my shift at work, my dad sent me a text asking me what I was up to – which already came across as unusual considering most of our texts started with a “Yo!” or “What’s up?” This was like talking to someone I haven’t spoken to in years. Someone wanting to catch up and go out for lunch sometime. He followed up with another text, asking that I call him. This became the second strike in my mind that something was off. I’ve never been known to call my dad much unless it was an emergency. Texts have just been a norm for us.

Without going into a full dialogue, the phone call made had lingered for 30 minutes past the time I was supposed to clock in and I found myself in a break room, sobbing over the news that my cousin Kayleigh was killed in a car accident. For the first time in my life, I’d heard my father cry. For the first time in my life, a car crash contained a victim I knew and a victim I loved. For the first time in my life, I watched a room full of people from my dad’s side shed tear after tear. The news had made its way through a phone call to an article written in the Circleville Herald to the mouths of my aunts and my uncles and the rest of my cousins as we grieved.

Shortly after, on the 9^th of October in 2014, my grandmother passed as well. But while death is a morbid topic to write about, it’s something that has affected me from about the time I was six up to the days I turned twenty years old. I sat at a time where death seemed to find other doors to knock on but he made his way back around to mine. This time I was on my own. No parent dragging me by the hand to a funeral. I remember the days and every detail and emotion behind them. I remember seeing my aunt and uncle in a whole new light, their sons as well. I remember the sky remaining a constant gray with raindrop after raindrop. I remember my dad saying, “don’t freak out,” shortly before stepping out of his car and into the funeral home. I remember this being the day I lost faith in God. All of the memories I’d had of my cousin came back in a flood, making everything hard to believe. While the news given to me was real, the reality of everything hit me like a train the second I stepped foot into a room of friends and family of my cousin, realizing why we were all there.

Even though this is something every person experiences at some point in their lives and this was just another one I’d come to experience, there have been things I’ve learned day in and day out since it has happened. You learn to completely grasp the concept to love your family and friends while they’re still here because the idea of waking up one morning to everyone you know being alive isn’t always true. You learn that nobody will tell you about the guilt you’ll feel afterwards that you blame yourself for time and time again. For myself, it’s having spent more time with my cousin. When I was younger, she used to pen pal me all the time and insist that I come up some day to sleep over or go see a movie with her. She’d ask about different things in my life and it felt as though I’d had a best friend within my own family. Now, I have the signature of her last letter tattooed on my right shoulder in memory of her. But the guilt still adds up as I realize we could have been closer and as I feel that I have no right in writing this. I could have done more and talked to her more but I’m left with memories of her that I can only hold onto while I can. I’ve learned that I don’t know the pain in losing a child but I’ve watched it wash over two aunts now within my family. Nobody tells you that when you lose someone to what’s seen as just another car crash in the world, that it becomes a traumatizing event for you, your family, the person’s friends and even those that come to witness it. Nobody will tell you how to pick back up and carry on with life in the days afterward, even if it’s 2 years later. Instances like these will become lessons in life that we’re never prepared for, and ones that we should never feel ashamed for when we still don’t always know how to carry on.

To this day, I will always miss Kayleigh and I will always wish there were more opportunities for the world to meet her. Call it cliché but I would tell her how much I love her and how much I appreciated the letters over the years. I would take time to see her and talk to her as I should have to start with and let her know how much I’ve looked up to her over the years and that I’m always thinking about her. The only thing I can do or say now to anyone reading is to please, please, please hug the ones you love today. Not a 2 second, 1 arm hug. Embrace your friends and your family and take the time to “love always.”