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Edited on Tue Apr-05-05 09:40 PM by rbnyc
I grew up with cousins who weren't my cousins. My dad's very best friend from way back had a daughter, 2 years younger than I. That's my cousin, Laura. My dad's best friend's brother had a daughter a year younger than Laura. That was my cousin, Colleen.
We never lived more than 5 blocks apart from the time we were babies until I graduated from High School and was the first one to go away. And the only one to never come back.
We grew up together. We spent every 4th of July together in Colleen's back yard. It bordered the park where our hometown always put on the very best fire-works display in the Chicago suburbs. And they always had a little carnival during the day. We'd get our faces painted and play that little game where you pick up the floating duck and see what number is on its belly and get a prize--usually a kazoo or a yo-yo.
Colleen was the youngest. Laura was in the middle. I was the oldest and the most worldly, least sheltered, the least Catholic. My dad, an x-Catholic was raising me on Nova, the Cosmos, Firesign Theatre, the Marx Brothers, Night of the Living Dead and Moondog's Comic Shop. Laura and Colleen went to church and weren't allowed to watch R rated movies. My mom and dad told me those were joints they kept in the Sucret's boxes. Laura and Colleen's moms hoped they believed that the dads just had very soar throats. I taught them things, to the extent that I was considered to be somewhat undesirable.
I returned for a visit from College, and Laura's mom, my "Aunt" Nancy, told me,"We were so surprised," and she gave a nod toward Colleen's mom, "Aunt" Kathy. "We were so surprised when it was Colleen who got pregnant and not you." Colleen got pregnant right out of High School. Colleen's mom nodded, kind of absently agreeing with Laura's mom, but she didn't have the same sniper instinct as Nancy. When I answered, "Well, I was the one who knew how to use a condom," Colleen's mom laughed.
Colleen was like her mom in a lot of ways. She went along for the most part, but she had a kind of peace. She was genuinely kind, naturally non-judgmental, completely unpretentious.
After High School, I was surprised too. Colleen wanted everything right away and she didn't want to wait. She and her boyfriend were in love. They wanted to get married. They wanted children. They wanted to go to college and they wanted to live their lives. So they did it. They took turns putting each other through school, and they had 2 boys.
Laura went to College too. She got married very early too. And they both came back to the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago.
I didn't come back much. I'm not great about staying in touch. Or, you could say, I am great about letting things take their course, come and go naturally. I can really let things go.
It wasn't a surprise. I knew she'd been doing badly. I went home for the 4th of July a few year's ago and saw Colleen at the town festivities. She looked great, but I knew it was a fluke.
In recent months, I knew it was too late to reach out to her. She wasn't remembering people. It would have been confusing, and difficult, and selfish on my part.
She passed away last night of an inoperable brain tumor she'd had for years.
She was my cousin.
EDIT: typo
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