Homecoming: On Life, Death, and Family

At the end of last month, I got a few days off from work to go home. I was excited: beautiful western Pennsylvania is ever calling me back, and spring is my favorite time at home. The birds, the stars, the fields, the family--I was glad to be with them all again. Given all the good things, though, time at home can be quite difficult, for many reasons. This time one of the most difficult I've ever experienced, with emotional extremes coming out of the freaking walls.

It began on Sunday, one of the most surreal, emotionally extreme days I've ever experienced. My sister was piddling in the kitchen, and I sat with Mom and Dad at the dining room table. We were spying on a killdeer who was working on laying an egg in our backyard--a beautiful picture of life if ever there was one. The phone rang, and unfortunately Mom answered. It's not hard to read her emotions, and this time around seemed really, really bad. Turns out, one of my 23-year-old cousins, Kayla, had been killed in a car accident. Yep, 23 years old. Kayla's a month younger than me. I think I'm still in shock.

After a nap to clear my head, dad and I left for the hospital to see my uncle who'd had a stroke a few months ago. It was still hard to see him so weak, but he was so, so much better than he'd been the last I'd seen him. Once he got sat up in a room with some light, he talked and smiled and seemed quite alert (though he did think my dad was his son and my cousin was my dad--figure that one out). It was such a good thing to see him, though it about made me want to cry in gratitude at how much more like Bill Cameron he was at the end of May than he had been at the end of March. This was also difficult, though: if my uncle had passed, as many of us thought he would, we would really have been celebrating a long life well lived. Instead, that day held the death of a very young woman: not much accompanies that but pain and anger at the way this world operates. I've been aware of that paradox ever since.

On going home, I recruited my sister to come with me to see one of the newest additions to the family: my cousin Randy's 6-week-old son Scott. He is a precious little bundle of joy. Randy is one of the proudest dads you'd ever meet, and his son is freaking adorable. We even saw a couple of smiles as Dani and I took turns holding him. Another paradox of life, age, and death.

The next day, I stopped to see my uncle, Kevin, whose daughter had been killed, and his family. This is where things get really complicated and traumatic. Kevin and Kayla's mother, Kandi, broke up when Kayla and her older sister Kasey were really young. I'm too young to know much of the story, but eventually it got to the point that Kevin barely saw his daughters. Barely, as in, maybe once every few years. I went to school with Kayla and often heard the girls' perspective, which was filled with a lot of pain and feelings of anger and abandonment. My uncle Kevin shapes part of my belief in absent fathers' ability to really mess up their kids. Kayla and Kasey were, by most accounts, severely emotionally messed up.

Tuesday was the viewing for Kayla. Seeing Kayla's body, along with her mother and sister's grief, was overwhelming. Kayla's body had taken quite a beating in the accident. Her mother and sister stood by the casket, Kandi just weeping and Kasey still seeming in shock. Neither seemed able to take their eyes off of Kayla. It was one of the hardest viewings I've ever been to.

While walking out of the funeral home, I saw Kasey's beautiful baby girl for the first time--as if I needed a final reminder of the surreality of the weekend and of life and death.