When I was 12 and he was 15, I caught my cousin smoking in our grandmother's backyard. At first I thought I had discovered some great secret, one in which I could exploit to my selfish pre-teen advantage. He saw me, though, and laughed -- his parents already knew he smoked. He could always do that, make himself seem edgy and loveable at the same time.
This week marks three years since he died. Over the course of three years, I have begun to remember the good times. One Thanksgiving, my grandfather proudly showed off his new Birkenstocks -- his "JC shoes," as he called them. My cousin laughed heartily and began calling his own sandals his JC shoes. He always maintained that my grandfather, unrelated to him by blood, was the funniest man he had ever met.
Because he and my brother were so close in age, they were in constant competition. My childhood memories of Thanksgivings and Christmases often involve one or both of them being injured by the end of the night. Arm-wrestling seemed to be their preferred mode of duking it out.
The summer before he died, he went to Alaska to explore. He, like me, had heard our fathers' stories of the Alaskan wilderness they had loved as boys when their father, our grandfather, was stationed near Fairbanks. Always an outdoorsman, a picture on my aunt and uncle's fridge shows him smiling from ear to ear, probably freezing his butt off. I didn't see him after he got back.
I assumed I would hear all his stories at Christmas, when our entire family always packs into my grandmother's house and eats the gourmet meal my uncle prepares for us. Instead, that Christmas became the first one without him, another milestone to get through, like his birthday or the first anniversary of his death.
In the few years before, to invoke that college cliché, I think he had found himself. A major part of that was his work as a volunteer firefighter. He would come to family gatherings, still in his blue t-shirt, issued cargo pants and boots, and regale us with stories of the firehouse. When I met his fellow firefighters later, I kept smiling at the hysterical stories I had heard of their inability to cook or their romantic escapades.
When my grandmother told me he had delivered a woman's baby, I knew, despite his claims of disgust, that he was exceedingly proud of himself. Again presenting himself as a humble badass.
He had decided to go back to school to take the classes he needed before he could train to become a professional firefighter. At his funeral, when the fire department honored him in every way possible, I understood how much the bonds he had created in the firehouse meant to him. In his twenties, independent from his parents but without a family of his own yet, he had found his family with Station 8.
I never got to find out about his trip to Alaska. My stories of the firehouse now come from different perspectives, friends that joined of their own accord. My brother, once only months younger, becomes older as my cousin remains the same age.
One of our family friends is a minister. When it happened, my mom called him to ask him how to help my aunt and uncle. He gave a great response, one I hope I can remember whenever someone I love is in crisis: "Just be there." As much as we were each suffering by ourselves, by being together we realized that having each other was better than any other remedy. Being there isn't going to bring him back, it isn't going to stop our world from changing forever. But no matter what happens, having the people that you care about and who care about you around is all that remain in the end.
In Jewish tradition, one says the kaddish in order to mourn for a loved one. You must say this prayer for up to a year after the death, and then on the anniversary of the death each year after. Like many prayers, the kaddish is meant for the soul of the departed person. Something about this tradition is so beautiful to me -- a way of going on with your own life while remembering how much a loved one meant to that life.
This column is my thanks for him, and for my family and friends, who have helped me through the last three years.
I will always remember that smile -- the humble badass.
Laura's column runs bi-weekly on Thursdays. She can be reached at lsisk@cavalierdaily.com.
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