Wesley.

Foggy memories, that's all that left of Wesley in my brain.  I remember him crying, I remember being annoyed with dealing with a baby.  I was maybe 7, and that's all the exposure I had with my cousin.

My cousin was 7 years younger than me, and through time and miles and family squabbles, he was little more than a stranger to me.  That's what happens when families are large and spread out, honestly, when care isn't taken to stay geographically close to one another. In a family like mine, where Dad was one of 10 and Mom was one of 13, there tends to be little gravity pulling all of the extended cousins together.

For whatever reason, though, when I learned this Sunday that Wesley had died at 25, I was gripped with a feeling of loss.  It shouldn't have meant much to me, this virtual stranger's death, but it did. Coming to grips with exactly why its affecting me at all has been a conundrum, and I'm still not 100% resolved.

I think mainly it points to how short life really is, in varying degrees for all of us. I wonder if Wesley did any of the things he'd set out to do when he dreamed of life as an adult, but if he was like most of us, he probably didn't. Also, since he shared at least a shred of my DNA, there is that dread that the brevity of years will run in the family.

Whatever the case, the simple truth is that once most of us are gone, the vacuum of our disappearance is quickly filled with the fact that life moves forward with a trajectory that's nearly unfathomable.  Maybe that's the hardest part of facing death---knowing that eventually, you'll be forgotten.

I see it a lot at flea markets---very old black and white pictures of people that once were loved, cherished, hated...people that were mothers and sisters and cousins.  And now, they are simply a relic of days gone by, a moment captured on film and then in a blink, forgotten.

Overall, the feelings I believe that I am left with is that of infinite smallness, and of sorrow...sorrow for all of us, living as if we've already died, living as if we're ready to be swept aside into the mausoleums of time.

I believe very much in energy.  Each time I have an amazing moment, I close my eyes and I try very hard to capture the essence and the energy within.  It's my hope that Wesley had these, and that some of the energy contained therein still exists here with the people that knew him better than I did.

Skeptically Yours.