First off, thank you to everyone that shared stories with me. Secondly, now that I can sit down in peace and quiet i'll share mine. There were three people in my life that died way to young due to unfortunate circumstances whom I never got to say goodbye to.
Around the age of 6, I lost my cousin to suicide. This was the first time I understood what losing someone you cared about felt like. Although at the time I was too young to understand the full extent of details, I knew what had occurred. Basically, he went to "church" camp and ironically the pastors son introduced him to heroine. He got addicted pretty quick and I remember my aunt (his mom) calling my father after she had found him dead. He suffocated himself by running a hose from the muffler to the window and ran the car while the garage door was closed. His father is one of toughest men I know, but I'll never forget, even after 15 years, hearing the cries of his father (my uncle) during the funeral. If I could talk to him now, I would thank him for giving me fun times we had together. Not that many people like heroine but this taught me at a young age, just what it can cause.
When I was 9, I lost my Mom-Mom whom I was very close to as a child. She was everything to me, and really the only Grandparent that spent substantial time with me (her husband died before I was born). She had a heart procedure that placed stents in her arteries and the procedure went well. A few days after, she was recovering in the hospital bed, with my mother by her side. My Mom-Mom kept complaining about chest pains so my mother told the nurse. Without checking my Mom-Mom first, the nurse credited the pain to "soreness" from the surgery. My mom told the nurse once more that they should really get the doctor in, but the nurse said not to worry. My mom noticed my Mom-Mom turning blue....and yelled to get the doctor. To make a long story short, the stent in her artery collapsed causing her to go brain-dead, all while my mother was holding her hand. The thing that's heart-wrenching about this is the fact that the nurse didn't care enough to check the pain out the first time. Few years later we found out she lost her job....karma is a bitch, eh? If I could talk to her now, I would just hold her, and tell her how I wish she wouldn't have gone so soon because I needed her so badly so many times. I think about how my life would have been different if I could have just spent one day with her as an adult. On a funnier note, I would thank her for not making me close my eyes when Rose was naked in the Titanic. So technically, I can thank my Mom-Mom for introducing me to my first set of boobies :) "Hey! Thanks Mom-Mom"
Last but not least, around middle school I lost my closest cousin. He was the only other male cousin in my family that was close to my age (1 year apart) We grew up playing video games, smashing cans of mountain dew all night, riding four wheelers, typical cousin shit. He was heavy for his age and got made fun of a lot for it, but I always tried to be his good buddy. One night, I awoke to my mother screaming "WHAT, WHAT, NO" on the phone....by this age I knew that her reaction meant something terrible happened but I wasn't expecting it to regard my cousin. The story goes that he was doing "whip-its" at a friends (he lived in a shitty, drug filled area) Since he was heavy, he ended up losing his balance near a stair-well, fell and broke his neck. I never got to say goodbye, and I didn't drink or smoke at the time, but now that Im older....I would do anything just to share a few beers and a cigarette or two with him and ask him about life. His father (my uncle) posts tear-wrenching Facebook post every year on his birthday and death anniversary. I love my uncle, I still spend as much time with him as I can because I know he's still in so much pain.