Connected

I have a cousin I don’t know very well. The last time I saw her I was a kid visiting Pennsylvania where my family is originally from. To tell you the truth, I really don’t know any of my cousins very well. We moved to Montana when I was 8 and our families drifted apart the way they do in our modern American lives. Yesterday, my mother called to let me know my cousin’s 17 year old son killed himself. As I said what people say upon hearing that horrific news, “I feel so sorry…we’ll be sure to send our condolences…they’ll be in our prayers”, my thoughts immediately went to that place of gratitude for my children. Then my thoughts drifted to instant worry that they could someday suffer from depression and then onto, “Oh my God… please don’t let anything remotely like this come any closer to me.” Like it’s a contagious thing. I’m ashamed to say tried to put it out of my mind. It kept coming back…the thought of my cousin grieving her son. While watching T.V. the theme of suicide and depression kept coming up, then I turned to a magazine and there it was again, a feature on teen depression. After a night of sleep, I looked forward to my busy day. As I attempted my morning routine, my husband called. He just landed in Seattle for his business trip and there it was again. He was calling to let me know he sat next to a woman that was from Hamilton. They got to talking and discovered how small our world actually is…she is travelling to the funeral today. It turns out she is one of my cousin’s closest friends and I had no idea she existed, let alone that she lives 30 minutes from my house. Strange connections. All of these things are not allowing me to just move onto the next thing on the list to accomplish today but rather actually think about the unimaginable...what if my child suffers from depression someday? How would we cope? Where would we turn? In the case of my cousin’s son the burdens of this world were too much to bear despite his loving family and support system. The fact is children are both resilient and fragile at the same time and finding a good balance between the two is part of growing up human. We love our kids deeply and yet tragedies like my cousins sometimes seem unavoidable. Helping kids navigate the waters of childhood is difficult even without added stresses of family dysfunction, addiction, poverty or even worse. It all makes me more committed to attempting this stupid running regime and now seemingly ridiculous blog in the hopes I can be possibly raise some awareness and money to help the kids at YHI that don’t have much in the way of healthy support to find their way. 


My thoughts and prayers go to my cousin Karen and her family.