My partner's cousins were killed in a car accident yesterday. They were driving to a post-Christmas family gathering, and they slid on black ice right into the path of an oncoming truck.
We've been in shock these last two days. I don't know how it can just happen like that, that two wonderful, vital people can just be dead, all of the sudden. I keep thinking about the next time I will see them... before I remember that I won't be seeing them.
We don't live near them - we are in California and they were in Indiana. My partner is going to the funeral this week, but we are quite tight on money and we couldn't afford to buy four tickets (for me and the boys) - we could have afforded two, but there is no one to take care of our 2 and 6 year olds. So it's just my partner going. I feel sad about that, but I guess it is okay.
Phil was my partner's first cousin, and older than him by about 20 years. They were close. We saw Phil and Louie every year at least once, usually twice. Their kids are my age, mid- to late-thirties, and my partner grew up as the older cousin who liked playing with the little kids - he was 8, 10, 12 years older than them.
Phil was an activist through and through. He would go protest war somewhere, get arrested, come back and do it again. He spent his life fighting war and injustice. He and Louie took quite a few trips to the Sudan, helping communities build infrastructure and creating peace - teaching peace in war torn villages.
Louie was genuine and loving. Every time I saw her, she would come up to me with a big, warm hug, and tell me how great it was to see me - and she would mean it from the bottom of her heart. She would sit down with me and ask what was new, and her manner was such that I felt thoroughly embraced by her. She was so encouraging... she would look at my sons and tell me what great parents my partner and I were. She was like this with everyone.
They were pastors of a church together - the atmosphere they tried to create at their church was all about inclusiveness, loving kindness, compassion, progressive values. I have no doubt that they were really great pastors.
Last time I saw them was in August. We were at a family reunion. Phil spent over an hour creating little people and cars out of vegetables and toothpicks, just for fun - a little zucchini car, bell pepper people, complete with bell pepper seed eyes glued on with peanut butter... my 6-year-old got into it and pretty soon, everyone at the reunion was creating little veggie people and we ended up with a whole menagerie.
I don't really know how to express what Phil and Louie were like - all the funny little quirks in their personalities. I know that I just expected them to be around - even though Phil had had health problems that were wake-up calls. They were such great people. Loving, selfless, sincere. They really lived their values. They were not people who ever would have thought, in their last moments, of regrets about their lives. They took risks to live their values, and they sometimes got in trouble because of it - but they have consequently touched so many people. They made the world a better place.