Losing a parent is a difficult event to accept. Losing a second family member adds insult to injury and adds more salt to the wound. My cousin was the only relative outside my parents to successfully immigrate here. He was an adult with one marriage and two children behind him when he arrived. After trying to gain an exit visa for over twenty years, he was able to escape the economic doldrums of his mother country. A new setting with unscripted possibilities faced my cousin. At the end, he found a new love, added to his family and created a bridge between different cultures for all his local relatives.

What does this mean for me? It comes down to trying to understand an emotionally draining malaise that sucks any will to create faster than a double black hole. A personal inertia has taken hold and there is no manual or textbook to help guide me. There is also a pain that can split me in half and continue down past my toes as it tries to reopen the San Andreas Fault Line. Every bad moment in my sad history file comes to the forefront in sharpest focus. What ifs and if onlys fill my trains of thought.

My cousin was only a concept when I was growing up. My parents, brother and I were the only family outside the home country. My cultural background did not match my friends and classmates as a child. An ethnic island misunderstood and ignored. Stories kept the image of my distant family alive in my mind. A trip to the old country when I was two was just another page in our family mythology. It was just us and then everybody else. After high school came the trip that set me on my self awareness phase of life. I met the family and they became real and visceral. They accepted and reassured me. I identified with them though I do not know the extent of their reciprocation. I met my cousin once more and grew to know him on that trip. I realized the depth and sophistication of my culture through him. I experienced the support that only an extended family can provide through him. He showed me a side of the home country not found in travel guides and expressed an impressively broad store of knowledge. I viewed him as an intellectual equal, one of the few I would admit since I was such a smug self satisfied smartass at that time. I learned so much in the three months I spent with him that I was challenged to add anything significant to his scholarly gems for years.

My cousin finally arrives here and begins to reinvent himself and accomplish new things. I spent much time with him at first, but my life quickly took precedence as I struggled with school and stumbled into a career. A family came next for me and now my concentration was even more narrowly focused. All this effort came at a cost to our relationship. The next thing I now, my cousin has a career, then a new wife and son bringing with it another cultural addition to our immigrant family. My cousin’s role had shifted from relative to friend and teacher, then to extended family member and cultural bridge. My personal career and family arcs took me out of the inner circle of our nuclear family and sadly removed me, all too often, with regular interaction with him.

Now he has passed and with him ends my mother’s direct lineage in North America. I am racked with remorse over my lack of familial interaction and obligations. Regret dominates my thoughts. This compounds the pangs caused by the loss of my mother. Idleness overwhelms any inclination to actually accomplish anything. My only answer to this feeling tonight was to drive. Ever my favorite means of avoiding responsibilities, I could drive for hours and days on end. Since learning to drive at the age of eleven, this has remained the one consistent thing I can do. I would drive in high school, leaving campus during the period before lunch and returning at the end of the school day. With classmates or alone, it did not matter. With gasoline at fifty cents a gallon and a never ending supply thanks to my father, I learned all the major roads in and out of Los Angeles County. So, tonight after the reception for my cousin’s memorial I drove. Without anyone to share this evening of mourning I took to the streets to try and remember past events and sites. My memory failed me in the most perfect manner. Houses no longer recognizable, streets long changed and a greater number of fellow drivers stymied any attempt to wax nostalgic. Still, I think best when driving alone. I came to realize the effects of many forces and stresses working upon my emotions. I realized my need for contact, an attraction to beauty and the need for mental stimulation that has occupied my attention for the last month. These interests echo the conversations with my cousin as he was also a cryptic soul. The similarities of natures are obvious, the success in our abilities to achieve personal satisfaction, not so much.

Loss leads to reflection. This reflection can include different responses but these too, are dependent upon one’s emotional state. Work through it, I tell myself. But I am torn between seeking personal dreams or continuing on the path I have forged many years ago. I have not been able to resolve any of my dilemmas, neither does there appear to be any available resource that can lay out the best possible scenarios. I miss my mother. I miss my cousin. I have no answers for the empty set stuck within my parenthetical heart. All I can do is warm up my ice with another hit of Jack. Perhaps the new week will present options.