*Shuffles in and flops on the couch
and blows nose*
Well Mr. Blog,
seeing Tom and Aimee last night helped my little heart.
I started feeling poorly again
from scrubbing gravestones in the drizzle
and missing mom and Lyle.
Ugh, Mr. Blog.
I was barely coping with my feelings
and getting all stuffed up all over again
and we got home at nine and I played the messages back
and was so distraught.
My cousin Debbie said her older brother,
my cousin Steve, passed away April 30th.
He was only sixty-three.
I felt like the floor
opened and swallowed me up.
We were all supposed to get old together Mr. Blog.
I mean, really old, like seventy.
He was so wonderful to all us bratty
little girl cousins when we were little.
All our Christmases in Auntie Ann and Uncle Dick's
huge hillside home in Laurelhurst
were wild, exciting fun times.
He and Larry were strapping, strong boys.
Steve wasten years older than me and starting
when we were four,
they would lay on their backs in the living room
in front of the Christmas tree
next to the warm fire
and they would balance us on the top
of their feet for hours!
They called it "The airplane ride
for the little bleeps."
They'd hold onto our hands for a bit and then
start swaying us wildly and eject us onto the rug.
My mom and aunties would all be in the kitchen
cooking and gabbing and Uncle Dick and Uncle Frank
would be in the arm chairs cracking nuts
at the other end of the living room.
Steve married a lovely girl, Bobbette DeButts
in a beautiful wedding at her parents
mansion above Lake Washington
and they moved off to Aniak Alaska
for three decades.
They had a son, Dillon and daughter Deidre.
We'd see them for weddings or the occasional
reunion and he was always the same tall,
handsome, warm and friend cousin
that I had known my entire life.
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