Monday, July 21, 2008

Friends and Cousins

As Emily posted in out last entry, my cousin Lee, age 34, died of a heart attack several weeks ago. For his upcoming remembrance friends and family have been gathering photos and I did the same. Going through the photos certainly brought back some memories and make his passing a bit more real. It is hard to imagine that there will be no more photos to take.

Lee and Keith

Lee is a 2nd cousin by blood, which means my mother and his father were cousins....my grandma and his grandma were sisters. We really did not get to know each other until 6th grade when we both landed at Sunset Middle School. From then until the end of college, we were buddies. Time, work and distance all separate us it seems and I hadn't see much of Lee since having him in my wedding in September of 2004.

Lee in Old and Ugly

Lee would come home with me after school and we would spend hours playing elimination on the driveway basketball hoop or ride our bikes everywhere. During the summers we'd meet halfway between my house in Empire and his house at the end of Crown Point Rd. Quite a ride for those that know the area. We'd carry on on our bikes taking us to other friends houses, or even over the North Bend bridge to my dad's work for a pop and a candy bar from the lunchroom vending machines.

Mud Football

During our high school years we'd sort of lose track of each other during the school year as he went to North Bend and I went to Marshfield. We were rivals each spring on the baseball diamond. When school was out and the summer started we were back to it. Bikes and baseball. Lee and I, with my dad's help, set up a full-on batting cage, complete with lights for nighttime practice, in our backyard. We'd spend hours out there. Or on the tennis court listening to Milli Vanilli on the boombox. We worked together in the hay fields and discovered the game of golf on a lunch break.

When college came, we rushed our fraternity together; roomed together; lifted weights together; drank and shot pool together. We both moved out of our fraternity at the same time and rented a house with 3 other good friends for several more years. Lee had the basement room that occasionally flooded, but he took it in stride.

Heading to College

Lee and basement room

I don't think I have ever seen Lee sad....I've see him mad, sometimes at me, but not sad. He was the center of the party, always ready to go out for a drink and a game of pool. His friends were his family and there were a lot of friends.

Lee got a hold of me several weeks before he died...to ask me to be in his wedding. He had met his girl. We caught up a little, as much as you can on a 45 minute phone call and regretted that we hadn't kept up with each other. But he wasn't lacking for friends. He had his life in Portland and Vancouver and it was rich.

I feel lucky to have at least talked with him before he died. It makes it easier I guess to know he was happy. Happy to be getting married; happy to have his circle of friends join him for rafting on the Deshutes, just happy.

I can't imagine the pain of losing the one you were going to marry, before you had the chance. I have visited Lee's and Andrea's Myspace pages often since he died. It is hard to read the messages of support on Lee's page...written to him as if he might respond. Andrea's page is filled with message of love and support, of memories of Lee, of friends in mourning. I join them.

It is not fair for Andrea or for Lee's mother Joyce. It is not fair to his friends that he is gone. There is no explanation, no reason that he is gone. I am not sure it is real....but it is.

I love you Lee. Friends and Cousins.

Yearbook Photo

Lee