When Your Cousin Dies On Easter

Be Brave Friday

Eleven years ago, my cousin Lisa died on Easter morning. She was in a car, and I honestly can’t remember if she was going to church or coming from church. I can’t honestly remember if she was heading to her mom’s house or her in-laws house. 

All I can remember is this:

She was in the passenger’s seat on a highway in NH. Her bonus daughter was in the back seat. Her husband was driving. They crashed. 

They crashed because he was drunk - really drunk. 

I don’t have any pictures of Lisa on my computer. I don’t have any words to describe how awesome she was, but she was. She was nine years older than I was and she was beautiful and funny with long, honey-blonde hair and the fastest laugh in the world. She could make you laugh when you were crying. She could make you cry from laughing. She cared about people so much. She wasn’t a rock star. She wasn’t a person with a million degrees. But she was kind and funny and she would do anything to help people, always. 

My Aunt Rosie, who is dead now, too, always called her an angel and after she died, Rosie insisted that Lisa was with her, watching, touching her shoulder when she made spaghetti, comforting her all the time because Aunt Rosie needed the comfort ... the loss of Lisa was that big.

Every once in awhile, Rosie would look up and say out of nowhere, “There’s my angel.”

A lot of people thought this was a little weird, that she was a little weird, but I didn’t. I think she was right. I think Lisa was with her, watching her, trying to make her laugh through her tears. 

I think that this is why I sneak angels into my paintings, tiny ones, big ones, glimpses. I think I do it for Aunt Rosie, for Lisa, for my mom, my grandmothers, my avó, my Aunt Maxine and Aunt Patty. All gone. And all a beautiful mix of naughty and nice. Angels to me. All of them.

My aunt was beautiful. 

 Lisa was beautiful, too.

They were like champagne bubbles that always floated to the top no matter what happened. You could never hold them down. I think even death can’t. And in a weird way, on this anniversary of her death, I can kind of finally understand why Lisa died on Easter. Death just can’t hold some people. Thank God for that. We are so lucky to have so many people in our lives. I hope you all have a million trillion Lisas and Rosies in your lives, too. 

And I hope that you can be brave enough to be a champagne bubble, to shine, to care, to laugh loud and quick and to love others as much as you can.

xox - Carrie