REST ON, BEAUTIFUL ONE.

I lost a cousin today.

She was so young. So beautiful! Always smiling whenever you met her. Full of life! She had this glow about her like all the time! The future for her was limitless!

I got a broadcast message on one of the what's app groups I belong to, about financial donations for a certain person suffering from Leukaemia to go for bone marrow transplant abroad ASAP because she had less than 90 days to live.

Then her picture was posted. My beautiful cousin!

I couldn't believe it! Started calling my siblings and some other cousins. No one knew anything about it. Was still dialing phone numbers of other family peeps when another broadcast message came in on the same group.

She was dead.

I don't know how I managed to run through my afternoon shift at the emergency. It felt like everything around me was just...surreal. Kept thinking about it all...the fickleness of life. Here one moment, gone the next...

I wasn't too close to her in our adult lives. We were quite chatty as kids, but living far from each other and schooling and other factors had made us drift apart. Hadn't talked with her in years!

GUILT. That's what I feel now.

I don't reach out to my loved ones enough. I could hold my medical training responsible, but in the end it's just another excuse. Saving others and not being able to save my fam...to what end?!

I'm gonna reach out more. Tell them I love them more. Spend more of my spare time with them. Cherish every moment I am blessed with to be with them. Forgive their wrong doing to me more readily and pray for them more...

Love hard. Hate less. Quarrel even lesser. Forgive more readily. And above all, always be in touch with your maker. For we do not know the hour when...

RIP IJ. Heaven has gained an angel. Rest on beautiful one.

*sigh*

...still numb...

I lost a cousin today.