Alone for the holidays is a comfortable place to be. Energy spent on showing interest in the lives of strangers is a tedious tradition. The few blood relatives I actually enjoy talking to are just as disinterested in forced socialization and wear the same type of mask I have on at family pow-wows. The only person I ever connected with outside of my immediate family was my cousin from Florida. She was older than me and possessed an unapologetically big personality, just like her dad. In an extended family where I always felt out of place, Katie showed me a different approach to growing up.
My mother has 5 sisters and most of them still live in the city they grew up in. The oldest went to Florida to make a life and the younger went off my mother’s radar. The rest fashioned relatively similar lives in and around the Memphis, despite following different paths. It’s hard not to make comparisons between siblings when they are born in a cluster like that and being all women compounds sensitivities. I’m not sure who’s perspective on that family drama is the most accurate but Katie was the first person to candidly address how drastically different the stories can be.
By 1999, I’d learned to take my own car to our annual Christmas Eve Dinner with The Grandparents. A senior in high school, I had just started showing signs of an interesting personality. Katie spotted the change right away and immediately grabbed me as her getaway driver. Her family came in town every other year for the event and this was the first time she could really talk to me. Or maybe the first time I could hear what she was saying? Either way, we clicked and I made it possible for her to sneak away from the authorities long enough to smoke a cigarette and express real opinions.
Katie’s candor was the most refreshing thing I’ve ever gotten from a family member. She was in a different state, far from The South I grew up in. If you need clarification about the geography, just let me know. She was exposed to other cultures, ideals, and skin colors. She told me the things my grandmother said when I was never in the vicinity. That endeared me to her in a way no one had quite accomplished. Every small detail I shared about my parents’ opinion of the family delighted her. It didn’t feel like gossip because I don’t remember feeling bad about it. When she told her mom what I said later, that probably felt like gossip.
Cousins are funny creatures. Technically family, we are all cardboard cutouts of our parents and told that we love each other just because. All my blood relatives are nice people and I have nothing against them but I don’t consider any of them friends. Katie was my exception to that rule. In 2003 she died at the age of 25. It happened because of a blood clot and bad luck. When I heard the news a deep, heavy sinking feeling hit my gut. Someone I barely saw, she made family gatherings more fun by making me feel less out of place.
Katie was someone I looked forward to having in my life and I took for granted she would be there for most of it. Losing her feels completely unfair. Her mother gave the family pieces of Katie’s artwork to help remember her by. I received a project she did for art school. She took a photograph of a somewhat pensive chimpanzee and created 3 studies of the image in different styles. Every time I look at it I not only think of Katie but I also enjoy the thought of her happy life creating art and making friends wherever she went. The small amount of art I own doesn’t hold much monetary value but this is one example of why it is priceless to me.