...might never live those days gone by, but we can try...

Yesterday, January 26th was the two year anniversary of the death of my cousin Mourad. He was in the Marines and he died in an helicopter crash in Iraq. If anyone used to read my LiveJournal I wrote about this when it happened. I was pretty upset and I didn't know why. I didn't even know what sort of a person my cousin was at the time of his death. My clearest memories of him are of both of us being around 5 years old and me making him a tea party when he came over to our house one time, and also playing with him at their former San Luis Obispo home when I first came to California at around 11 years old. I remebered today as it happened two years ago, and I remembered sitting on the roof of my King St. house crying into my cup of tea while smoking my first non-drunk cigarette. I remember telling Larkin about it and him consoling me and how his dining room looked blurry over his shoulder.
As strange as this sounds I haven't seen him or my uncle Rufat(my dad's brother) or the rest of their family in probably four or more years, even though they live in San Diego. Our families have never been that close, but I think that's mostly because my mom and their mom aren't that close and my mom is normally the initiator of family gatherings and if she's not motivated, no one is. I didn't go to the funeral because I was up in Santa Cruz in the middle of midterms, and I also didn't go to the one year anniversary for the same reason. This time I couldn't "escape" this family gathering, and headed down to San Diego yesterday afternoon with my dad. A group of about 10-15 people went to the cemetary to set down some flowers and then we went to a local Christian orthodox church (my aunt is pseudo-Christian I think) where a priest performed a special service just for our group. The whole time I felt pretty awkward because first of all, I no longer felt actual sadness at this point, and also because I couldn't really relate to my cousin (his sister) Shayla and their friends because I felt like they had this bond that I've missed out on during high school and college. Last time I saw her, she was a skinny 13 year old and now she's almost 18, graduating high school, has awesome individual taste in clothes and music and is way ahead of where I was at 18 in terms of alcohol tolerance. There was also a whole lot of Russian family friends' children at whom I used to scoff at as "those super-Russian kids", who now happen to all speak in English to each other. It was very odd because these kids are around my age (18-24), they're Russian and/or Azeri, Jewish, Armenian, Georgian, but also as perfectly intergrated into California life, accent, etc. as I am. I've been passively looking for this combination all through college and it's been right inside my family this whole time.
After getting well-buzzed with my "little" cousin and her friends, exchanging emails and promises to keep in touch more (time will only tell if we fulfill them), I left a previously dreaded, awkward engagement with a huge smile on my face, good food in my stomach, good feelings flowing through my still slightly reeling head and memories of 5 year old Mourad drinking imaginary tea from a tiny teacup. I suppose I'll take what I can get.