I watched my cousin die today and I am numb because I don’t think the reality of watching someone die, especially a family member, has worked itself out in my mind completely yet.

I got a call early this morning from my mom. She told me that Buckey accidentally shot himself in the head around 5:00a.m. and that he was in the hospital. When we got to the hospital, he was still in the ER in a room, hooked up to life support and such. Family was there. We were all crying. There was talk of donating his organs.

It was horrible.

They moved him to a room in the ICU and told us it would be about an hour before we could go in to see him, but within the next 15 minutes a nurse came in and said we could all go back right then – I knew that was a bad sign. We all stood around and near his bed, listening to the doctor tell us there was no brain activity and that there was nothing else they could do, that he wasn’t going to make it.

What happened next I never expected.

They turned off life support and said ‘it won’t be long’. I was traumatized by that act alone, turning off life support. Within 15 minutes, his heart stopped. My cousin, who I shared so many childhood memories in Greer’s Ferry with, was gone.

I stood there for a moment longer, frozen, but shaking and in tears. I couldn’t speak, or hug anyone. I don’t know why, but I just couldn’t. I looked across at his body, at the side of his face. I couldn’t recognize him, he didn’t look like my cousin Buckey. And finally I just couldn’t stand there anymore and I left quickly.

Buckey and I used to go to The Creek behind my great grandmother’s house in Greer’s Ferry and hunt crawdads (crayfish) and we’d fish and play and love childhood. Buckey and I were really close when we were children. We grew apart as we grew older, but I always did think about him and the good times we had.

Like most people, I only want to remember him in those moments so long ago and not the way I saw him today for the last time.

I love you Buckey and you’ll always have a huge place in my heart and in my happiest childhood memories.

I’m going to look in my mom’s old photos to see if she has one of me and Buckey as kids.

Update: My cousin, Angie (Buckey’s sister) sent me this photo of little me and Buckey with my grannie Bradford.

Last Saturday I went to Greer’s Ferry Lake with the family, and although it was too hot even for swimming and I left early because I felt the sunburn creeping up too quickly, I did enjoy my time there, reminiscing. Some (or pretty much most) of my best childhood memories were of Greer’s Ferry Lake. Not only was one main road that led straight to the swimming area of that side of the lake, occupied by many family members, but two of the greatest people I ever knew, lived there: my grannie and grandpa, Leon and Roy Bradford. :-)

I used to sit out in the vast green field in front of their house under a massive walnut tree, searching through every cloverleaf hoping to find one with four petals. Below is the tree, which is still there thankfully, though unfortunately, it looks nothing like it once did.

After my grandparents died, the family sold the house (which was built by my grandpa) and the land. Since then, everything about it has changed. There was never a fence before, and the grass, like I mentioned was beautiful and healthy and green; the way grass is supposed to look, and there were no ‘dead areas’ and spots of dirt. The walnut tree was one hundred times fuller than you see here and I remember the branches and leaves seemed to hang down like a vibrant umbrella of green.

And…(it hurts me every time I drive past it now)…there were never old junked cars strewn about the land, as you see in the photo above and goats and horses walking around practically everywhere but the front porch. I have nothing against horses and goats! But seriously, this place used to be so beautiful. There were pretty Dogwood trees in the front yard, a big and wonderful garden in the field where my grandparents grew every kind of vegetable you can imagine, and a grape vine, and on the land in the back was a giant watermelon patch.

Seeing it now is hurtful and even disgusting.

Like I’ve said before, one of these days I’m going to buy that land back and clear all the junk off it and make it look the way it did when my grandparents were alive. I swear it! You just watch me! :-(

On a lighter note, directly across from my grandparents house is where my Uncle Darrell lives, still. :-) Above is his house, which is still pretty and also holds many memories for me.

And above is the little store at Bee Branch where we always stopped for drinks and candy on our way to my grandparents. It’s about an hour and a half drive to Greer’s Ferry from Little Rock, but when we were children, an hour and a half was really three hours, of course. Bee Branch (actually called Snappy Foods) was our in-between stop. Once we made it to this store we knew we were almost there!

And this is the corner store in-between my grandparent’s house and the swimming area at the lake. I remember walking there a lot and stopping in for Orange Sherbet Push-Up Pops.

So, that’s my little stroll down memory lane. I don’t know whether to smile or cry….