My cousin ended his life about a week ago. He was in a coma for a little while and then finally...on Friday...he just went. He was only 15. Here...and then gone. Like that. Still just a little bird.

Someone once told me - a woman I'd never met before - that when she closed her eyes she saw this picture of me standing like a tree in the middle of a field and thousands upon thousands flocked to me. That they were drawn to me. On a seperate and unrelated occasion, another woman - this time one that I knew - told me that she also saw me as a tree with branches that spread into the sky; and that thousands of birds and animals came to me to find refuge...

When I think of my cousin, I think of how I wish I could have been a refuge to him. I think of how I wish I knew how to give him the kind of love that he needed. But even if I possess it, I wonder if he would have ever recieved it. There is something about holding a child who no body seems to want or notice or really care about - just to say I want you; I notice you; I really care about you. But only if it is genuine. Because a child deep down knows when it is not genuine. And such a knowledge creates a void in them...I believe. Or maybe I don't know anything at all and I'm simply processing why my 15 year old cousin felt that ending his life was his only option.

I have no words of wisdom to offer in this situation. I have to deep insight - other than to say that I know, without a doubt, that God loved that boy more than any of us could ever understand or realize. And that his pain was also God's.

This has changed my life. It has made me contemplative about things which I have chosen to so much ignore in the past. It has made me realize that in this one...very short existence...we cannot compromise fullness of love for self indulgence. I do not know what day I shall pass on to glory. Why waste my life trying to aquire something that I will never take with me in the end anyhow? On that day all I will have is the life I lived. And I'd most like to look back on it with gratitude and a confidence that I did the best I could to live it right. That I lived it pouring myself out of love. And to do that, I must be full of my Maker's love.

I wish I poured more of my love out onto that boy. But I can't go back. Now I must go forward with what I now know and...do the best I can.

Right? If only this grief were not so heavy. Preston, wherever you are, you must know that you have changed me.