Calgon take me away!

The last few weeks have been an emoitional roller coaster of sorts.

I have been fighting problems here and there with Microsoft's limitedly documented issues from Service Pack 1, as well as trying to do work around the house and perform annual maintenance on my three vehicles (Hence the fact that I have not posted anything in quite a while.

Yesterday, though, my entire world came crashing down.

Monday started off like a typical Monday; full of mayhem and problems galore to fix. Then, I got a call from my baby brother which literally knocked the breath out of me.

He called to tell me that my cousin was killed in a head-on collision with a logging truck. Evidently, he had been up most of the night contemplating the three interviews that he had with three area school districts. He left from his parent's house, where he, his wife, and his two month old son were staying to his first interview. From my understanding, he was going to turn this job down but he wanted to do it in person rather than over the phone. He left early that morning for that interview, fell asleep at the wheel and veered across the median and struck a logging truck just behind the cab.

So far, this is all the information that I have been able to obtain. The family is still quite broken up (As am I), so I am not going to push for any details.

Currently, I am sitting in the staging area of Continental Airlines, waiting to board my flight back to Houston. I have had a few emotional moments since yesterday, but I am pretty sure that when I step off that plane in Houston and see my baby brother, it will hit me like a brick wall.

I am not the type of person who likes to display this kind of emotion at all; I don't even like to do it privately. I just don't feel comfortable doing it.

But this situation is different. Sure, I have been to more funerals that I can count - great-granparents, friends, an aunt, but this one is different...much different. I watched this boy grow up. He was a little younger than my brother. We spent the summers at his parent's house...

He and his wife had already gone through so much over the last few years, with his wife's cancer treatments, and finally they became parents in March; and now this.

The one thing that brings a tear to my eye everytime is the fact that he will not get to experience what it is like to be a father, and his son will not get a chance to see what a great person his dad was. He was a prankster, but had a heart of gold. He made mistakes, but who hasn't??

Well, better make one last pit-stop before boarding.