In memory

How do you eulogize someone you don't know?

SO's cousin tried to kill himself yesterday. He very nearly succeeded; he's more than halfway there, anyway. Hooked up to life support, brain dead, his body waits in the hospital for the family to gather, for the machines to be turned off. He is 27 years old.

I've met him only once, many years ago, when he was a child of 5 or 6. The memory is a fuzzy one, of a tow-headed boy launching himself off some place high (a table top? a stair landing?) and onto my brother-in-law, who gasps and grabs at his neck. The two go down onto the floor, wrestling. Eddie was a tough little kid, harrassed by older twin brothers into learning how to fight dirty and watch his back.

He took a gun and shot himself in the garage of his mother's home.

I don't know any details as to what led him to it. All I keep imagining is his mother rushing through the door, seeing the blood, smelling the gunpowder, unable to process the images in front of her, finding that her son is still breathing, shock hitting her in the stomach like a two by four, the call for an ambulance, the interminable wait, hands pressed to the wound, desperate measures.

The call came this morning, letting family know of the circumstances, asking for prayers. Underneath our eyelashes, we watch our boys as they get ready for school. Fear and sorrow and loss and grief.

Oh God, please...