A moment of silence, please...

My cousin is dead...

There is no way to say this but bluntly. Anything else would be bullshit.

My lovely cousin Janet died yesterday. She was travelling, in the far east somewhere, and came down with a cold or something. Then she got disoriented, so they took her to hospital in Beijing, where a CAT scan revealed a mass in her brain. Before they could operate, she had an aneurism and died. She was 18 or 19. I feel terrible that I can't remember exactly how old. I feel terrible that I haven't seen her since she was a little girl. I missed her bat mitzvah.

My family is not good at the whole extended-family-in-touch thing.

I resolve to do better. I resolve to hug her parents, Dee and Howie. i can't stop thinking of them. My grandma told me, "Howie says everything happens for a reason, but this is going to take him a long time to figure out the reason. And everyone is in shock, I think. I am. Can't comprehend.

And also, they can't figure out how to get the body out, so we can't plan a funeral.

This is all very awful.