I’m sure most of you have seen the Facebook Meme or question asking “If you could go back and talk to anyone who would it be?” It’s no secret that I would go back and find Connor in a heartbeat. This week has been nothing short of a living hell. Starting the process all over again, walking each step all over again, feeling each and every agonizing emotion.

But I would also talk to someone else, someone who has walked in these shoes, although I didn’t realize it at the time. When I was 3 years old my cousin Beth Anne was killed in a car accident. On her way home from the Cape, on a surprise visit to see her parents. She was 20 years old and although I don’t remember any of this (I was only 3) her parents were devastated.

When I got older I loved to go visit Uncle Turk & Aunt Ann, he had this little dog that rode everywhere in the truck with him, and a cat Jezebel that was a huge bundle long pale grey fur. You could only pet that cat for so long before she had enough and would swat you. Aunt Ann made the best cookies, and Uncle Turk just laughed at everything.

I want to go back and sit at her round kitchen table with her and ask all the questions that I never needed the answers to before. How did you cope when Beth Anne died? Did you feel like your heart was permanently broken forever or did you eventually start to heal? Did you ever stop crying? These were questions that teenage me never would have asked. Beth Anne had been gone many years by the time I was s teenager, but it was an unspoken family rule not to bring it up.

Aunt Ann has been gone a long time now, she died the day that Kyle was born. So the questions that I have for her will go unanswered. I have living people to ask them of. I just wish that I had asked her. A lady that I loved, at that round table that I am pretty sure shared the broken heart that I carry now.