• It was a gray after-Christmas-day. I looked out the car window, painted with rain streaks. Then, I looked at my sister's face, painted with tear streaks. My three day old cousin died. We were on our way to her funeral. I thought it was awkward, because that very night before, I was thinking about what it would be like for her when she was older. She had Down's Syndrome. Terror and grief struck our whole family. I walked in first to her room. It was like a dark cloud had fallen down and gave me a terrible headache. I looked at her blue, lifeless body. I wanted to turn away but I couldn't. What had she done to deserve this? Two hours ago, I had just heard her crying on the phone. Turns out, her heart failed. She stopped breathing. Her mom didn't actually care, she was pregnant. She was only about 21. I guess she cared because it's her daughter, but she never actually showed she was sad. No tears, no words. Just hanging out on a chair talking with her new boyfriend--not the baby's dad. How long would it be until people understood that she was a baby? You can't just let a baby go like that. She was helpless. She didn't actually want to die. I couldn't get over the fact that just a couple hours before she was talking and crying. I sat and thought about what could have happened if nobody put her to bed. Would she have gone to the hospital and made it? Would she still be alive today? Not a single trace of the to-be-three-year-old still lingers on. It's like nobody knew her. A room full of people, not one remembers her. The after party was a disaster. Nobody cried, some actually laughed. They seemed like they were having a good time. If someone tried to talk to me, I just stared. I tried to stare through their soul to see if they cared. I'm not sure they did, but I did. Christmas was the first day I met her, and yet we still had a closer connection than her and her mom did. She let me carry her, she played with my jacket, and even opened some of her Christmas presents. To some people, tomorrow couldn't come early enough--getting to sleep in, listening to old Christmas songs, taking down decorations. To her, it couldn't come late enough. I wonder what it was like seeing a lifeless body in a crib, knowing it's your daughter. The only ones who seemed to care were me and her grandma. Not more than a year later, my great grandma died--day after Christmas. I didn't like it because she loved hanging roseries over her bed. I had gone to Bible School and made her two. I never got to give them to her. At her funeral, people were crying. Was it because she was older? To me, death is death. It's still sad whether you know them or not. People lose moms, dads, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins everyday. You don't know what it's like until it happens to you. At that funeral, I took the rosery, opened her hand, stuck it in, and closed her hand. Sure, it was weird touching a dead body. But it was someone who actually cared about me. I hate seeing people the day before they die, it makes me feel like it's my fault. I have pictures of both of them. Even if other people forgot about them, I didn't. I won't let them fade away that fast.