RIP Cousin
02.10.06 (10:36 pm) [edit]Mom just emailed me to remind me that it was seven years ago today that my cousin Stevie died.
He was only 22. He killed himself during an argument with his wife. It was so out of left field, so out of character from anything anyone knew of him. It was the most horrible funeral I've been to, and the largest. The procession was over a mile long. I think somebody counted 475 cars, if memory serves. He had nothing but friends.
His older brother put together a tape of his favorite Stevie Ray Vaughan songs. Stevie was a guitarist too (I remember showing him a few things when he first started) and he was a huge SRV fan. He was buried with two of his guitars.
He had an uncle on his mom's side (his dad is my mom's brother) who is a drummer. I just saw Tom a few weeks ago at one of my gigs, for the first time in years.
I remember the group that gathered at the music store that day. The same that was there the day SRV died. We were all stunned, not knowing what to do, think, or say. We could think of nothing that could possibly have prepared us for losing him. Nothing that could explain this.
Stevie knew my friend Mike, who I played briefly with in Southern California back in '99. A couple months before I went out there, Mike was home and visited Stevie's grave. Mike died the next year of cystic fibrosis, and is buried very close to where Stevie is. I'm out there often when I go to Marion, most of my family is buried there, and I think I probably will be too.
Stevie, you had far too short a life for someone as good as you were. The memory of the pain that swept your family after you took your own life was one of the few things that kept me from following you this past summer, when I felt for a time (very wrongly) that I had nothing left to give. Part of me was very angry at you then for taking yourself from us. I better understand now the wretched feelings that can come up out of nowhere and make us give into these terrible decisions, but I still know that you had no good reason to die.
If there is something after this life other than the dust, I hope you're on the good end of whatever the fuck it is. Rest in peace, cousin. You're still missed.
Love,
Dougie