Dea

Dea was my cousin. I found out today that she died last week. I'm not altogether surprised, because I've been thinking that a family member had died. It was just a sense of something like that, an unsettled feeling that there was something I should have been aware of.

Dea and I became friends close to 10 years ago, over the internet. We would link up via instant messenging, and chat for hours. She was really sweet and good. She was several years older than I was, but we had shared similar life experiences. We became good friends right away. Dea had lived a hard life. She had made some lousy choices that had led her down some tough paths, and she hadn't been able to correct her course quite the way she would have liked. That never changed the fact that she had an incredibly good heart, though. She was a good woman, through and through. I loved her so much, although we had lost touch over the years.

She suffered from some major physical challenges, and dealt with awful pain. That was something we had in common, and something we understood about each other. Pain sears your soul and bonds people together, I think. She struggled with addiction to painkillers at times. I'll never judge her for that, because I know how it feels to be wracked by pain and have your body just cry out for relief. No one who hasn't experienced that can possibly understand, and there's just no point in trying to explain it.

Dea's family - her parents and her siblings - loved her and supported her. They may not have agreed with everything in her life, but they never deserted her. She wasn't a perfect person, of course not. Who is? But her family loved her. Dea seemed to have always been searching for the right person in her life. I don't think she ever found him, but I hope God, in his infinite wisdom, will help Dea work that out. I'd like to think of her happy that way - spending eternity holding hands with someone wonderful who makes her feel as completely special as she really is.