I never thought my life was going to change in the span of two days but it did. I woke up and saw a lot of messages in the family group chat, and decided to ignore them for a while. When I opened the messages all I saw was a poster that had my cousin’s picture on it, and with big red words on top saying “missing person”. I was confused and called my mom wondering why was it there, and she said “your cousin is missing” while her voice was breaking. My mom also told me to have faith that shes going to be fine, and I did but only for a while.
After three hours of me knowing about my cousin going missing, I decided I needed to clear my head and go shower. While I was in the shower I heard a knock on the door and heard my mom’s voice telling me to hurry up. I got out the shower shortly after and got ready. As I was going down the stairs ready to leave the house I had an unpleasant feeling in my stomach. I saw one of my uncles there looking at the floor and my mom having these look on her face like she was numb to the whole world around her. I went up to my mom and said “you told me to have faith so please have some too” and she just looked at me and hugged me and told me she loved me. After a few minutes of my mom and I crying the three of us got in the car and left to go to my uncle’s house where the rest of the family was at.
When we got the my uncle’s house my whole family was trying to be strong for one another, but all of us wanted to cry. My mom was making calls to Mexico and asking my family if they have any updates, and every time was a “no”. As all of this was going on, I was seating on the couch quiet, wordless thinking about my cousin and all of the fun time we had together. I was loosing faith as more calls went on and all we kept getting was that no one knew anything, until we got told that our final option was going to a morgue to see if shes there. So, my aunt in Mexico went to a morgue and told us over the phone “we have to be ready it’s going to hurt if shes there but we have to be ready”. I wasn’t ready. After a few minutes of waiting she called us and said she wasn’t there, but as soon as she was leaving someone that worked there told her that they just brought a body with the descriptions of my cousin so she was going to go see. This time the feeling of waiting felt like a million hours, and the more time went by the more I was fading out of reality and just thinking about her. Finally, my aunt called us and told us “shes gone”. Her voice was breaking while she said it.
As soon as I heard those words, I fell to the ground and cried and as much as I tried to stop I couldn’t. It felt so real, and it was such a painful feeling. All the memories of us talking,laughing, and spending time together were racing through my mind. We were all devastated, and I couldn’t process the fact that she was gone. I hated that feeling. The next day, we were all quiet fro a couple of hours. I went up to my mom and told her how I texted her phone telling her I miss her. I also said sorry for the times I would be “too busy” for her, because now I wish i can go back and do things differently. For a whole week straight I would go in Mexico’s news and would see her name in articles and I would see how people would say stuff about her death when they didn’t know how it happened. Seeing all of those comments hurt, and i would constantly think “they don’t know so why do they feel the need to say something”. They were adding on to my pain and the rest of the family’s pain because of their comments. It was so much for me that eventually I shut down completely it felt like I didn’t know how to function anymore. I was so broken and devastated. A couple months passed and I started to learn how to deal with her death better, and to this day I send her messages telling her i miss her. Through all of this I learned to not take people for granted especially family, because life is unpredictable and we never know what it has for us.