This blog is written in memoriam of my cousin.
To those of you who live in New England you probably heard last week in the news about a man in Lempster NH who was reported as to have jumped off of a the Brattleboro bridge in Vermont. The reason it made such news is because the man in Lempster was reported as being the man that jumped… he shared the same name as an optometrist in Claremont New Hampshire one town over. The name the two man share being Jason Fulton, both age 35.
Jason Fulton of Claremont is my cousin.
I write this as my way of coping with the situation. I don't exactly know how I should respond. I can say that my mind and my heart have both been screaming in anguish since I was told. They both are screaming for very different reasons. My heart screams because he was a very caring person. We shared many experiences together. He was the first grandchild on my father's side of my family, he was the first of the grand children to get married, he was the first to have a child. He was also technically the most successful of us all in getting his degree in Optometry. He was also well on his way to having his own practice.
I have so many reasons to look up to him and so many reasons to believe that he was a great person. When I would go to Loon Mountain as a kid he was the one that I spent most of my time with because he was only slightly older than me and I could easily identify with him. Loon Mountain was the one place other than my grandmother's house that I associate with Jason. As kids we would go on the occasional hike in the mountains, we would race to the top of "The big rock" behind the timeshare home. We would spend time in the arcade or at the pool just hanging out and having fun.
Every moment I think of my heart screams louder realizing that there will never be another time in which we will get together, and while I have never had the chance to meet his wife or his daughter (because of my time in Florida) he will never get to be the one to introduce me to them.
It screams for every moment that we have shared, and every moment that we will never share again. God damn it Jason I miss you…
My mind is screaming in pain because it can't fathom why he could ever do such a thing. How the hell could you do this? Someone of your intellect and your beliefs and you go and destroy the worlds of everyone that cares for you! You selfish jerk how the hell can you abandon your family, your daughter, your unborn son! The fact that you felt that the world was coming down on you and that everything was going wrong.. yeah I can understand that, I'm in the same spot… everything that I have been trying to accomplish has been tough, it certainly hasn't been a walk in the park, and while things are coming down around me and I look at what appears to be a dead end at every corner I still push forward. We all do! Life isn't easy for any of us and it's even harder for those of us that refuse to back down, so what the hell?! Take the easy way out? YOU SELFISH PRICK! My mind can't comprehend how you can do this because it makes no sense, you were the provider! You were the one that was taking care of your family! You helped them accrue the debt that you were working at paying off and then you just abandon them??! Leave them in a position in which they are now buried under the weight of the world that you were building for them only to rip out the main support beams before it was finished!
You also robbed your sister of her happiness! She just got married two days before you decided to do this! THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING? You got a wedding, you got a honeymoon, you got to have the happiness that you so longed for all of your life, and the moment your sister finally gets the same kind of happiness you steal it from her! You just swoop in and destroy it! You thought this was the easy solution, you thought this was the way that everything would be alright… everyone you left behind that was counting on you will have the hardest times of their lives! You never thought of that! You never thought of what the consequences were to those that you leave behind and for that you hurt us in a way that you can't imagine. I love you Jason, but there is no way I can respect this choice… I've never had reason to be angry with you before but I can't let this go… and my anger may never die because you took the easy way out and made such a cold hearted self absorbed choice.
I don't know what to do… I don't know what to think… my mind is pissed at him and my heart is crying for him, and those emotions are so conflicting that my body is locked. My mind won't let me cry for him, and my heart won't let me curse the choices he has made. I don't know what to do…. I feel more statuesque as I think it over my emotions are almost encased in granite.
Because of this my dreams are getting more painful. While my dad had tried to tell me that it's just a dream and that I shouldn't allow it to affect me but also don't tend to second guess what I see. I haven't dreamt of my grandfather in many years. The last dream I had of him was shortly after his death. In that dream he was relaxed. He looked younger than I ever knew him, he looked like he did in pictures that I had seen of him growing up, long before I was born, long before my father was born. This new dream was different. In this dream he was the man I remember when I did something that he wasn't happy with. He was a very strong man, someone that had a presence that people didn't challenge. When I made mistakes and he corrected me it instilled fear and later respect. In this dream he was angry with me. He was correcting me again… reminding me that Jason... no matter what he has done... is still family. You don't EVER turn your back to, or your heart away from, family. I keep wondering if this was because my mind was getting too aggressive over the way I felt and something needed to keep me from shutting down. Either way he didn't like the fact that I was more pissed at Jason than sad. The fact that I haven't cried (and I still haven't) over the loss of his life, over the situation that his wife is now going to be in, and the torment that my Aunt and Uncle are now experiencing is the source of why he is angry at me. I have a feeling that this is going to take a long time for me to resolve… it's not like anything else I have ever experienced, it's not supposed to be like this….
"Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." – A Tombstone in Ireland
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