Today would have been my cousin Danny’s birthday. I mean, I guess it still is, but he’s not here to enjoy it.
Some days when I think about my beloved dead, I feel sad and loving and generous. Today is an angry day. Angry with medical people in his childhood who breezily told his mom that his heart was just fine. Who, years later when he was a young adult, treated him like garbage when he was having a heart incident and who kept demanding that he confess how muck coke he’d done (the answer was “none, you fucking assholes,” but they wouldn’t listen, so he pulled off the goddamned monitors and walked out). Just angry.
I hate these days because there is nothing I can do with this anger. Even if I could bring those assholes to some sort of justice, it wouldn’t bring him back.
Lots of people in my life are confused by why I don’t trust the medical establishment. It’s not a deep, confounding mystery, folks.
Haddayr Copley-Woods 
My husband’s cousin was born with cardiac issues. He died at 31, in his mother’s favorite restaurant, just as he’d gotten up to toast her and wish her a happy birthday. Hubby’s cousin’s been gone almost 20 years, and hubby’s aunt still hasn’t gotten over her son’s loss. Stuff like that never really goes away.
Danny was 29. And you’re right; it never does.