This photo is a few years old, I guess it's five years old now that I think about it. I took it on Easter Weekend 2003 at my Aunt Mary's home. My Aunt Karen & Uncle Mike were home from out west and as much of the family as we could muster were gathered at the Cooks' for Easter Dinner.
The story behind this photo is that everyone was taking a photo of my mum and her siblings (from left to right, the photographers are Meg - daughter of Mary - my mum's sister; Karen - wife of Mike - my mum's younger brother; Kathy - daughter of John - my mum's older brother; and my dad). I think that this was the last photo I had taken of Kathy and it's always made me smile because when I turned around, it was like looking at some paparazzi.
Kathy died earlier today. She had fought a very long battle with a malignant brain tumor. I think it was about 10 years ago now that she was first diagnosed. Kathy, her husband Jeff and her parents (my godparents) went to hell and back with this disease but the fight is now over for them.
Kathy was my first, first cousin. She was the oldest grandchild on my mum's side, I was the second oldest. This morning, I went through old family photos of us when we were kids. Looking at the pair of us in so many photos, we couldn't have looked more different: Kathy had gorgeous, long dark hair, I had my little blond pixie cuts. Most of the time, I was in a yellow dress and Kathy was in a purple dress. In a few of the photos of the two of us, we were up in a tree in our Nana's yard and I have to say, those are my best memories of my time spent with Kathy as a child... climbing Nana's tree and colouring the bark with our Crayola 64.
Tonight I talked to my cousin Meg on the phone for a while. We were talking about Kathy's love of all things purple and we've both decided to not wear black to Kathy's funeral on Saturday. We'll both be wearing purple, for Kathy, and if anyone has a problem with that, well, they can just suck it.
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