It certainly was not a day where you would find my Uncle Lou pitching a baseball game with the boys in the backyard, the girls organizing a dance contest in the basement, or everyone participating in pillow speed races on the wooden stairs. The solemn incident did not allow for any play, something we were not used to.

“Wanna play war?” I asked, already knowing the answer. My attention turned from the worn deck of cards to see Bryn chewing on her doll’s plastic toes, one of her odd habits. “Here’s a letter I wrote you in school this week.” The letters bonded us, since we only saw each other on the weekends. With each letter, we tried to outdo one another with the most elaborate pages that any nine year old would find glamorous. Bryn did not have a letter to exchange with me. She just sat on her bed, comforting her thoughts while I intently waited for any sign of emotion, so that I would know how to feel.

Days before, Bryn’s father, my Uncle Lou, was killed in an airplane crash. He was flying home from a business trip. “It’s a shame, only ten minutes from landing,” my mom said over and over again.

I stood in the parlor of the funeral home, watching the devastation manifest on everyone’s faces. It was not the emotion though that kept my attention. I incessantly peered into the room that housed the deceased. I had never seen a closed casket. “It’s because of how he died,” my mom stated. I couldn’t cross the threshold of that room. Something about going into the room made me feel like I would understand, and being nine, I didn’t want to.

Within that same year, my aunt and cousins moved out of their home. In fact, they moved often. “Uncle Lou visited her,” my mom explained. Shortly thereafter, my grandfather died. They all said Uncle Lou’s death broke his heart. It was sad. I never asked Bryn how she felt about her father’s death, but I never needed to. Tearfully peering over my grandfather’s vacant face in the casket, I began to understand how everyone felt.