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I don't have a cutesy title for this post or a day count...It's 2:57 in the morning, New York time...and I can't sleep. It's not jetlag, or the full moon shining through my bedroom window or the ticking alarm clock that I forgot to put in my closet. It's the sound of a million thoughts bouncing through my head like a pinball machine. Séb and I spent the afternoon at North Shore Hospital due to an unexpected family emergency that at the moment, I'm not at liberty to disclose. It hurts me to write this but the outlook does not look good.
I have been lying in my bed listening to Séb breathe and thinking about the losses that I have suffered in my life; my father in 2005, my Aunt Maria in 2006 and the most devastating, my Aunt Angelina who would have been 47 today had she skipped a night out with the girls almost 20 years ago.
It was Father's Day 1993. My mom, my brother and I had just come back to Manhattan from Father's Day dinner with my grandparents out on Long Island. It was one of those first warm summer nights in New York where school was letting out in a week and my mom let us stay up late with her. We camped out in the living room with the windows open, eating Cherry Garcia ice cream and watching Knots Landing, even though I didn't understand a word of it. This was the last time that my brother and I would ever be in this apartment. Of course at the time, we didn't know it.

Amped up on sugar and the excitement of summer, I was finally able to fall asleep when what felt like three seconds later, I woke up to my mother frantically packing Dean and Deluca grocery bags with my clothes. It was 3:30 am and we were heading back to Long Island. My mother, Andrew and I rode in silence in the car as breezed passed exits on the desolate Long Island Expressway.

We arrived at my grandmother's house where my grandparents and aunts and uncles were in the living room with drawn and exhausted faces, listening to the police not give them the news that they were hoping for. My cousins who at the time were all under the age of ten, were tucked in the guestroom beds, wide awake wondering why we all got ripped out of our beds and transported back to Grandma's house. They were relying on Andrew and I - the oldest who always knew everything - to fill them in, but for the first time, we were a disappointment because we too, were in the dark.
The following morning, after our mothers tried to soften the shock with pancakes and boysenberry syrup, finally disclosed what the hell was going on. At this point it was owed to us. My Aunt Angelina had gone out with some girlfriends after Father's Day dinner and left something out in her car. She went out to get it and as she was crossing the street, she wasn't paying attention while searching for her keys in her purse, and was hit by a speeding a car where she died instantly. I know everyone says this after someone passes, but we were just with her at dinner where her and I were singing Extreme's "More Than Words". It wasn't possible that she was no longer here. It just wasn't.
Unfortunately, it was possible and nothing was going to change that. To be closer to my grandparents who had just lost their youngest daughter, we moved into Aunt Angelina's house on Long Island, where I am sitting right now...not able to sleep.
Séb and I will be back at the hospital tomorrow (today?) to hope for the best and to show support to my other side of the family who is in pain that I am all too familiar with. Although this wasn't the trip from Paris to New York that we had planned, I'm thankful that he is here with me and that as usual, is keeping me calm and sane during this unexpected turn of events. 
Sometimes I really don't understand life.