the weight of two nations

The call came in, it was my mom. She said “your cousin Peter is dead.”

I was living on campus at James Madison University in Virginia and we had been asked by the Head RA if they could use our room to show incoming Freshman what the dorms looked like on our side of campus. We were in newer dorms on the technology side of the campus, a show piece for the University of their emerging technology field.

As I held my phone in hand unsure of what to say, I smiled weakly at the visiting students and said excuse me as I left the room pointing to the phone. I went into the hall, but there was no where to run from the devastation of losing my cousin, my best friend in the world, my brother. He was…