One of my earliest memories of my cousin is kind of vague.

I remember the two of us together.

It was somewhere in India and we were each flying these thin paper kites.

I was using the tension from my kite string to try and cut his string and he was doing

the same thing to me.

It's something called kite fighting.

My last memory of my cousin is much clearer though.

It was a dinner in Boston's back bay around July of 2012 and I remember that meal so clearly

because it was actually our last dinner together.

You see a week later my cousin died of cardiac arrest.

He was at work and he collapsed outside of an office building while he was leaving.

He was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital and I happened to be there in the hospital

on call that night.

I just arrived there and I got a page from the emergency department asking me to call

about my cousin which I thought was really strange.

So I returned the page and the resident asked if I was sitting down which is never a good

sign.

He told me that my cousin had suffered a cardiac arrest.

He had been brought to mass general and they tried to resuscitate him for 45 minutes but

they couldn't.

My cousin was 34 years old.

It's hard to tell the story but I wanted to share it because it was my introduction

...