A first cousin of mine, Michael, died this past Friday. He had had some heart surgery quite a while back, and had had some recent health problems, but I believe this was still rather unexpected by his family. My sister, Lois, said she saw him not two weeks ago, working as usual. But his kidneys failed after being hospitalized last week with what they said was congestive heart failure.
Mike was the middle son (one of six children) of one of my father's oldest brothers. He was 61, 20 years older than I. I actually grew up with his kids, one a year older than me, and another a year younger (and a daughter quite a bit younger). But still I knew and liked Mike as a first cousin and as a neighbor, living about a mile from my parents for as long as I could remember. His mother, who was a first cousin of my mother, died back in the late seventies, and his father, my Uncle Theodore, died in the early nineties, if I remember correctly. A farmer, he was the uncle who once told me that I had "dimples deep enough to slop a hog in." I can't remember seeing him and my Dad together where they didn't try to outdo each other with jokes or ridiculous stories, and I remember Mike as being much like his father.
My father was #9 of 12 kids, and I believe Uncle Theodore was #6 of the clan, so he wasn't too much older than my Dad. At least he was just old enough for my dad to be able to follow around and close enough in age for them to pal around together some when my dad was older. If my father were living he would be very saddened by this particular nephew's death.
And maybe that's why I'm up at 1:39 a.m. instead of sleeping. I woke up and started thinking about Mike and his family, and that led me to thinking about more of my Dowell cousins. Although I was closer socially to several of my cousins from my Mother's side, I was exposed to more of the cousins on my Father's side, even though most of them were older (sometimes much older) than I. All but three of my Father's brothers, and one of his sisters, lived with their families in houses down the road from the house I grew up in and where my Mother still lives. And although none of his siblings who lived on that road are still living, the road is still dotted with the homes of their children and grandchildren, and two of their widows. The graveyard attached to the little Methodist Church barely a half mile from my Mother's house holds the graves of my Dad, his parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents, most of those deceased brothers and both of the deceased sisters of my Dad.
My childhood was spent riding the schoolbus with the sons and daughters of quite a few of my first cousins, and a handful of those first cousins themselves. When I was a Senior in high school and our Uncle Harlan died, there were scads of Dowells checking themselves out early to attend the funeral, or at least it seemed so. I can remember being lifted up on a big draft horse that Mike's dad, my Uncle Theodore, worked on his farm. The horse's name was Shorty, and I can remember being amazed that he was so wide that my legs stuck straight out at the side when I sat on him. I can remember being at family dinners at my "Mamaw" Dowell's house on Sundays (and I had to have been only 3 or 4 years old), and watching the uncles and the older cousins playing horse shoes and the younger cousins playing tag or hide and seek or kick the can.
Yes, even though my oldest sisters and brother were the ones who grew up with most of the Dowell first cousins who lived nearby, they were still very much a part of my life as a child. Although I can't say that I was close to Mike, he has been a constant in my life, and I guess I'm feeling a little vulnerable because yet another constant has been taken away. I never used to have problems dealing with deaths in the family, but since my Father died I do. Mike is by no means the first of my first cousins to die. There were some children of the oldest in my Dad's family that I never even knew. One died in Viet Nam. Several died while I was still quite young. But Mike is the first in a long time, and the first of those cousins who lived nearby, whose kids I grew up with, who Dad would drop by to say hi to, who I actually do have a little bit of shared history with.
All these thoughts were running through my mind, and Istarted crying. I didn't want to wake Thomas, so I got up and came into the living room. I really feel right now for Mike's wife, Wanda, who I always liked so much. And I especially feel for his kids, Micky, Mark, and Tracy, and their families.
I hope you guys don't mind that I needed to share this.
Isn't this beautiful?
We also had an unexpected recipient of deer meat today -- one of our resident red-tailed hawks! 
Earlier this summer I saw two hawks flying over our house and one of them had a snake dangling from his talons. They landed in a tree bordering our back yard and proceeded to have lunch.
My heart goes out to 
Just your monthly reminder to schedule your annual mammogram if you haven't already!
After getting two does on Thursday my little huntress got her first buck on Saturday, November 24. For her first ever buck she got a really nice one -- an 8-point, basket-rack, red deer, that field dressed at 170 lbs, using her Rossi .410.
Thanks to 