Does this situation sound familiar? You’re attending a wake or funeral service chatting with relatives you haven’t seen since, well, the last service for a relative who died. You spend time catching up and as you leave, you find yourself saying something like… “We must get together soon.” You mean it when you say it. But back home and in the flow of life, it never materializes.
This recently happened to me when a cousin of my mom’s passed. He was 85 and a treasured member of our family. As I was uploading pictures to the funeral parlor’s website in preparation for his service, I smiled recalling all the good times these cousins shared in their later years, whether on vacation or at each other’s homes. But then I was struck that almost all of the members of the generation that preceded me, including my mom, have passed. Somehow the kids became the elders.
And I got see these “kids” – all of my second cousins from Brooklyn – when I attended that May funeral. I was amazed at how easily the conversation flowed with people I hadn’t seen in a long time. And I vowed that we’d see each other before the next wake. That reunion happened last week.
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