Yesterday was my Uncle Gene's funeral. He had a long life full of changes. He spent time in the army before marrying my Aunt Miggie then held various jobs. Most of my memories are during the years he was a dairy farmer. They lived those years in East Texas. Since we also lived in East Texas, our family visited Aunt Miggie, Uncle Gene and my cousin Duane a little more often than some of our other family who lived further away. Uncle Gene was a soft spoken man. I don't know if that came from working with cows who he didn't want to spook or if he was just born that way. But I can only remember seeing him angry once or twice and even then, he still seemed very quiet. Later in life, he got out of the dairy business and opened a convenience store which he ran until a few years ago.
His funeral, yesterday, was nice and attended by several family members, some of whom I had not seen in several years. I drove to Jacksonville for the funeral yesterday with two cousins. Cindy who flew in from Oregon and Terry who lives in McKinney drove down with me. We chatted all the way to Jacksonville. Once there, we went to the family room at the funeral home where my parents, one brother and a number of other cousins and aunts were waiting for the service to begin along with Duane and Aunt Miggie.
We had about 20 minutes to greet everyone and chat before the service. Some of the cousins present yesterday I have caught up with recently on Facebook. Others I had not communicated with in more than 20 years and it was good to see them all. I think that you have a different sort of relationship with your cousins than anyone else. You all share family and I like that relationship. There aren't many people in the world who I can talk about my grandmother with who really understand what she was like other than those 16 cousins. Sure, I can talk to my parents about my grandparents. But that is a different relationship than grandchildren have with their grandparents.
When you're a kid, if you are lucky, you start life out with cousins who are like ready made friends. Sometimes, they don't like you or you don't like them. But most of the time you get over your differences and you can get along just fine. After all, you see each other at every family function. It ensures that you always have someone to play with at all the holidays, barbecues, fish fries and get togethers. As time goes by and you grow up you begin to go to fewer and fewer of those get togethers. In high school, you might chose to stay home and go out with friends instead. Then you go off to college and can't come home for all of those events. Eventually, most of us start families of our own and have other commitments that begin to take precedent.
I must say that my Mom has always been pretty good at trying to get me and my brothers to attend some of those events even into adulthood. They would be having a crawfish boil or Aunt Dorothy and Uncle Johnny were having a fish fry and Mom would practically demand that we drop everything and commit to being there. At the time, I must admit, I didn't understand what the big deal was and why I needed to attend a random family get together. Over the years, those occasions have become more few and far between. But after this weekend, I'm starting to get it why Mom thought it was so important for us to attend back in the day.
Cindy stayed at Aunt Miggie's house yesterday. She'll stay there a few days and then I'll go down and pick her up to bring her back to Dallas and she'll fly back home the middle of the week. So Terry and I drove back here yesterday afternoon together and had another few hours to chat during the drive home. It was so nice. Either Terry or Cindy suggested sometime yesterday that we need a family reunion and I couldn't agree more. The other side of my family has family reunions periodically. But I have to say that the Meyers side of my family has only had a few and I don't think it has ever happened since my grandmothers death when I was in middle school. I have 16 cousins on the Meyers side of my family and I think it's time we all get together again. None of us are getting any younger!
So I think that I am going to begin plotting and planning very soon. If you have any relationship to Eddie and Elizabeth Meyers, prepare yourselves, because this thing is going to happen. If I can force a family photo of my family on the day after Christmas this year, I can make this happen too. None of you may like me when this is over. But you'll all be happy we did it.
Happy Sunday!
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