Keeping Family Connections Strong

On Friday, we held a memorial service for my older brother in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville is where Donald lived and worked for over 40 years, but the closest family in the area is a first cousin twice removed (my cousin’s granddaughter). And we were very grateful she was there when Donald fell at home and lay undiscovered for two days until we asked Paige to check on him.

But I’m also grateful for the close family relationships we have maintained or redeveloped with our cousins over the years. A cousin from my mother’s side and her husband came from Maryland for the memorial service, and two cousins and a spouse from my father’s side came from Michigan. Other cousins from my father’s side wanted to come, but we are an aging group (I am the next to youngest), and health concerns interfered.

As a child, we occasionally had family reunions and visits with my Wagner cousins (my mother’s side), but we only kept up communications with the one cousin who came to Donald’s service.

On the Page side, while I was growing up my family had our closest relationship with the family of cousins who also made it to Donald’s service. That was mostly a combination of location and age—the other cousins who lived in Michigan were much older than my brothers and me. We also felt that we knew our Virginia cousins, who were older but traveled to Michigan once or twice a year and always spent some time with us while there.

But we drifted apart over the years. Then our parents started dying and the Page cousins reconnected at their funerals, and also at the funeral of one of the cousins who died much too young. But a relationship based on funerals alone isn’t a satisfying one, so my younger brother and my cousin Gail made plans to bring us all together at Gail’s house on Topsail Island, North Carolina. We spent about a week together in July 2018 and had a great time reconnecting. The photo at the top of this page shows all of the living cousins.

That was the last chance Donald had to gather with the Page cousins as a group. Some of us had a mini-reunion this past summer, but Donald’s Parkinson’s Disease had taken its toll and he was unable to join us.

I’m very glad that I reconnected with the Page cousins in recent years, and I hope that connection remains strong until there is nobody left to connect with.

God willing, that will be a long time yet.