Covid had really changed the landscape around here over the past couple of years. Without realizing it we had all drifted part from people that we used to spend a lot of time with and lost connections that used to be important to us.
I have a lot of family on my mothers side and we all grew up together as we lived nearby and had a similar age. There was about 20 of us within 8 years of each other and celebrated birthdays, communions, then 30th's and weddings as a family.
Now a lot of them I hadn't seen since the last wedding four years ago. That's a lot of time to pass at this stage of life and a lot of change in our lives.
One of my older cousins turned 40 this week and decided to have a party to celebrate. I wouldn't usually have made the effort for a 40th birthday and i'm sure that a lot of the others wouldn't either wth kids and busy lives but if we didn't make the effort now then when would we all meet up again?
It doesn't take much to drift apart permanently if people aren't willing to put in a little time and effort to maintain relationships and with all of us living in the same area it would be a shame if we did.
I wasn't even feeling 100% after picking up a nasty little bug yesterday but sometimes you just have to put in the effort for what's important.
We ended up having a great night as a family and caught up with almost all of the cousins from that side of the family. There are some not in the country but almost all of the ones who are living here id make it.
We built back up some old relationships and hopefully will do more to keep them alive going forward. Family is important and we won't always be around to do these things.
As one of them said.
Families meet for weddings and funerals. Unfortunately we are almost past the weddings stage.
