Reunion

Originally posted 4/8/07

My husband's brother-in-law passed away 6 days ago, and yesterday we went to the celebration of his life. This was the first time in 3 years that we had seen anyone in my husband's family. Longer for some. My husband has been unhappy that his siblings always seemed to expect us to do all the traveling for visits, and frankly, so have I. Only once has anyone in his family come to our house to visit, and that was for Moira's first birthday party back in 2000. My husband and his brother have been polite to each other, but no more for several years, and I have lamented this. Religion stepped in and reared its ugly head and there were heated discussions between my husband his his brother's wife, who is a Catholic convert. But yesterday, we got to see all of his family. No one recognized one sister who has lost 271 pounds and is getting herself put back together health wise. This was a wonderful thing (though embarrassing since we felt like we should have recognized her, after all, she is family). we had a chance to reconnect with all the sisters (except one who has nothing to do with any of the family) and it was great to see how much the kids have grown. One of our nieces is almost 15, no longer the little girl she was when we last saw at age 12. She is now a young woman. His sister is now grandmother to a 6-year-old boy who played most of the time with our almost-8-year-old daughter. But I think the best part was seeing my husband's brother and his family again. Their youngest daughter is 5 months younger than my oldest, and I last saw her when she was probably 5 or 6. She is now 10. They didn't even know about my youngest two children. There was no hostility (that I felt) like there has been in the past, and we learned that they just moved much closer to us. That will make travelling for visits nuch easier, and maybe we can start again to become more family. Ironically, we discovered that we both patron the same dairy farm, and they bought their house in one of the towns we have been looking for property to buy. Although the reason for the reunion was unfortunate, I am very happy with having reconnected with family again.