I have always been a big fan of a good old dictionary, mostly because I am the world’s worst speller and I love words and thus look for not only words but for meaning of those words. I went to the dictionary today, to look for how it defined “change”. It is sort of the theme of my life these days. In the past six months, I have retired, lost my only surviving parent, and turned 65. All of these bring about change in many different forms and fashions.
One definition of change is – “replace(something) with something else especially something of the same kind that is newer or better;” other definitions use words such as alter, modify, turn or convert, to make new. These are all good words, but change is a big word and most of all change is a VERB.
I went home to West Texas this past week to meet my cousin from California in Lubbock for a visit with my sister. She is taking the same action that I took over 30 years ago. Her brother, also my cousin, had passed away after a long and hard battle with brain cancer. He was only 27at the time. He had always lived on the West Coast and I had always lived in Texas, so we did not grow up spending time together. We only saw them a few times before the grandmother we had in common died. When that happened, his mother and my father worked at spending more time together and they came to Texas several times and I got to know Nick better. As I attended his funeral, I was sad that I had not gotten to know him better. The church was full with young men, who he had coached in his short career and he had such an impact in such a short time. I decided right then that I would get to know my two other cousins and thus began to travel to the West Coast at least once a year. Thirty plus years later, my cousin Angela is one of my dearest friends. She is one of my travel buddies and we have had some great times together over the years.
Angela did not know my other sibling very well, so after the death of my mother, she wanted to get to know them better, so she planned a trip to come and visit and get to know three of my siblings who all live in Lubbock. Well, I was not going to miss that fun, so I joined them all.
I have always talked about each family being like a mobile, like the ones we put over babies’ cribs when they are young. If you remove one part of that mobile the whole structure is thrown off and most times the mobile will not work, till you replace it or adjust the other remaining parts. I am one of five children that were blessed to have great parents. That family system had to adjust several times, when Dad was in Vietnam or when either he or my mother got ill as they aged. The children pick up some of the roles in the family, and that is a big change and also a time of adjustment for all. When Dad died, we were all out of shape and it took a while before we could figure each role we all had and how to make those work together. We got it down and when my mother began to age and needed much more from us, we found our roles and worked together (well most of the time). Her death again changed the family roles and with both parents gone, we were not sure how it would all look after we recovered from the initial grief.
At times in my life, I have been close to one or two of my siblings and then often life would get in the way and we really did not have a lot of energy to devote to sibling relationships. When your siblings become the family, it is a big change, but often a wonderful one. I think the fact that we are all more stable now, kids are grown, we are becoming grandparents and our work life is slowing down with only one still working full time. (He tells us he plans to take off half a day for his own funeral! which is his way of telling us he will work till he cannot!)
Most of us have spent some time together during the holidays for the past several years and plan to keep doing that. Travel plans are made to include each other and our children and most of all we love to just spend time together. Adding my dear cousin to all of this was wonderful. While she had not seen several of my siblings for over 20 years, we all fell right in and it showed by the laughter. As we all age, we all want to make sure that we don’t bury people we don’t really know and most importantly they don’t know we love them.
So, as your family changes as it does with the circle of life, remember it is never too late to fall in love with your own family.
