Family Connections

Family Connections

Author’s Note: If you got this link in your inbox and we’re related, then this is for you. It’s part of an ongoing series of loosely related essays and opinions, and nonsense appropriately named “Dave Rambles On”, that I was encouraged to start up again by your mom/our aunt. I would love it if you read this and also dug around a bit through the other work here. If you want, I will add you to the email list.

Please find the sentiments here sincere, and please share them with the rest of us Bare Grandchildren.

A year ago, as we were preparing for Thanksgiving, I texted my father’s eldest sister to check in with her. She had been having some health issues, and I was anxious to hear how she was feeling. She replied that she had been connecting with my other aunt’s eldest daughter. I noted that I hadn't seen that cousin since I was a little fellow and that my primary memory of her had been a picture of her when she was Ms. Wisconsin in a prominent place on my grandmother's wall.

My aunt encouraged me to get in contact with my cousin, and, as was common with her, when she said to do something, it was expected that we do it. So, I texted my cousin. In these days of busy schedules and copiously filled daily planners, I lost track and didn’t follow up. I’ve never been a very good communicator, at least not by letter, text, or email.

In the intervening year, my aunt's health declined significantly to the point where she was rendered nearly helpless. I still communicated with her, primarily via text, and continued to send her my weekly essays. I dreaded that, at her venerable age, things might not go back to how they were. I took the opportunity to tell her exactly how I felt about her after we were alerted that she was getting hospice care. I’m glad I did. I kept sending her pictures of our family, our granddaughter, and sending uplifting messages, which her daughter and caretakers dutifully read to her. 

Then, the inevitable happened, but like all such things, it takes a while to get the idea through the cranium. For almost a decade, my aunt had always been there, either a call, an email, or a text away. I corresponded with her more than with anyone else except Pop Bare, and I cannot say how important that was for me and how grateful I am that she was there. 

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My aunt was the eldest of my grandparents' three children. My father was the youngest. She had five children, their middle sister had four, and Pop Bare had my brother and me. My aunt's eldest son is the oldest of the grandchildren (also named Dave), and I am the youngest by far. As I've shared before, I came along 12 years after my brother, who is closer in age to all of them. 

Although my grandparents grew up and lived in PA their entire lives, both my aunts moved away as young adults. My parents continued to live in Pennsylvania, while my cousins all grew up in the Midwest. When my folks split, my mother got custody and remarried, and we moved to the country. I was quite small then. My cousins visited rarely, and we had even rarer family events that drew us together. When they were visiting, though, I was always excited. We have no cousins on our mother’s side, so to me, they felt like intensely cool older siblings. I grew up loving and admiring and even idolizing them. I also felt alienated from them because of my home situation. They were basically adults, and I was a kid. They lived in Chicago and Wisconsin, and I lived in the Pennsylvania countryside. They were all college grads, funny, smart, and very hip. I was just a farm boy in hand-me-downs. Aside from them always making me feel loved and special when they visited, we were never able to develop deep closeness, and that was a lot to do with the distance, but also, their families were more enlightened and progressive. This isn’t a criticism of my parents at all. Just an observation of the reality.

I’ve always been terrible with birthdays and holiday cards. They used to send me books and cards, but I was terrible at correspondence. It’s only more recently that I have made even a little effort to stay in contact, and it’s been paltry at best. The person I wrote and stayed in contact with most was my aunt, which proves that I can do it and so all excuses vanish.

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This past weekend (as I'm writing this), our family gathered to honor my aunt at a celebration of her life, and though we were not able to attend in person, my cousin Dave made it possible for us to be there via the wonders of the Internet. Micki and me, Pop Bare, and my brother watched from different states as our first and second cousins told stories and celebrated the remarkable woman that she was. We wanted to be there in person. We would have been, had things been different, but too many intersecting contingencies prevented it at home. Nonetheless, it was a moving and lovely experience. I’m so glad we were able to witness it.

It was also wonderful to see the family and hear their tributes. As the hour of the digital visit neared its end, my other aunt’s eldest cousin rose and spoke. It was the first time I had seen her in the Internet Age’s version of “in person” in many decades. As she paid her tribute, I began to understand that she had valued and been close to our aunt, similarly to me. She had been an elder counselor, a support structure, and a valued provider of context for the Bare family, its eccentricities, historical realities, and lore. My cousin then ended with a potent suggestion. Maybe we shouldn’t wait for the next funeral before we all get together again, she said. Although my mic was on “mute”, I heartily “hear-heared”. 

Then it was over. The hour passed too quickly. As I packed up my laptop, I had a painful realization. For years, my aunt had been a point of connection for me to the family. History and memory, yes, but also to my cousins and their kids. For some of that time, too, among many other things, she reminded me that I was family despite being the youngest and living so far away. More than this, she stipulated that the responsibility was mine to reach out and connect and keep those connections open.

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In the Spring of 2017, during what would be our last visit, my aunt reminded me that there is nothing more important than family. While hanging out with her and my cousin and his family that weekend, I felt something truly eye-opening. Here were people with whom I had a genetic bond. The gestures, shapes, ways of thinking, and seeing the world weren’t just happenstance. This sense of connection is the basis of and the joy of family. We flew home, and I felt for the first time in a long time a growing understanding of the fact that I was a part of this group, regardless of how I’d felt throughout my life until then. 

As the years between then and now unfolded, I got better at keeping in touch with my aunt, who was always a call or email, or text away. She recommended books, critiqued my writing, encouraged Micki’s writing career, and was an avid cheerleader to us both in all things. Along with the amazing example that she lived in her own life, she was a deeply important source of family connection, as I’ve said, and that meant the world to me.

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It is an odd feeling to love and feel a connection with your close kin and yet feel so far from them at the same time. Family pride is something I feel keenly. And yet, life goes on, and we grow. Micki and I find ourselves in middle age with elderly parents. We have adult children, grandkids, busy jobs, and many of those damned pesky intersecting contingencies I mentioned before. John Lennon spoke sagely when he said that “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans”. While this is certainly true, it actually makes me think that we need to work harder to keep the connections that matter to us in spite of the frenetic and hectic tendencies of daily life.

The night after the celebration of my aunt’s life, my mind spun like a squeaky merry-go-round at a school playground. I kept looping back to my cousin, saying that we needed to not wait to all get together soon. That next Sunday was spent shopping and preparing for visiting family, and putting up holiday lights, and as darkness fell and bedtime rolled around, again, my mind was racing as I lay there trying to sleep. It was in the wee hours, as I stood outside in the chill, waiting for our elderly pug to find the right spo,t that I formulated a plan.

My favorite aunt’s words resounded in my head. “You’re family. Get in contact and stay there.” At the risk of being pesty (though I’ll stop well short of that, I hope), I want to be a better cousin. While they too suffer the loss of a parent and aunt, I truly believe that we can help one another in the way that family is supposed to help. We can assuage our pain and loss. We can share stories. We can even—it is devoutly to be wished—all get together soon and be together as a family again. In this modern era of communication and connectivity, nothing is stopping me.

To my cousins, fellow grandchildren of our grandparents, bearers of our genetic heritage, I say, thank you. Thank you for being the coolest, smartest people a little kid ever knew, and thank you for setting an amazing example for me. I was, like you all, the first from our little branch to go to college and get out of Reading and expand my horizons with (so far) only one tentative trip abroad, but many more to come. 

We are family. Life continuously proves that it is too short to be remote with the people we care about. I ask that you forgive me for being lousy at communicating my affection for you over the years. I’m so lucky to be part of such an intelligent, good-looking (well, most of us), intensely funny, wonderfully eccentric group of grandkids, and even though I’m the youngest, farthest bookend all the way down the shelf, I’m proud to be of common heritage with you. You’ll be hearing from me soon, and I cannot wait to start new conversations with you. Think of all we can learn from each other. To me, it will be following the directive of my favorite and most admired aunt, but more than that, I hope it will help to fill the gap of her loss for all of us.

Here’s to her. Here’s to us. Here’s to family.