Family

It has been a while... AGAIN. What a busy month this has been! I am stockpiling photos of our new house so when I finally get a moment to upload them and do a massive "we finally moved in" post I promise you'll get to see it all! Unfortunately, that is not the case today.

Today I was fortunate enough to attend the funeral of a man I didn't know very well, but this man was my grandpa. All I knew of him was that he was a hard working cattle rancher and that he thought the world of my mother (most people do).  He is married to a woman that is unlike no other, and that is my Granny Franny. You will find no kinder woman on this planet than Fran. I am so lucky to be her granddaughter.

As I sat at this funeral, I felt out of place. I felt like it almost wasn't my family. You see, it's the side of my family that doesn't socialize. My dad's side of my family never gets together... and by never I mean this is the first time in my 29 years of life that I have been in the same room as all of my relatives on that side of my family. And if history is any indicator of how things will go in the future, it is probably also the last.

Grandpa Ira

My mom would take us to see my grandparents every Christmas so I spent a lot of time with them in my life. However, my Grandpa Ira wasn't home a lot of the time when we went. He was a very busy cattle rancher, and a successful one at that! Also, most of the relatives were never around when I visited, and because my parents were divorced by the time I was two years old, I never really spent any time at all with my cousins. Up until a month or so ago I wouldn't have even been able to point out a single one of them in a crowd.

Ever since my mom's diagnosis of brain cancer back in March, I have been thinking a lot about what really matters in this life and that is my family and friendships. I decided to search out some of my cousins... really the only ones I knew of. And I found 3 of them on Facebook as well as their dad. It was nice to form some sort of connection to that side of my genetics. Earlier this year I was disappointed to find that the entire side of my paternal ancestry charts are empty, but records have been done for my mother's side and are completely filled out back about 9 to 12 generations. I started digging to find people, and was barely able to find a single person past my dad.

As I sat at this funeral for my dad's stepfather who had been around practically his entire life, I wondered what I'd missed out on by not being a regular participant of this side of my relatives' lives. As people got up and spoke their remarks about what a great man, father, grandfather he was, I felt a little shafted. I didn't get to know him. Part of that is my fault since I've been an adult for 10 years and could've made more of an effort. One of my cousins got up and gave a beautiful poetic tribute to his life as one of the last remaining cowboys in the west. I only knew she was my cousin because it said so in the program.

It's such a polar opposite of what happens in the other sides of my family. My stepdad's and mom's sides know me well, and I'm an active part of those family relationships. We have regular family reunions and see each other often. I hope that one day when I have a family, I'm able to do what needs to be done to make sure my posterity know each other and know where they came from and are proud of it.

It's funny that some people only have a few cousins and they are like siblings with each other, and then I have upwards of 60-70 cousins and half of them I have never met. It's pretty sad that families can break apart and never come back together. I hope nothing like that happens to the rest of my family, or to my future family. It is so sad that we are walking this Earth and know nothing about the people that we share genetics with.

I vow right now to never let that happen to my kids.

My grandpa's obituary is HERE.