If you have a close knit family, cherish it, by all means. My parents' generation did a lot better job than mine of staying in touch. I used to fuss because we traveled from my home in Northern Virginia to North Carolina every two weeks or so. I had virtually no social life until I was old enough to drive.
Well, Saturday, one of my cousins passed away. We've not been in touch a lot in recent years. But I have memories of childhood, first of his trying to run away from me, and then of fun times, like when we shared a trombone on the porch of my uncle's parsonage making a racket and some time later, when he came up for a visit and we clowned around with my old reel to reel tape recorder. We laughed until we cried.
I knew him as Richard. His new friends knew him as Tom. He knew me as one name early on, then as John. But my friends now know me simply as ROEBUCK.
But my generation, and the generation of my children don't hold family as close to the heart as we did. Sadly, many just don't seem to care any more. This is what I mourn for.
The BRIGHT side of all this, is that I have discovered within myself a capacity to love, I thought had died with my broken heart at the rejection of the woman I describe as the love of my life. But each year it seems, I meet new friends whom I love like family. I'll take that.
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