Sunday, October 10, 2010

Connecting with Lost Relatives...

10/10/2010

In the past few days I have connected via email with some, for want of a better descriptor, lost relatives.  By this I mean some with whom I have had no contact since Jesus was a baby, so to speak.

All of us have lost contact with relatives, especially cousins.  Many of mine are scattered across the country, and typically, these days, the only time I see any of them at all is when the family gathers for a funeral.  It doesn’t seem like all that long ago when the same was true of weddings and Christenings.  And now that all my uncles and aunts have departed this earth, the chance of a funeral drawing us together is pretty slim.

I have an interest in my families’ genealogy, and with that in mind I contacted a cousin in North Carolina.  This led me to his daughter and that led to another encounter (via email) with another cousin I don’t believe I have seen in over fifty years, perhaps even longer.

Some how with “lost relatives” there seems to be a time warp involved, for many are trapped in my mind at the age I last saw them.  Gloria is still the cute, little blond-haired girl of whom I carry a picture of in my medulla oblongata, and most certainly not the retired grandmother she purports herself to be, though I have no reason to doubt her veracity.

I think one day I will make a list of all the cousins I remember and make an attempt to look them all up.  With the most recent advances in computers and social media, it really makes it a lot easier to make connections with “lost relatives” anywhere in the world.

All that is all I have to say about that…