Such was the case for me today when I attended the funeral of my uncle, one of my mother's seven brothers.
Yes, she had seven brothers.....
And six sisters !
My mother was number four in a family of fourteen children so my childhood was full of cousins and aunts and uncles.
Mum might not have been the eldest in the family but she was the glue that kept them all together. There were always family BBQs, picnics and celebrations and family visiting from far and wide.
But families grow up, begin careers, marry and move away and gradually the contact between the cousins dwindles as they have growing families of their own.
These days it is the funerals that bring us together and despite the sadness of losing the older members of the family it is a great joy to reconnect with those cousins that manage to make it to the funerals. Nowadays we are managing to reconnect with the help of email,
and Facebook lets us share in the daily events of their family lives wherever they are I this great big world.
RIP Uncle Noel.
