The Never-Ending Story

Today I am grateful for our cozy couch to watch election returns on last night. I am also grateful for the large family I have. We have a never-ending story.

One of the challenges of a big family is keeping in touch with them all. That is true of my family of origin, with 12 siblings, and now over 80 people with marriage, children, and grandchildren. And it is true of my extended family. My dad had 6 siblings, my mom had 7. There are dozens and dozens of cousins. I have some sadness that there is no way to know all of my family. I am close to some, have rarely even met others. That is a loss going both ways. But it is reality.

So when I walked into my Aunt Esther's Chicago apartment on Saturday, it was my first time there. I was fortunate to meet some of my aunt's friends who became part of their family. Sandy met Esther through work and her two daughters considered Esther to be their second grandma. Christina had known Esther, Esther's husband Carl, and Larry and Mary for decades. These friends knew my aunt in ways I never did. But as I told Sandy, there are many ways to define family and they are all legitimate. I was glad to meet these folks and hear them share stories and memories.

Larry and Mary wanted family and friends there to help go through some of his parents things and to take away items of meaning. I quickly realized that I have this in common with my aunt--saving lots and lots of stuff. It was fun to see treasures unearthed, to hear stories behind certain things, to see pictures I hadn't seen before. And in those photos, to see the younger faces of our parents, to see ourselves.

My own family didn't amass a lot of "stuff" as I grew up. Being a big farm family, we shared and got used to hand-me-downs. We didn't have a lot of extra space, time, or money. I simply don't have many treasures that belonged to my parents or grandparents. Maybe that is why I became a saver myself.  It was very meaningful for me to see the history in the things we looked through this weekend, to bear witness to the never-ending story of my dad's family-the story that began long before my father was born and that will continue with future generations long after I am gone.

I felt a bit like an interloper, but not because anyone else made me feel that way. In the end, I was so grateful to be there, to have made the trip, and to have some treasures to take back for my mom, myself, and siblings. Even though I wasn't part of the story with some of the items, just knowing that they had been my aunt's made them important to me. There is a deep need to connect generations of families. That is what was happening this weekend.

In the end, we had a fuller Suburban on the way back to Iowa than we did on the way there. But it wasn't just full of more stuff. It was full of more stories from our weekend together. Stories to add to the never-ending story.

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