Family

My ever present laptop.

I just finished sending off an email to my Uncle Jimmy in Boston. He is the last surviving sibling of my mother. On my visit last month, to see him and my Aunt Patsy for their 59th wedding anniversary, he said there was one thing he wanted me to know. He wanted me to take over the job of keeping him up to date on the family comings and goings like my mother did before she died October 2011.

I realized then that this is exactly what she would do for me. I didn't know she was spreading the family news to everyone. These are some big shoes to fill. She knew the happenings in the older family branches. My grandfather and grandmother's siblings' doings. Most of them are dead now, but there were a whole lot of them. Many of my mother's first cousins are still with us and I'm going to have to call them and see what's going on.

It would be so easy if I could Face Book them. That's not going to happen though. The younger generation is online and they love to post their most intimate information. That's good for nosey old me.

Now that I think about it I believe there are only two of my mom's 1st cousins left. So I think that is what I will do tomorrow. Call Alice. She's the most interesting cousin to me. She has pictures of just about everyone in the family going back 3 or 4 generations. These pictures are all on the walls of her entire house. I'm talking about the bedrooms, kitchen, bathrooms, everywhere. The pictures go all the way up to the ceiling. Every available surface is covered with framed photos. Treasures all. We took the whole Boston family to see the pictures when they came for my mom's funeral. We took pictures of the pictures. Some came out OK. Then I ran out of battery. My two baby cousins where at it, too. I think we got just about all of them. I so wished I could have scanned them.

Anyhoo, I decided to send them an email instead of making a phone call. This way they can refer back to it after they hopefully print it out. It went pretty long. After all I take this job very seriously!