So this past Saturday sis and I went to Mt Vernon for a small family gathering to introduce ourselves to a long lost cousin. All of this started with my aunt’s funeral. First my mom’s cousin Barb attended, bringing her mother, Wanda, and reintroduced herself to my mom and to us. Then Barb found Dean on Facebook (see not EVERYONE uses Facebook to pick up women!). Dean knew nothing of us. He moved away as a young boy and everyone lost track of him. So Dean wanted to come to Illinois and meet whoever was around and Barb planned the meet up at her house.

It was a lot of fun to share old photos and to meet Dean, his wife and his daughter. Wanda was quizzed many times over to identify a child in a photo or confirm a story or memory. I wish I had known about Wanda and Barb when we first moved to Illinois. Wanda is in her 80’s now and she is the last living child of Lafe and Liza Perry. Dean didn’t realize he had so many relatives, and we were only about 5% of the total! Barb made lots of great food for us. By the time we left I knew I was coming down with a head cold and not just suffering from my allergies. I felt bad that I may have made someone else sick unknowingly but I’m glad I went to meet them. Everyone was so much fun and it was not the least bit awkward. I hope we have more big family gatherings in the near future.

Through Verdean’s passing I feel like I reconnected with some of my cousins and I gained some new ones! I’m realizing that we, as young people, take our family for granted. But in the elders of our family lies our history, in memories and stories that live on only within them and will never be in a history book. While we can find birth dates, death dates, marriage dates and names while researching… seldom do we find stories and events that bring our ancestors to life. Some things we will never know simply because no one asked.