Love your family

I've been trying to sit down and write, actually, for several days now, but I just couldn't bring myself to blog because I would be rambling and just roaming from one thought to the next. I want my blogs to generally start and end somewhere, so, I stayed away for as long as I could.

I just can't avoid the inevitable. I must write. This must happen. So, I'll start from my point of wandering and try to bring it to a neat and polished closure.

My uncle died on Wednesday evening, at approximately 9:30pm, while I was in rehearsal, as I usually am on Wednesdays. My mother called me about 10:30, as I was on my way home from rehearsal, and she let me know he had passed. She called me Tuesday to inform me that he was dying and they were just really waiting to hear the news.

I cried as much as I could possibly cry and not have my poor husband concerned for my mental health. In other words, true to Watson form, I cried for about 10 minutes, or less, and then I was finished. Well, in front of him, anyway. I spent the rest of the day crying in spurts on Tuesday, just making sure that I was alone.

In times like these, I'm the type of person that wants to be alone, brooding, if you will, reminiscing with my thoughts and all the things I would have wanted to say or the scenarios that I wish would have happened. This is truly the case with my uncle.

My uncle, who was in his early 50s, was my father's older brother. Since it was just the two of them, they were very close growing up. As they got older, though, something happened.

I don't know what that something was, but I believe it involved my grandparents, and my uncle pulled away, if that's the best way to describe it, from the family. I don't know why, but I'm positive the family pulled away a little from him, too.

For years, I never really met my uncle, nor did I really know him, but I talked to him occasionally on the phone. My father and mother decided one year, along with my mom's sisters, my mom's mom (my other grandma), and my dad's parents that all us kids and grownups should visit Florida. Take a trip to Disney world. And, since my uncle and his family lived about an hour away from Orlando, we would stay with them.

This was the first time I remember meeting my cousins in the flesh. I've been told stories about how we used to stay with my Granma and PaPa together, but I don't remember. I was too young.

I loved them instantly, and I think they really liked us, too. It was great knowing I had a girl cousin my age, especially since I was surrounded by all the boys - my brother and my aunt's sons - on the trip. In fact, we became pen pals and wrote each other almost religiously throughout our middle school years and into high school. We lost touch a bit once we got to college, and then, nothing for years, to this very day, actually. We even got married within a month of each other. And we're born about a week apart. How's that for uncanny.

The same thing started to happen with my uncle again, but some very key things kept that from turning into years without contact. My grandparents started visiting him and his family in Florida. I was very happy about that. My uncle kept planning on coming to Texas to visit us. He never quite made it, though. I think I was upset about that for a while. And, through a few other incidents within the family, he began to keep in touch with us a little better.

In fact, he started coming to one of our annual traditions - the Mother's Day reunion. It was always so wonderful to see him and my Aunt Mary - they would even bring friends with them, but my cousins never came. I was saddened by this, but I came to understand that there was some rift between them and my uncle. I don't know the whole story, nor do I need to, but, it kept them away for a long time.

Now, as I prepare my own family to embark on a trip to say my final goodbyes to my uncle, I am thinking of how bittersweet this all is. For the first time in life, I will be meeting my cousin, Julius, whom I have never known, nor know anything about, and is my uncle's oldest child. And, all my cousins will be there - 'Neka, Man, and Carlos. And, hopefully, their families, too, whom I have also never met.

To be so close in bloodline, we know nothing, really, of each other, just a few memories here and there. This must change.

Please, friends, don't be like me. Not really knowing your first cousins, so much so that you would pass them on the street and not know who they are. Learn of your people, your family, your heritage. Love them, and know that even if you have differences in beliefs, religion, or anything else, you are family, you belong to each other.

God gave us all to each other to love and to care about and for one another.

Never forget that. And, please, learn from my family. I hope that we can build bridges and make those connections that exist and last for our children. Family is super important, and I think we've forgotten that in this society and culture we live in. Love your family, friends.

Love your family.