Restoring Our Family Bond

This Friday was a cold and dreary day. The sky is pale and gray as the rain beats down hard upon our windshield. There is an eighteen-wheel truck alongside us throwing up gushes of water from its large tires. We are on our way out of town to the next county. It'll take us about two hours and forty-five minutes to get there. I sat in the backseat with my son as my husband drove to the funeral home to see my Aunt for the last time. There have been several of our family members that we have lost this year. It has been so stressful because of the timing of each passing. It puts in perspective your own life. How precious each moment is and how important it is to tell the ones you love just how much they mean to you. Today is the day I make this change to do just that. As children, my cousins, brother, I all grew up in the same house. There were fifteen of us in a home with only three bedrooms and one bathroom. I don't know how we did it fitting in each of the two bedrooms. My grandparents had a bedroom near the living room. We didn't have much growing up, but there was a lot of love to go around. Grandpa was strict with us kids. He made sure we did our chores and homework before we went outside to play. We went to church every Sunday. Our other cousins would come to play every Sunday with us after they got out of the church. Grandma as a chef in her own right whipping up Sunday dinner for all the family to eat. She made biscuits so moist and flaky that they would melt in your mouth as soon as you would take a bite. We all were so close back then. The bond that we all shared as children has become undone as we have grown older. There was jealousy, hatred, and pettiness that drove many of us apart. Some of us even stopped speaking to the other one. It was an awful thing. I know it is probably far-fetched to think we could ever go back to when we were kids playing together. It would be nice for us to get closer and start talking to one another again. We have lost so many special people throughout the years. As a family, we need to restore the bond we lost because we need each other. When we reached the funeral home, there were so many cars in the parking lot. My husband manages to find a parking space between two small cars with our large van. We had to go in one by one because my special needs son was asleep, and we didn't want to wake him. My Aunt was a well-respected lady in the town. She had worked many jobs when she was younger to take care of her six children. Our grandmother helped her look after the children while she worked. We all lived together back then with our grandparents. Aunt Lucy's husband Floyd worked downtown at the local lodge as a bartender. His womanizing ways finally caught up with him one Friday night when Aunt Lucy caught him cuddled up with Selma Riggs and nearly beat the hell out of them both inside his 1986 Cadillac Fleetwood. The two of them separated after this incidence. Aunt Lucy took her six children back home to her mother and father's house. Uncle Floyd was apologetic about what he had done, but it was too little too late for him. I got out of our van with very little room to maneuver. I'm a chunky gal, and that tiny space between our van and the car was a tight squeeze. A man was standing outside the door of the funeral home smoking a cigarette. 

"Good morning," I said.

"Hello there," said the man.

I looked at him a little closer and realized it was Uncle Floyd. I hugged him, and we both went into the funeral home together. There were hardly any seats left to sit down. Uncle Floyd and I went up to the casket to view Aunty Lucy's. She was in a pink casket with white satin trim inside. She was dressed white and looked pretty, lying there almost like she was sleeping. A smile came across my face standing next to Uncle Floyd. I thought about the night Aunt Lucy caught him with Selma Riggs. She was a little firecracker, and we all were going to miss her dearly. I saw my mother sitting in the front row of the chapel and hugged her. I had to go back outside to let my husband come in and look at Aunt Lucy before we left for home. The rain was coming down hard as we left the funeral home. It was time for my son to get his tube feedings, so my husband pulled into a Chevron station. My husband got out to go in to get us some coffee and a bear claw. After feeding our son, we got back upon the freeway heading for home. I had forgotten to turn the porch light on, and it was so dark along the road to our house. The street light in front of our neighbor's house bulb kept getting knocked out by unruly teenagers. The power company stopped coming out to put up new bulbs after the police couldn't find the little hoodlums who kept breaking them. I kept my word after deciding to get family closer together. I got in touch with a few family members to set up an out-of-town trip to Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We set the trip for the Christmas holidays to give the younger children a chance to see a real white Christmas. I think the trip would get us all started in the right direction for family healing. I have high hopes and trust that we all have inside to restore our family bond as strong as it once was all those years ago.