I just helped my daughter get her PJs on when I turned back to my BBQ pork sandwich. I looked at a list I'd written of who to write on Sundays. I LOVE to make lists. I spotted my grandmother's name and I began thinking about my ancestry. My living ancestry. I'm somewhere in the middle. I still have one biological grandparent alive having lost my maternal grandmother in 1980, my paternal grandfather in 1997, and my maternal grandfather just a few years ago. Both my parents are living, all my sisters, and we've not lost any of our children (fingers crossed). So I'm both a parent and a child, but I started thinking about the amount of time I make for my family.
My grandmother is still alive, but how do I live with her? The last time I saw her was in March and we were celebrating her 80th birthday. I've thought and thought that I need to drive over and take her to lunch or just hang out with her, but I never seem to find the time. (Or perhaps better stated, I don't make the time.) I am so busy with my own tiny portion of my larger family that my grandmother, mother, sisters, nieces and nephews get pushed into a corner to gather dust and cobwebs like the chair I "inherited" from my long-passed grandmother.
I rarely see my cousins. Facebook seems to have become the chosen method of communication for more distant relatives. Of course, when you're spread all over, it works out pretty well. But I have a cousin, who just graduated from her program of study and lives not too far away, that I haven't seen since she took my wedding photos over two years ago. Her sister, who lives 60+ miles away, I see on an annual basis to exchange Girl Scout cookies. Their sister lives in Utah and I don't see much of her at all. Could I though?
Do we take for granted our extended families? Is there a way to spend some time with them once a month, a quarter, a year even, to reconnect and see where everyone is and how they're doing without the use of a computer screen? And to that end, do I take my (not-so) tiny portion of my bigger family for granted too? Will my husband come home tomorrow? Will I get to watch another of my daughters' soccer games? Will I get to have another lunch with my mother?
I don't know what tomorrow will bring so the answer to those questions could, very well, be "no". And wouldn't it be a tragedy to pass through the veil and find that I'd squandered my time here and now.
As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, I am taught that the family is central to Heavenly Father's plan of happiness. It is NEVER taught that it is just my spouse and my children, but my family. My ENTIRE family. And since I just completed my maternal grandmother's temple work yesterday (with thanks to the lovely temple workers at the Portland Oregon Temple), I think it's high time I (we) recognize not only who I am (we are) and what I've (we've) contributed to my (our) family, but to be grateful for where I (we) came from as well. We are the posterity of those who have gone before us. Let's leave this world better than the way it was when we came into it. Honor thy father and thy mother, and aunt, and uncle, and cousin, and grandmother, and grandfather and so on.
