Sticking together

The loss of a key member of my family and the ensuing mini family reunion has made me ponder on what keeps a family together. I know from other people's blogposts and tweets that my family has been very lucky at how close we have been, it also made me wonder how we be able to keep it up.

On my dad's side of the family when I was a child the family regularly got together each year and not just for big family events.

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As my generation has grown up and married the times we get together are getting further and further apart. For the first few weddings it was a full turn out. Then we all started to have more commitments and moved further away from each other.


At the funeral 5 out of 7 of us were able to be there without any partners and only 3 of the 7 great grandchildren. We were trying to work out when we had last been all together. So we went through the lists of the last possible events... it wasn't my wedding in 2002 or my cousin's blessing in 2004. The last definite photographic evidence was from 15 years ago at the celebration of my grandfather's 80th birthday!


So how do we ensure that we stay in touch and see at least part of the different branches of the family? My 2 female cousins and I are now corresponding regularly through Twitter and the wider family are using Facebook as we are spread across 2 continents.


Let's hope that we can get together without the traumatic family event that caused the last reunion. We all get on when we do see each other so just need to co-ordinate or complicated family schedules.