Fading Memories

My parents were the glue to our family. The one common link among my brothers, sister, and our families. When they died our link to one another seemed to be breaking. Last year was filled with mourning and taking care of the business at hand (dealing with the after-effects and estate). My son, Josh, decided that he was not going to let the family fall apart and scheduled our first Family Breakfast; we now meet the first Sunday of each month for breakfast and catching up. Not everyone can make it due to work and being out of town, but we seem to be sticking with it pretty well. About the same time my daughter started a family newsletter that would be distributed at the breakfast to announce happenings, share stories and memories, and become just another layer of trying to hold us all together. Kelley and I worked together on the newsletter until January this year, when I took it over.

What I've found in doing the newsletter is that I only know so much information about our parents and ancestors. This newsletter goes out to aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, my siblings and their families...and I'm getting very, very little feedback and even littler contribution for information, stories, favorite memories.

Take for example this edition: It is celebrating my parents' (would be) 52nd wedding anniversary and Father's Day. Just like I do every month, I asked, begged, pleaded with my family, extended family and friends to share a memory that goes with the theme. Simple enough...don't we all remember something...anything..about my parents or my dad? I swear the crickets jumped out of the last post and right into my requests because that's all I've gotten. Fortunately, I was able to increase the font of the text, add a few pictures and pull a couple of stories together from my aunt and uncle; just to fill the pages. Pitiful!

I ranted to my daughter last night that this there is probably going to be one more newsletter and that's it. I only have so much in my bag of thoughts and memories, and frankly, I don't think anyone gives a shit whether there is a newsletter or not. Everyone enjoys reading them (I think...I hardly ever hear a peep about if they like it or not), but no one is willing to give me anything to go into it! Kelley suggested that people may not like to talk about my parents...too painful. I call ultimate bullshit on that! I'm sick and tired of their death being played as an excuse to not do something. Then again, if they aren't ready to talk about them then I'm certainly not going to force them to read it.

This is my rant for the month, week, day It saddens me and it pisses me off!

This is just a screen shot of the latest edition that will be sent out this weekend.