Last January we manage to organise anniversary of the death of our grandmother after a long layoff. We used to organise it after few years of her death but stopped when the elders thought that we need break a year or two. Once it stopped, it was forgotten without somebody trying to revive it again. I was summon to attend a family meeting and was informed that it was about the anniversary of the death of my grandmother. We tried to involve everybody but time was not our side then as the date of the intended gathering was two weeks away. We managed to call for the meeting twice only after another one was called off due to some misunderstanding of the intended date.
The problem of having the elders in a meeting was their diversion of the discussion into something that was not in any way following the prepared agenda. They would talk about how hard life when they were growing up and bla ..bla ..bla.. Many a time would we tell them to concentrate on the agenda but sometimes we were reprimanded as they were trying to connect the anniversary and the life of our grandmother. I concurred with them of how important our grandmother but what we were trying to do at the time was organising the event smoothly and not to waste anymore time.
Although we may be having the same grandmother, it does not mean that we are very close amongst our cousins due to marriage. They married and follow their husband or wife and lived in another place. They visited their siblings with their small children to the place of his/her birthplace or parents house but once they are bugged down to look after her/his new family their visit become rare and it become worst if their parent passed away and the family house demolish. Their children will not be very close to their parent’s sibling’s children. It goes the same to our family also as some of us do not know our entire cousin children and vice versa.
It is heartening and good for the family to have the gathering as it was an eye opener for us that the family remain intake as shown by the eagerness of the younger generation to get involve and acquainted with their unknown family tree. It should be best sum up that the availability of networking such as email, Facebook or Twitter proved that whenever you are, you’re always get updated with what is going on to your families. We did make use of facebook to get most of the event known to them.
Next on our agenda is the gathering of all the children of our grandfather but for now I will write about it on my next posting.
