Life is like a trail. We travel it, most of the time not knowing where it will lead us, but hoping for the best.

Yesterday was one of those sad days. I said goodbye to my aunt. It was sad because it was the end of a long good life. The funeral service showed her best qualities and how much she loved life and never let it knock her down.

I saw many of my cousins and my remaining uncle and his wife from my mother’s side of the family. There’s one left, an aunt, older than my mother with severe dementia. I learned she will be 95 in March. My uncle will be 87 in June.

Funerals happen more often these days. It’s the only time we seem to get together as a family to remember the days when life was slower and fun lurked over every horizon. In the past couple of years, I attended a cousin’s husband’s funeral, a cousin’s funeral the same age as me, and a cousin’s funeral a few months ago from another family. It was my cousin’s mother whose funeral I attended yesterday, who passed in October.

Yesterday was a day of memories shared, seeing cousins I haven’t seen in decades, and laughed with over some of those memories. I also learned something I thought I knew about my mother, but the facts were far from the truth. You see, instead of having twenty-seven cousins from all five families in my mother’s family, there were twenty-nine of us at the family reunion in 1969. And my mother was not three years old when she moved from Duluth, Minnesota to Kimberly, Wisconsin. My uncle, her youngest brother, was nine and she was seven years older than him. So, she wasn’t three.

Yesterday, I also got people straightened out in my mind until the next funeral we meet at when I’ll start over remembering who’s who. For now, I have them straight in my mind. We had a good laugh when I finally asked my cousin across from me what her name was. She said, have you been sitting there all this time wanting to know my name? Yes, I replied, laughing with her to my sheer embarrassment. I grew up with these kids, yet I didn’t know their names. I learned everyone’s at the table with me.

It was a good day yesterday, filled with memories shared and memories made. There was laughter, important to my late aunt, and tears because we won’t laugh together with her until we meet in heaven.

It was a good day because I could be there to say goodbye. I don’t have a car so my brother picked me up. I’m forever grateful to him.

Not all my cousins were there, some couldn’t make the journey, living too far to make the trip, but it was a good representation from all five family’s in my mother’s family.

Seeing everyone yesterday was a joy on another level as we greeted and hugged with smiles, knowing that life is short. We don’t know what’s around the bend in the trail as we walk ever onward to the trail’s end.

My family isn’t without its losses. Ten years ago I lost my brother, a year later my mother, and six months later my father. Every family represented had missing family members.

Thank you for reading.