Family Gatherings and other things

This coming Sat. I will be traveling a bit go to a family gathering. My great aunt Ruth will be coming from Va and we haven't seen her in awhile so that will be great. Only her and my great uncle Warren are left of my granddaddy's family. Aunt Ruth is the baby and Uncle Warren was the oldest boy. He was the only other boy besides my grandad as well. He looks alot like my granddaddy according to my mom. It's always nice to get together with them, but sadly it's also a bit of a downer. Because I know once my Uncle Warren and Aunt Ruth, and uncle Warren's wife, Aunt Norma are gone that will be it of them. And once my cousins, the ones my mom's age and all are gone there will most likely not be anymore gatherings or reunions. Sadly my generation is not as close as theirs is. We know each other, some better than others but mostly we don't get together and when we do we rarely talk to each other, we talk with the older crowd. So it's a sad thing to me to see. I feel closer to the generation that is older than me than to the one that is my contemporaries. And going to gatherings is almost like a countdown to the last one. I think about the past and remember when my grandmother was alive. And it really makes me wish we had taken the time to build lasting relationships rather than just knowing each other's names. There are some within the family who are close, cousins who are closer kin because they are the children of brothers/sisters, and some because they were/are the same age, but for the most part we are a disconnected bunch of people who can trace their family to the same people. Very sad to me. I long for a family that is close, that knows each others secrets, that has children who play together and would know each other if we ran into each other when out and about. With the internet so much in use now, you'd think families could be closer, but I have to wonder if it doesn't make us less intimate now.

I can remember as a kid loading up in the car with my mom, and grandma to go ride to see my great uncle Warren and his family. Or go to see my great aunt Addie and Uncle Damon, or to see Aunt Ruth and Uncle Edward. They were the ones who lived closest so we could ride and see them. My mom remembers that every Sunday you went to Grandma's house. My kids don't know that. They won't ever say "we all loaded up and went to grandma's to eat lunch after church on Sunday." Because it doesn't happen. I see my mom often, she comes here or I got there. It's just not the same as what she remembers or I remember. We don't get together once a month or more with cousins and other relatives to eat and just be together.

I just wonder with people being able to connect without that person to person connection if it's really connecting. Are we really fooling ourselves with the world is smaller, or are we making things harder on the next generation to really truly connect with people?

Do you enjoy family gatherings or reunions? Do you think there will less of them in the future? Do you miss the way some things were in the past?

hugs,
WendyK