Big Family Weekend

Well, Halloween has come and gone.  It marked the end of a very busy weekend for me.  On Saturday, my Uncle Ed, the youngest of the five brothers, turned 80 years old.  He is the only brother to make it to that grand old age.  Uncle Donald was killed in Germany at the age of 22 during World War II.  My dad, Duane, died from congestive heart failure two months after his 58th birthday.  Three years later, Uncle Lavern died at the age of 59, three weeks after his wife of over 35 years passed away.  Several years passed before the oldest son, Uncle Russ, passed at the age of 74.  But this weekend, the youngest son made it to the age of 80.  As a milestone birthday, it called for a family celebration, so we had a big party on Saturday, the 29th.


Family came in from all over for Uncle Ed's birthday, including my Aunt Mary and Uncle Bill who flew in from California.  Uncle Ed's son, Donnie and his family came up from Tennessee and brought his half sisters with him.  When Uncle Ed got married back in the 70's, his new wife Bonnie came with four children:  one boy and three girls.  An instant family.  And those kids, especially the girls, just loved Uncle Ed.  Ed and Bonnie had a baby boy about two years later, and were divorced after about eight years.  She moved down to Tennessee to be near some of her family members and took all her kids with her (except for Jess, who was in the Navy and married).  Donnie is now all grown up (he'll be 41 on January 1, 2012) and has an absolutely beautiful soon-to-be 16 year old daughter.  He still lives in Tennessee, so Uncle Ed doesn't get to see him and his family as often as he would like.  But Donnie and family spent several days here in Illinois last week and came to his dad's big birthday party.


Uncle Ed's party was like a mini-family reunion.  It was an open house from 2-4pm on Saturday, but I left at 4:15 and folks were still sitting around and visiting.  I had cousins up from Bloomington and Quincy.  My cousin Lana and her family were down from Michigan and Lynnette and her husband Duane had come up from Florida.  There was cake and punch and coffee and everyone was having a blast catching up with everyone else.  The two hours just seemed to fly by.  While it was a little sad to be saying goodbye to everyone, we knew it wouldn't be long until we saw each other all again.  The next day, my cousin Pat and her husband, Gary were celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary!


That's right.  Pat and Gary had been married in 1961 and this year is their 50th anniversary.  So everyone who came to Uncle Ed's 80th birthday party on Saturday came back to the same place on Sunday to celebrate the 50th anniversary party.  The open house portion of the day was scheduled from 2-4 pm, but it was followed by a catered dinner for the family afterward.  I'm not sure, but I would estimate that there were about 60 people or so for dinner.  Pat's kids had put together a cd from Pat and Gary's photo collection, starting with them right out of high school and coming forward by decade (60s, 70s, 80s, etc.).  They had set up a big television and played the cd throughout the afternoon.  After the reception was over, Pat's sister Rita switched the cd for one that she had created from all of the folks' photos.  We all sat around watching the pictures flash by on the screen.  It brought back many good memories for all of us.


The only sad part of the weekend came about 6:00 on Sunday, when Aunt Mary, Uncle Bill, Aunt Marilyn and Uncle Harold (Uncle Ed's youngest two sisters and their husbands) got up to say goodbye.  They were driving back to Quincy that evening and they wanted to get on the road before it got totally dark.  After the rounds of goodbyes, a couple of us noticed Uncle Ed sitting off by himself in tears.  So Rita sat on one side of him and I took the other.  All he kept saying was "I'm never going to see my sister again."  You see, Aunt Mary, who is the youngest of the original eleven, lives in California and hasn't really been too well for the past few years.  When she was giving hugs, she said that this was probably going to be her last trip back to Illinois, and it suddenly dawned on Uncle Ed that he had just said his final goodbye to Aunt Mary, and it upset him a whole lot.


After spending all of last week in getting ready for his party, Uncle Ed had gotten overwhelmed with everything that was happening.  As a matter of fact, on Monday, Aunt Dorothy (who is the oldest of the living children at 82+) and her daughter Lori had to take him to the Emergency Room.  He was hospitalized for an acute case of nerves and depression.  Once the let down of the weekend hit, his blood pressure dropped and he was not doing too well.  Aunt Dorothy thought he had had a stroke, but after a bunch of tests, they kept him overnight to try and get his numbers back to normal.


Uncle Ed wasn't the only one thinking about this being the last time we might all be together.  A lot of us cousins, now that we're getting up there in age, were thinking and talking about it, too.  We didn't dwell on it too long, though.  We had so many wonderful things to think about and share instead.  My sister Karen said it correctly on Saturday afternoon.  It was really nice to be getting together for something so happy for a change.  The past couple of years, it seemed that we usually only got together at funerals.  Having a happy occasion, actually two, as a reason for getting together was a real blessing for all of us.  Our next full family reunion isn't scheduled until 2014, which would have been my grandparents' 100th wedding anniversary.  In the meantime, let's hope we don't have too many of those sad gatherings before then.