Family

Well, life goes on.

This morning, we laid my great aunt to rest, with her husband, next to her mother. As I've thrown out many times here, I'm not totally on one side or the other of religion - some times I'm buying into everything, and other times, I kind of just stand off in the distance, watching and wondering if any of it means anything in the grand scheme of the universe. And what I felt, today, is that all of the traditions and customs took a back seat to something bigger, something intangible - family. Family is something that pushes me towards religion, instead of away from it. Burials, independent of any other burial that's ever happened, could be entirely meaningless to me. But being buried with and next to the people you love, where everyone can see the headstones...I feel the meaning in that. And I've felt the meaning of family over the last couple of days. Something Aunt B always stressed, especially during our phone calls when I'd be at school. She'd always tell me how much it meant to have such a loving family, and children who would call her, even if for only a few minutes. I believed her, and knew that we've always been a close family (taking it outside the sense of my sister and parents), but have never actually felt it as strong as I have in the last two days.

I don't want a family member passing away to have to rekindle such a strong sense of the word, but maybe it has to be that way. Maybe then will it be conserved. I've never really thought about the exact emotional connotation of the concept of family. It's kind of like home, in a sense of the concept and feeling. But right here, right now, isn't the place nor time for me to figure this out. It takes time, contemplation, effort.

I'm not expecting my experience to shape what you think about the definition or semantic association with "family," so I won't pretend that it will, or has. What I do hope is that it gets you thinking about your own experiences. Times when you felt the presence of family. Create your own meaning. Assign your own values to the term, and live in the experiences that come out of those values.