More of the Plot is Revealed....

I attended a family funeral today. The greatest generation is slipping away. My aunt was 85 and crippled with arthritis and a series of illnesses which robbed her of peace for many years. Her death is a mercy, but she will be missed by the sisters and daughters who loved her, and by the fringes of family that seldom saw her, but were comforted by memories of the times that we did spend with her growing up.
It was hotter than old billy hell in East Texas this afternoon and despite its name there is little shade in the cemetery where my maternal ancestors are waiting for the Resurrection. That's fitting weather for my cousins to come together. It was always the summer when we had the opportunity to be "up home". While my grandmother was out of school, she would keep any combination of cousins who came for at least a week at the time.
There were eight cousins. Four girls came first, followed by four boys. The youngest girl and the youngest boy have died. Neither of them lived to be fifty. But back in the summers of our childhood, we "canned" the peaches from our grandparents trees. We rode an old horse that my grandfather would saddle up for us to share. We slept four in a bed on the sleeping porch to be cooler. And after the peas were picked and shelled, my grandfather would sometimes drive you into town for a swim in the city pool.
We had history....Christmases, Easters, Thanksgivings. We had vacation Bible school and skirts alike that my grandma made on the Singer. But then my grandmother died and things began to change.
There were longer periods of time when we didn't see one another. There were graduations and college and weddings. There were divorces and moves. There were illnesses and deaths. Events brought us together, but not frequently. But always there was the history that made you feel a connection.
Today I learned another piece of the history. It seems that our family had a secret that very few shared. There was a baby quite a long time ago. She was adopted by another family and her young birth mother went away to college and eventually to a career in another state.
When the baby turned eighteen she found her birth mother and began a relationship, but the matter was not widely known. Now the baby is thirty-something with babies of her own.
Happily, today when the minister read the list of my aunt's survivors, he named a granddaughter and two great-grandchildren.
It was not so hot in the cemetery under the funeral home's portable awning that this information failed to register with the unknowing.
I don't know how many more times our family will be together. The occasions seem to fewer and further between and maybe all the secrets have been revealed.