Cycles of Life

This past weekend, I found myself in in the same place I was in 5 months ago...at yet another family members funeral.  My uncle passed away last week after a long and debilitating illness.  As I sat in the same church as I grew up in, the memories came flooding back.  I was born in this church family and lived my life there until I was married.  My aunt and uncle were married in that church 42 years ago almost to the day.  Memories of that day kept flying to mind.  It was over 100 degrees when they married and over 100 degrees at his funeral. The only thing changed was there was now air conditioning!  I spent many days with my aunt and uncle when they were first married and their daughter seemed more like a sister than a cousin.  She and my youngest sister are close in age and she spent a lot of time at our house. 

As we were standing in the family cemetery, I kept remembering all those loved ones that were around us.  My father's grave, my grandparents, and other relatives that I didn't know personally but have heard all the stories over the years of their lives in that place.  I looked around the pasture (where the cemetery is located), and remembered flying kites there with my brother, riding my grandfather's bulldozer as he cleared the pasture next to us, using the tin roof on the barn as a slide, storing potatoes in the loft of the barn, making a Morse code box and trying to learn to use it in that same barn.  I remember seeing my grandfather everywhere I looked.  The crib where they stored corn was our after-school job.  We went there to use a corn sheller to get enough corn to feed the chickens, pigs, or whatever animals they were raising.  Boy could that old corn sheller pinch your hand!  

The air conditioner was broken at my mother's house, so we went back to my grandparent's house to eat supper.  All of my sisters were there and we started talking about all the things we remembered growing up.  I guess they were having a lot of memories surface too.  My aunts ( that now live in my grandparents house) got out the old movies and put them in the DVD player.  It was great to see some of the people I remember from childhood that helped shape me into who I am today.  

This has been a teary weekend, but not all the tears were sad ones.  Sometimes its good to take a walk down memory lane, even if it begins with a sad event.