This is a photo of the HMS Belfast, a second world war battleship which is now moored on the River Thames just over from The Tower of London. My granda was a joiner who worked in Belfast docks and he worked on this boat! I was looking at it a few weeks ago when we were in London and it got me to thinking about family, not immediate family but aunts, uncles, cousins etc..
I have 5 sets of aunts and uncles on my mums side and 4 on my dads side I havn't seen any of them since 1987, 19 years! I have loads of cousins (approx 20) and only actually met one since then. I think we all lost touch when we moved to England and then my mum died and my dad remarried very quickly which may have annoyed them! Anyway from were I was sitting they kind of abandoned us, I talked to my elder brother last year about getting in touch with some of them and he said why should we bother they didn't ever get in touch with us.
Recently I have been feeling like I should reach out to them but living out here makes it hard.
I guess I don't want my own kids to drift from their family like I have from mine.
I am also a crap uncle myself and should work harder at being in touch with my own nephews and neices, but it's never been modelled for me.
It's hardly like long lost parents or anything like that, but do you feel wider family is important?
Should I try to re-connect?
5 comments:
that's a tough one. it strikes me that if you lost touch after the loss of your mother, it might bring up that grief for everyone. some people want to face that stuff and some people don't.
it also lends itself to disapointment. (i'm just so cheery, aren't i?!) weather we mean to or not we always have expectations going into those kinds of re-connections. it's a risk.
that being said, i think you should do it. i think it would be harder to live with not having reached out, than to live with having reached out without it working out. it sounds like there may be some healing there for you. even if it's a painful process, it sounds like it would be worth the risk.
there's my two cents.
Hi my friend.
My experience is different but has similarities. I have three brothers, one of whom is 250 miles away, one is 200 miles away and the third is 100 miles away. My Dad is 360 miles away. We are rubbish at keeping in touch unless one of us makes the effort. It always seems to be me who makes the effort to go them, but I am blessed in that we are all Christians and we always have a blessed time together. It's worth the effort. I also have lost touch with others from my past and I try to contact them sometimes but never get a reply. I found this frustrating and sometimes annoying but I have peace in my heart because I have done what I need to do. One other thing, there was a time when I used to think of someone every day without fail and I knew that I had to contact him and put things right. This I did. I received a reply and now the nagging voice has gone. Search your heart, seek God and do what he says, then you can leave the rest to him.
It's Duncan btw. Donuts is my blogger name.
Thanks guys, I appreciate your words
Did you know... that the guns of HMS Belfast are supposedly trained on Scratchwood service area on the M1? Idea is that it would be an immportant staging post for an army assembling to invade London from the North? (And how many utterly outdated threats do we still invest effort in taking precautions against???)
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