Big Families

With a big family comes lots of love. And that, sadly, comes with lots of loss.

My favorite uncle - Ralph - died three weeks ago, and today we buried my favorite aunt - Juanita. Long-time smokers, these siblings had lung cancer. Ralph was 63, Juanita 57.

As we attended Juanita's graveside services on this windy afternoon at the Green Mountain Cemetery in rural Wright County in Missouri, I perused the headstones nearby.

There's my brother, John, who died at age 35 from HIV.

My paternal Grandma Agnes lived a hard but good life and was 86 when she passed in 2006. She's next to Grandpa Claud who died in 1975 after a heart attack. He was 75.

Just a few yards away is my cousin Mark - Juanita's eldest son. He died 20 years ago in a car accident, just a teen. Here's my aunt Ann who had breast cancer. My dad, Joe, who died after a stroke.

My thoughts turn to a cemetery in Thayer where my mother, Gail, is buried. She was only 36 when we lost her 32 years ago from a brain aneurism. Next to her is her dad, Bill. Her mother, Margaret, is buried in South Dakota.

A hodgepodge of names and memories are coursing through my mind tonight along with feelings of anger and hopelessness. I don't understand why we're given the gift of loving and being loved along with these burdens of loss.

My pain, however, is countered by cherished memories: Picking blackberries with Juanita, Ralph telling tall tales, John teaching me to whistle, Grandma giving me a tomato plant, Grandpa Claud smoking a pipe under the maple tree, Mark's long eyelashes, Ann sewing my eighth-grade graduation dress, dad taking us fishing, mom teaching me how to make a gooseberry cobbler, Grandpa Bill and his neater-than-a-pin house, Grandma Margaret giving me a throw pillow she made.

After Juanita's services, we gathered for the traditional potluck meal at Aunt Jane's house. I looked over my relatives mingling in her sun-dappled front yard and tried to figure out the connections.

Whose baby is that? Can I hold him? How am I related to that boy in the striped shirt? Where is Cindy? The blonde girl looks like her Grandma Juanita. Is that beautiful teenager my cousin Jill's daughter? She has her Uncle Mark's eyes. A blonde, blue-eyed toddler with a yellow Crayon in her right hand asked me to color a picture with her. Becky invited us on a float trip next weekend. Donald and Leo were wearing bib overalls.

As I took all this in, I struggled with the anguish of losing so many loved ones year after year and rejoiced in the realization that life goes on - generation after generation.

And, most important, I realized that having loved those who are gone and being loved by them makes the pain of losing them more bearable.