Family

What’s going on everybody? I was just in South Carolina for the past few days attending my great-grandmother’s funeral. She died at 98 years old, lived a great life and the funeral was a great tribute to her. I’ll get into more thoughts about the funeral in my Sunday reflections for this week.

For now, I’ll discuss one positive aspect of attending the funeral, meeting up with some family members that I hadn’t gotten in touch with in years.

Since I moved out of the NYC in 1999, I haven’t been up there in a long time. I can only remember one or two occasions when I’ve been up there. The result of that is that I’ve lost touch with a lot of family members there like some uncles, aunts and my grandfather. However, everyone came down to Estill, S.C. for the funeral, so I got to see them, which was big since I haven’t seen some of them in nearly ten years.

And there were two cousins that I haven’t seen in even longer. One of them lives in Tampa and she was my road dog back in the day. I used to kick it with her all the time as a kid, but we lost touch. I was so happy to see her. The other one actually works in sports media, which is cool because I work in sports as well. He’s actually going to Wimbledon, lucky SOB.

I also got to hear so many stories about my family and learn more about everybody, including my parents.

The funeral also brought me to Estill, S.C., which is the epitome of a small southern town. People call cities like Macon, Ga. or Chattanooga, Tenn. small, but those are nothing compared to Estill. There are literally only about twenty stores in the entire city. It’s also a city that you can tell is struggling financially and has a high poverty level. I can understand why people want to move out of there, but I can comprehend why people would want to stay there too. It’s their home.

But that’s where my roots are so I have to respect it. I think it’s good for all of us to go back to where our families have started to gain prospective of the current life. The visit confirmed the unity that we share as a family.

I’ve been a hermit in relation to family relationships the past few years, but that needs to change because the older members of my family are going to pass away at some point and it will be up to me and the other kids in my generation to continue our strong family tradition.

I just need to attend more family reunions and keep great-grandma’s legacy moving.