Missing The Way Things Used To Be

I've been on Facebook a lot the last couple of months. I never liked Facebook before but then I found some old high school friends and started chatting with them. Most recently, I've found cousins from my mother's side that I haven't seen in years! That's been nice. It's also made me a bit sad.

When we were younger, the families were close and had a lot of fun spending time together. They were hilarious - the jokes and the laughs that sounded like cackling hens. Swimming in the pond, riding around on a little motor bike, cook outs, climbing up the hay stacks, my favorite cow, Elsie. My aunt used to give me pickles she canned herself because she knew they were my favorite. My cousins were older and I thought my male cousins were quite cute. As a shy little girl, it was a lot of fun to be around my teasing older cousins (they're still darn cute now, believe me, lol). Once I was an adult, I had my own relationship with my aunt. I would call her; she was great to talk to.

Then some stuff came to light about things that happened before we were even born and it tore the siblings (the parents of all of us cousins) apart and never again was that closeness to be found between them. I doubt they will ever get that relationship back and I can understand why. However, I am not sure that bringing things to light that happened so long ago was a good idea now. At the time, I felt like sides were drawn and in doing so, lost the relationship with my aunt and cousins. I am also not sure that the kids should have been told about any of this information because, naturally, loyalty would come into play even though we (at least me) were only told the bare minimum...no details. Just enough to let us know "what" but not "when" or "how" or anything else. What good did bringing it to light do? Did it help?

Some of my siblings and cousins managed to leave their parents' conflict out of the relationship and maintain a close relationship. They didn't allow the conflict to affect their relationship. They still see each other and seem to be friends as well as cousins. Maybe it was because they were closer in age so it was more natural. I don't know.

I do know that I miss my cousins. I miss my aunt. She is getting up there in age and it makes me sad thinking about all the time that has been lost. "Seeing" them on Facebook has been great, but it's made me a little sad the last couple weeks too.

You can't go back to the way things were (and I would never want to repeat my childhood) but these were good memories and I guess when you don't have a lot of good childhood memories, the ones you do have mean more to you.