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So Much Common DNA, So Little Consistency
As someone who spends much of my time thinking about how families function together, I’m always eager to enter any real world “laboratory” to observe members of the same family as they assemble for whatever reason.
So imagine how lucky I felt over the past couple of months when I “got to” attend not one, but two, “celebrations of life”, the events formerly known as funerals.
Over the past decade or two, it seems we’ve finally found a way to put the “fun” back in funerals.
Thanks to the conscious choices to delay these events for several weeks after death, some of the grieving is allowed to happen in smaller private groups in advance.
By the time the greater extended family and friends group gathers, a much lighter atmosphere allows for more of the celebration we now usually experience.
Catching Up with Relatives After Many Years
Considering how rich with information post-life celebrations can be, it’s almost surprising to me how seldom I’ve written on them.
In fact, I think I need to go back 10 years to Family Business Flashback to find the last time I wrote specifically about a family funeral.
A couple of month ago I attended a celebration of the life of someone who was more of a distant relation, but was still someone with whom I had had many interactions.
Pam was quite gregarious in life and it was great to hear her daughter Laura eulogize her and make everyone laugh.
What stayed with me was when Laura shared something that had occurred between Pam and a grandson, and then she contrasted how his other grandmother would have reacted very differently.
I’ve begun to share this with some people, and ask them to compare their two grandmothers and note whether they were similar or different.
I know that mine were polar opposites, and so are the grandmas of my offspring.
It kind of feels like “opposites attract” but one layer above and even more magnified.
Another Pillar of Our Past Now Gone
The more recent event was my aunt Liz, my late father’s older sister.
She’d been instrumental in our family’s immigration to Canada story, and without her bold first move, my parents would surely never have met, and so whose blog would you be reading now?
One of her granddaughters shared so many stories that brought laughs to the assembled family and friends.
I congratulated her for the speech afterwards, and we laughed at how Liz would probably not have appreciated everything she shared, but that it was great that she did so anyways.
It made me flash back to when I eulogized my father, and it enabled me the opportunity to share some sides of him that many people were likely unfamiliar with.
I feel like I “humanized” him for some who were only used to his tough exterior, which felt safer to do with only his ashes in the room, and not his judging glare.
More Random Life and Death Musings
The opportunities to be with extended families as they gather like this are an interesting vantage point to view how resilient some family members are.
When many people from a family branch have survived various tragedies over the past few decades, it can be reassuring to see how they continue on courageously nevertheless.
Perhaps there are lessons there on how strong a family can become when they learn to rely on each other, even if they have more practice at it than they wish they had.
Understanding a family’s history can take a while when you’re hired in to work with them, and you can never get to the level of depth that you can in your own family.
Family History Lessons Travel Differently by Branch
Another interesting fact that emerges is that lessons about the family’s past aren’t typically shared to the same degree in every family branch.
Some stories from Aunt Liz’s eulogies about their family’s pre-immigration past were “brand new” to some of my cousins, whose parents rarely share about those olden times.
Every branch evolves in its own way, and siblings are all their own people despite overwhelming similarities in their DNA.
But although we all evolve into different beings, our shared history and roots can remain a huge strength to be tapped into.
In the end, everyone’s life deserves to be celebrated by family and friends.
