Today, I went to the funeral for my Uncle Herbert. This was my father’s next youngest brother (he has four); my father died in 2004. I didn’t know Uncle Herbert well—during much of my youth, for whatever reason, we weren’t talking. But things eventually cleared up and we did get to know his family a little better. Hearing the eulogies today, I wish I had had the opportunity to truly know the man. He was a lover of books and knowledge. He was an engineer. He sounds like a person I could have really enjoyed talking to, if we didn’t get into disagreements of fact. But, alas, time has taken that opportunity from me. I’ll note this isn’t the only time this has happened—why is it we often don’t learn until we hear the eulogies what interesting people folks of our parent’s or parents parent’s generation were?
Getting together with his family afterwards was fun, and I’m hoping we can figure out how to not make the same mistake: I’d like to make an effort to get to really know the people behind the cousins I don’t know well. From what I saw today, they are really neat people and good folk.
