My Family

Yeah, so I don't say much about my family - there isn't a lot to say really there are few left that I can call family. That would be my aunt & uncle and two cousins. They came to the US from the Netherlands in 1977. At the time I was still in middle school and they lived with us for 6 or 7 months before they established their own home in Camas. It was kinda cool living as a big family, but I mostly remember being annoyed that there were toys all over MY room - as a pre-teen what else am I supposed to complain about.

So, years and years go by and we drifted in and out of each others worlds. They lived with us, then after I moved away from home I lived with them for a while, after that we kept in touch sporadically. We are still family and I keep in constant contact with my cousin Francois thru email almost daily. So I am never too terribly out of the loop.

Last Thursday, I had not heard from him and he had not responded to my email, but I didn't think anything of it. Sometimes work just gets crazy and there isn't time to "talk". During my lunch I saw that I had an voicemail message waiting for me. Later when I listened to it, it was my cousin calling to let me know that his dad had a heart attack and that they were all at the hospital....it didn't sound good. He only calls when things are bad.

So I got myself out of work the rest of the day and headed over there to see my uncle and support my cousin. It didn't look very encouraging that first day, but things started looking up when on my next visit we could see that he was not happy with his nurse when she tried to clean out his mouth...and today he was actually coming out of being asleep since last Wednesday evening. It was good to visit with my aunt (my mom's sister) and just talk about everyday stuff. Things felt just as they always did. I think there will be more visits in our immediate future as Oom Freddy recuperates.

Yeah, we might not see each other much, but things just keep on going and we are there for each other when the time comes.

Oom Freddy and Francois