“Mishpocha” means family in Yiddish. Last month, we had a memorial service for my grandmother. Due to my mother having been undergoing a medical treatment when my grandmother actually died, we, after consulting with a rabbi, decided to cremate my grandmother, and have the funeral when my mother could be there.
As a result, we were able to schedule it around many people schedules, and it ended up being a family reunion of sorts. My grandmother died at 98 1/2, and lived a happy and full life, getting to see her five (so far) great-grandchildren reach 22, 20, 12, 9 and 8. So it was a celebration of her life, and sad, but not a tragedy. She would have been glad that all her children, nieces and nephews, and all their children were getting along and happy together.
What was interesting to me, was that at one point, my stepfather, me, an aunt by marriage, and one of my cousin’s spouses, as well as the 20 year old great-grand-daughter (I call her my niece, even though she’s actually the daughter of a cousin: she called me Aunt Rivkah when she was younger, but now it’s just Rivkah), went to poke around some antique shops (it was really more like a flea market, but they were called “antique” shops). I had a moment where I thought that only two of us were actually related by blood, but if you asked, we were all family. We also had an age range of 58 years, but we were all having a good time together. We went out to lunch afterwards, and had a great time.
I’m really very lucky in my extended family.
That’s the MPSIMS at 3am when I have not been able to sleep for the last hour, and have been watching TV and playing Monopoly on the computer. I probably should take some Benadryl and melatonin. At least I can sleep in tomorrow morning.