Does family still mean anything?

OffHeGoes29

I want a moment of your time to give me your opinion if "family" still holds an important part of your life.

I went to a family cookout today at my grandparent's house, and as a sat and talked with my grandfather; he told me that life goes by in an instant. He talk of how 40 years ago seem like just yesterday, and how he remembers his father saying the same thing when he was his age. His father (my great grandfather) came over from Italy in the 20s and started a large family here in the US. Over the years the family grew to a huge size, three full families in all, and at the head of this was my great grandparents. Traditions and family gatherings where common and a lot of great stories and times spend together as a large family. Well when my great grandparents passed away in the late 90's, the large family gatherings stopped, and all the traditions fell apart in what seemed like overnight.

Now that my grandparents are getting older, I see the riffs forming with in our own family. Divorces and bad blood between people have left a lot of people feeling bitter and hurt. I think the only reason we still all see each other is out of respect for my grandparents. But as time goes by, and with their eventual passing, what will become of my family? I feel that few people will even talk to each other.

So my question is how can a once proud and loving large family, at one point in time my family ties where well beyond your average extended family. Now I'm afraid that in 20 years, I will be lucky enough to have a nucleus of a family. I just don't know how a large group of people that loved each other fell apart over time? This isn't an isolated event, my dad side, also with strong Italian roots, met a similar fate.

I want to bring that feeling back, but feel that the time has passed, and I will be lucky enough to have any sort of relationship with even my immediate family.

KosmicJelli

Family means everything to me... and its not just the ones that are blood related either... its the family I have created also among friends who can at times be "more" family than my Family...

Jeanie

My family is every to me, even when they shit me.

We've had a similar thing happen with extended family after the death of the great grandparents and some of the grandparents.

We all scattered to the four winds really and yes there's been some bad blood here and there.

My one suggestion, which could possibly help, is to organize a family reunion.

We organized our first one to commemorate my great grandparents first coming to Australia and getting married and EVERYONE came and we had a fabulous time. It was so nice to get together for something to celebrate instead of the usual catch up at funerals business that had been going on.

So we've had a few of them now, alway picking somewhere neutral so that everyone had to travel and nobody had a territorial advantage.

I don't know, if you'd told me that my family would get together for a reunion I'd have told you you were nuts but they did it!
Maybe your family might too?

CHANGEinWAVES

KosmicJelli wrote:

Family means everything to me... and its not just the ones that are blood related either... its the family I have created also among friends who can at times be "more" family than my Family...

I think u are right here...family isn't always those who are blood related, its about those you can be yourself around and not feel judgment put upon u. Family should be a place of comfort and understanding no matter what is going on...if there is bad blood then perhaps those ties were not meant to be tied. I know family members of mine who will always be there and I know others who have already run...a family is what you make of it, and who u make of it:)

Gossard_Is_God

Im an only child, i only have my parents, i only see my nan on my mums side, once or twice a year and the rest of the family on my mums side once every 7 years, and never see my dads side of the family because they live in another country, except for holidays. sometimes i feel that one day im going to be very alone :P

CHANGEinWAVES

Gossard_Is_God wrote:

Im an only child, i only have my parents, i only see my nan on my mums side, once or twice a year and the rest of the family on my mums side once every 7 years, and never see my dads side of the family because they live in another country, except for holidays. sometimes i feel that one day im going to be very alone :P

I'm also an only child that's why family means more then just blood to me...create ur own "family":)

OffHeGoes29

CHANGEinWAVES wrote:

I'm also an only child that's why family means more then just blood to me...create ur own "family":)

You don't know how much I want to do that, just got to let go of the past first.

CHANGEinWAVES

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

You don't know how much I want to do that, just got to let go of the past first.

I think I do... I'm having trouble letting go of the past too.

Allie

it is true, the older you get, the faster life seems to go! I was just talking to someone about that.

I'm not yet married so my immediate family is my (divorced) parents and my brother. I'd say we're close. I didn't have a relationship with my dad growing up but we developed one over the last 10 yrs or so. He's in a nursing home now so my role is reversed, I'm doing the caretaking. And I took care of my mom last year, she broke her leg. I have other family here but I'm closest to my parents.

SoonForgotten2

I don't really have much of a sense of family for a lot of reasons. The strongest feelings I have for any blood seem to be indifferent caring, if that makes any sense. I'm pretty sure that I'll never be capable of unconditional love. I don't say this being proud of it, but simply because it has been my reality. :-/

Touchofgray16

I agree with Jeanie about a family reunion. My mother was one of 15 and my father was one of 7, so I am part of a huge family. My mother's family has been having reunions for 10 to 15 years now and I just got a call that my father's side is going to have one in September. I always attend because otherwise I would only see my cousins, aunts, uncles, etc. at funerals.

Then again, I am heavily into genealogy, so family is very important to me.

OffHeGoes29

SoonForgotten2 wrote:

I don't really have much of a sense of family for a lot of reasons. The strongest feelings I have for any blood seem to be indifferent caring, if that makes any sense. I'm pretty sure that I'll never be capable of unconditional love. I don't say this being proud of it, but simply because it has been my reality. :-/

I kind of understand what you're talking about.

OffHeGoes29

How is it that family is the most important thing in your life, and if you don't have that..well all you have is yourself?

norm

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

So my question is how can a once proud and loving large family, at one point in time my family ties where well beyond your average extended family. Now I'm afraid that in 20 years, I will be lucky enough to have a nucleus of a family. I just don't know how a large group of people that loved each other fell apart over time? This isn't an isolated event, my dad side, also with strong Italian roots, met a similar fate.

I want to bring that feeling back, but feel that the time has passed, and I will be lucky enough to have any sort of relationship with even my immediate family.

short of a family reunion i'm not what else you can do....perhaps set up a website of your family and post pics, vids....blogs....:)

it's funny my parents left detroit in 1955 for california for many reasons...one was they were sick of their families...every Sunday all the relatives would get together for drinks, dinner etc....drove my folks nuts

now i think if it were up to my parents, they'd want to see their 5 kids and 8 grandkids all the time.....and that would drive me and my siblings nut

LONGRD

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

You don't know how much I want to do that, just got to let go of the past first.

I'm trying to learn and honor the past that I've tried to ignored through out my life. I feel like an embarassment to my family for that.
It's sad that it took the death of an important family member for me to noticed my errors.

huffaluffa

Family is one of the most important things in my life. I see my relatives at least twice a month and family gatherings are a blast.

suns rival

of course....here in the philippines, close family ties is a treasure....

_

OffHeGoes29 wrote:

I want a moment of your time to give me your opinion if "family" still holds an important part of your life.

I went to a family cookout today at my grandparent's house, and as a sat and talked with my grandfather; he told me that life goes by in an instant. He talk of how 40 years ago seem like just yesterday, and how he remembers his father saying the same thing when he was his age. His father (my great grandfather) came over from Italy in the 20s and started a large family here in the US. Over the years the family grew to a huge size, three full families in all, and at the head of this was my great grandparents. Traditions and family gatherings where common and a lot of great stories and times spend together as a large family. Well when my great grandparents passed away in the late 90's, the large family gatherings stopped, and all the traditions fell apart in what seemed like overnight.

Now that my grandparents are getting older, I see the riffs forming with in our own family. Divorces and bad blood between people have left a lot of people feeling bitter and hurt. I think the only reason we still all see each other is out of respect for my grandparents. But as time goes by, and with their eventual passing, what will become of my family? I feel that few people will even talk to each other.

So my question is how can a once proud and loving large family, at one point in time my family ties where well beyond your average extended family. Now I'm afraid that in 20 years, I will be lucky enough to have a nucleus of a family. I just don't know how a large group of people that loved each other fell apart over time? This isn't an isolated event, my dad side, also with strong Italian roots, met a similar fate.

I want to bring that feeling back, but feel that the time has passed, and I will be lucky enough to have any sort of relationship with even my immediate family.

I totally know how you feel. Family is really important to me, but I sometimes feel like it's not quite as important to everyone else. My extended family all lives several states away and my immediate family doesn't usually have the money to go visit them. I'm lucky enough, at 32, to still have a great-grandmother. I try to see her as often as I can, but it's hard. And it makes me really sad to feel like she's not being honored and taken care of in the way I think she should be, especially since my grandmother (her only child) passed away.

On my mom's side, we have a pretty large family. We try to have family reunions every few years, and if it weren't for that we'd very rarely see each other. A few years ago I decided to start an email listserve for the family and that has worked really well! Now we are able to keep in touch even when we can't see each other in person.

One thing that makes me sad about this large family though is that those cousins who do live in the same town seem to sometimes take it for granted. Turns out they're all so busy with their lives that they still only see each other a couple of times a year. I don't understand that.

My advice would be to: a) start up a tradition of family reunions (as Jeanie already said); b) create an email listserve and maybe one of the those websites for everyone to post pictures (I plan to do this as soon as I figure out how); and c) try to keep track of your family history, take videos of your grandparents talking about their lives, etc., so that way when you have kids (if you don't already) you can keep the sense of family strong. I think it's a noble effort. Good luck!

Cree Nations

Family means everything and anything to me...friends too. It is what you and others put into it. Having a strong sense of family in ones heart lends to a strong character.

Jeanie

Oh I forgot to mention that as part of the family reunion we have a family website that we update periodically and my Mum in particular, is a total geneology nutter. :rolleyes:

I understand for some people it might seem like an impossible thing, a family reunion but really, before we had our first, we thought the same thing and were pleasantly surprised.

I guess it's important to bring family together for positive things and not just negative, a chance to celebrate being a family.

I mean my family most certainly has had it's ups and downs and there are and have been quite a few feuds and disagreements and dischords going on throughout our lives, but I think that's just life.

I'm glad we did it and will continue to instead of continuing to wonder.


The important thing, no matter how bad or how good it gets with family, is to remember that it's all a rollercoaster and there's going to be good and bad times. I just think it's important to make opportunities to take the time to celebrate the good and I suppose also to make sure that your family understands that regardless of arguments and disagreements that you still value them.

One of the other things that we have done as part of celebrating the family is to sit down and "interview" and record conversations with our older generation. I can't tell you how much being able to listen back over those musings and conversations means to me now that we have lost some of the participants. Those recordings are priceless.

failedpersephone

cutback wrote:

short of a family reunion i'm not what else you can do....perhaps set up a website of your family and post pics, vids....blogs....:)

it's funny my parents left detroit in 1955 for california for many reasons...one was they were sick of their families...every Sunday all the relatives would get together for drinks, dinner etc....drove my folks nuts

now i think if it were up to my parents, they'd want to see their 5 kids and 8 grandkids all the time.....and that would drive me and my siblings nut

Awww you and your sibs should just bite and DO IT for the parents! what the heck???

We have a long standing monthly barbecue - all the cousins and everyone comes to town from all over CA even if it's a 10 hour drive. (they stay the night) it's usually on a saturday so they can come on friday night (early sat) stay until sunday morning when they take off. the only ones not doing the monthly meet live outside the state...we have relatives in Oregon, Arizona, Washington, New York, Illinois - they only come once a year...tho my Sis in Wa comes 3 times a year.

It almost happened to my immediate family when my Mom died, we sort of stopped showing up each week (yeah...the immediate fam gets together EVERY week. at least once) everyone just sort of stopped showing up...it almost killed my Dad to see everyone sort of forget him...but we pulled through it and now, one of the weekends is spent with the extended fam, but one day out of the week is spent with the "real" (as we call it) family.

usually it's Friday and it's mostly at one of 3 houses...

I think that you should do whatever you have to - to stay in contact with your extended, and be sure to keep things civil with your immediate fam...

I have a really huge family of immediates, and we don't all get along at all - but once a week we are all together listening to my Da hold court...and if I don't like my sister or my sister is pissed at me or something...we swallow it and fuckin' behave like humans. My Da is 77 years old...if I have to do a grinnin' soft shoe act to keep the dude happy you better believe I will do it...

He's family.

beachdweller

best family on TV now is Gene Simmons and his family, well them or Family Guy, lol.

Touchofgray16

Jeanie wrote:

my Mum in particular, is a total geneology nutter. :rolleyes:

My T-shirt says: Shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out

Jeanie

Touchofgray16 wrote:

My T-shirt says: Shake your family tree and watch the nuts fall out

hehe! I need one of those!

Sounds like we might be related!

chiquimonkey

Cree Nations wrote:

Family means everything and anything to me...friends too. It is what you and others put into it. Having a strong sense of family in ones heart lends to a strong character.

i totally agree.

for me, i have my parents and sis nearby, the next closest relatives i have are in jersey, and then spain and cuba. so we're tight by default just cuz we have nobody else nearby to annoy haha

i consider my close friends family too, bound not by blood but by love.

cutback's idea of a website sounds like a great idea, easy way for folks to keep in touch.

drivingrl

My family means a lot to me, because of the losses we have suffered together. But it's never too late to do for yourself what your family won't do. Namely, plan family reunions, or create your own big family.

South of Seattle

I've felt closer to my friends families almost more than mine. I'm close with My Mom and Dad, but that's about it.

I grew up without any brothers, sisters, or cousins that were my age. I was born in between generations.

I grew up playing sports to consume my time and relate with kids that were my age. I consider most of my best friends as my family since they've been there for me for most of life. I'm fortunate to have many of the same friends for over 25 years.

OffHeGoes29

Well the problem is that every one in my family has some serious issue with one person or another, so it feels forced when we get together.

FinsburyParkCarrots

I probably only really care about my family.