Last June, before my world imploded, I had lunch with two of my cousins I hadn’t seen in several years. These two female cousins are ten to fifteen years older than I am and are the daughters of my dad’s only sister, Mabel.

The older one, I don’t really remember from when I was very young, except for bits and pieces of her wedding. It was a small wedding, at night in a church. It was cold. I just remember the aisle on the side of the church. I don’t know why that is what I remember.

I recall a bit more about the other cousin, who is about ten years older than I am. I remember she had a 1964 1/2 baby blue Mustang convertible. I knew she read Cosmopolitan magazine (I found some in her bedroom once when we were spending the night) and I thought she was beautiful.

We used to get together at Christmas and I remember a Thanksgiving, but that basically stopped in the 1980s after Grandma Maggie died.  It seems like the only times in the last thirty years have been at funerals, which is a sad thing to say. In fact, at my brother Steve’s memorial service, the younger of the two cousins came up to me and I didn’t recognize her.

I don’t remember what percipitated our getting together this time, but the two cousins and my older cousin’s daughter-in-law met for lunch. I’d asked my brother Bruce if he wanted to come and he said he’d love to, but he was going to be out of town.

While we were waiting for our lunch to be served, my older cousin brought out two bags of photographs she said had belonged to her mom (my Aunt Mabel) and since she knew her son did not want them, she asked if I did. I did. Most definitely.

What a treasure these photographs are. They are mostly from the 1940s and 1950s and are photos of my dad’s family. What’s even better is that many of the photographs have the names of the people written on the back. These treasures will certainly go by the wayside now. Many people don’t even have a backup copy of their photographs, they exist entirely on their phone. Me, my photos automatically go to the cloud, I download them to my computer and I have an external hard drive where they are also stored.

L-R: Ethel Blanchard, Mary Schultz, Johnie Schultz, Leroy Blanchard, late 1940s or early 1950s

But what I think about now when I look at these photos is that I have no one to share them with, no one who would appreciate me saying “oh wow, look how young ‘so-and-so’ looked” or “wow, I wonder who that is with Uncle Johnie?”

My dad had two brothers, one sister and one half-sister who lived in California. His older brother, Johnie had one child who died in infancy; his bonus brother (he was actually a cousin, but was raised by my Grandma as her son and died two years after my dad),  had one son but they did not live close and my Aunt Mabel with her two daughters.

Now, all that is left of Dad’s family are me, my two cousins who are elderly and their children that I don’t really know.

These are not just photos to me.  They are stories of my family that are now all gone, they are my heritage. They are my treasured memories.

My gosh, Bruce, how I miss you and Steve.