THE MAGIC OF FACEBOOK

Say what you will about FaceBook, but sometimes it brings wonderful surprises into our lives.

I just had one of those surprises!

Last week I had posted a group of pictures that I had taken from another FB group I am in of a unique and brilliantly colored wedding….very non~traditional but being who I am and loving colors the way I do, it so spoke to me and so I wanted to share it with my peeps in my newsfeed (or whatever it is called when you share stuff…I am old…do not judge me for my lack of technology terms!!!!) and I had commented in the original post group how I had thought it was the most beautiful wedding I had ever seen.

Yesterday, I see that someone I did not know, posted a comment to the photos I had shared from my timeline (?) saying that they did not know me but had to say they loved my love of colors and I had a new friend request from this person.

Now, we all get those random friend requests and usually just delete them but since she had gone to the trouble of commenting on the photos I had posted, I thought I would check her out (I think it is called, “creeping”) by going to her timeline (?) and seeing if she was real and/or a weirdo!!!! (Okay, that is the pot calling the kettle black as who is a bigger weirdo than me….but still….)

So I am looking at the posts she had posted to her peeps and her profile picture and her big picture (I cannot remember what our big pictures on our timelines are called) and I thought, “Wait a minute…..these people look like they could be related to my dad’s side of the family” and as I was scrolling down her posts, I see that she has a photo of someone with MY family’s last name!!!! We do not have a common last name so I commented on that photo that I, too, was a Van Wave….and did she know that?

Well shut my mouth and call me a biscuit (that may or may not be the right saying….I am getting more and more like my mom and can mix up stuff with the best of them), it turns out that she is my second cousin!!!!!!! Her dad and my dad were cousins! And no, she had no idea that I was related to her…..I saw that we had one mutual friend listed but I could not click that on to see who was her friends that was my friend, but after tons of texts on Messenger, it so happens that her friend and my friend is MY cousin also!!!!!

Talk about serendipity…..and sadly enough, she and three of her brothers were JUST here last week to spread the ashes of her older brother and her mom and had met with our cousins and she was staying just miles away from my shop!!!!!!!

She is from Texas (her family had to move when the steel mill in Morgan Park closed) and my family was not a traveling kind so we lost touch with the cousins who moved to find work across the US in the remaining mills.

I do not believe in coincidences. I lost a second cousin last week and he was laid to rest on Saturday and Sunday I find a “new” second cousin. You want to call that coincidence you go ahead, I call it the mercy of God. Of course, the loss of my young second cousin is not replaced with the finding of my older second cousin but what a blessing to me and to my sister and mom when I tell them, that there is a new connection made with my dad’s side of the fam.

I sort of pity my new found cousin…..cause if you know me at all, you know how I HATE talking on the phone but how I can go on and on and on in my writing texts and emails, etc. Because I always post stuff from my iPad and have an attached regular laptop sized keyboard, I forget that most everyone else is hunting and pecking from their phones!!!!

So FaceBook, thank you for doing what you were intended to do way back in the beginning of your function….to connect people and families……I am forever grateful for this communication tool.

Welcome to my world, Cousin Gale….hold on to your chaps, honey, cause I am a wild ride!!!!!!

Why Funerals Are For The Living…..

The older I get, the wiser I become.

When I was young and foolish, I was of the opinion that funerals and wakes only made the intense grief of the families last longer. I thought they were cruel.

Yesterday, I was once again reminded that instead of being cruel, they can be a like a healing salve gently placed over a wound.

I was at the memorial service of a young man who died suddenly and unnecessarily because of a series of medical missteps. He was 25. He was my cousin’s first~born son.

We all believe that no parent, no matter how old, should have to outlive their children. It is not natural in the course of life. But we also know that life can be unbearably cruel.

I think I can speak for all my cousins and their parents when I say that we were all so heavy~hearted knowing the pain our cousin and her family were in and how there was truly nothing we could do to lessen their pain. I am also sure had there been a way to take some of the grief and carry it for awhile, we would have all stepped up and gotten our portion….because that is what families do.

Kyler is the name of my cousin’s son. He was an employee of the Department of Corrections for the state of Minnesota. He worked with his dad and still lived at home, happily, one of the rare breed of young people who actually like their parents and want to spend time with them. So at the service there was a large contingent of officers in uniform as befitting the falling of one of their own.

When you see the respect and loyalty that these people show someone they may never even have met but because they were one of their own, they show up to honor their brother and his family. I was so impressed.

The woman who was officiating the service did not know Kyler personally but had spent time with his family getting to know him through their stories about him. She did a fantastic job retelling some of the stories so those of us that did not know him well, got a better look into the kind of person he was. That takes a special kind of compassion and gifting….not all who officiate funerals can do that.

Kyler’s two aunties (my cousins’s sisters) got up and spoke about him and even though their voices shook with so much emotion, we got to hear how much Kyler meant to them and their kids.

Kyler’s family each picked a song that meant something to them in regards to him and they were not your typical “funeral” songs….some made us cry while others made us smile.

But the part of the service that had the most impact on us all, was when they played a recording of the person who calls out to the officers when it is their watch time. Her voice called out his name twice and when there was no response, she said his watch was over and that he would be watching over all of them and the whole time this was being played, his father….his best friend…his co~worker….was overcome with emotion and the rest of us rode that wave of pain with him.

Because I am older and wiser, I understand the need for this time of grieving…..to cry with those who are also mourning the loss…to absorb the grief and then to release it….not fully of course, but enough that when you leave, the boulder hanging onto your heart has shrunk to a more manageable stone.

And to be able to gather afterward with family and to tell stories and to reminisce about childhood memories and other’s who have gone and to (in our case) pass around a bottle of a favorite adult beverage in remembrance of the one who loved it. It is all part of how we begin to heal after such a terrible tragedy.

Those we have gone before us are never truly forgotten as long as there is one person who still remembers them and shares their story…..

Kyler Lee Greene…..you will live forever in the hearts and minds of those who gathered yesterday and those that will think of you and speak of you in the years to come. You are away but always near in our hearts…..

Are We Propagating Hate Unintentionally?

My brain works like a computer…..many open tabs…all running at the same time….(okay, I have no idea what I just said….I have seen memes like these on FB….but I am not sure what a “tab” is and if many can run at one time….back in MY day, tab was a diet drink and a key on a typewriter….I know…I am old…)

I was listening to a worship music site on Pandora and a children’s song came on and one of the lines said something to the effect that we can be a little light and they can be a little light in this world and my brain went here:

I “saw” from space (no, I do not astroproject…it was just in my mind’s eye) what one tiny little light added to other little lights can be. So bright they can be seen from space…..just your little light and my little light….added together….

Then my mind jumped to hate…(ya, I know…it is exhausting being me) and I had the thought of all of the political stuff I see on FB….from my friends…..I have friends on all sides of the political spectrum (can spectrums have sides? I should ask Siri but she already thinks I am stupid….) and when one side posts something, sometimes in the comments ugliness spurts from the “other” side….doesn’t matter which side is posting….we all have such passion for “our” side.

Then my brain (I think it was God this time) went to this thought:

COULD WE BE SPREADING HATE BY POSTING NEGATIVE STUFF ABOUT THE “OTHER” SIDE?

I was shocked at the answer I got.

YES. WE ARE.

Let me tell you why I think this…..

When I or someone else on my friend list, posts something good about our President (for example), all my friends see it and if they are on the opposing side of what is posted, they in their passion for their “truth” to be heard, reply with nastiness or an attitude of “what are you? Some kind of _______” and an ugliness permeates the post.

The same thing happens when my friends on the “opposite” side of whatever they feel passionate about post and my friends who disagree with them, post comments deriding them and their side, more ugliness……

So you see…..we are part of the problem in this world….and we never even knew it! ALL OF US….no matter what side of world issues you are on.

What if we were to STOP POSTING controversial stuff on our timelines (or whatever they are called) and only sent our strong opinion posts to our friends whom we KNOW believe the same way we do? Can we do that? Can we die to self and not feel we have a “right” to our opinions and the right to post them on our page…..because unless you have 100% of friends who think like you, you are causing someone else to have bad thoughts or to post a disagreeing opinion and there we go…..

I think we all know what “buttons” push our friends in the other camps.

Let’s try to practice “Loving your neighbor as yourself”….even atheists can get behind this….it is the ultimate goal to having a peaceful, loving planet….is it not?

Please think about this. Truly. If you want to be a little light that stands with other little lights that make a light so bright it shines into outer space, stand with me on this and tell your friends to stand and their friends to stand and maybe, just maybe, we will be the start of a whole new world…..

One person CAN change the world…..

In love and peace,

Robyn