reunion

 

Hey dad, 

I took little Johnnie to the Richter/Brown family reunion yesterday. 

It was hot, just enough to make his baby cheeks flushed. Everyone was gathered unceremoniously in the pole barn in the back of your grandma’s property, I think it’s the one you told us so many stories about, where your brother accidentally hit you with an axe just above the eye and where you loved spending Christmases. 

Everyone is the same. It’s all the same faces - the ones I’ve seen every year or two at weddings or funerals or occasional reunions, like this one. The people I know more from scrolling past their Facebook posts than from anything we’ve ever done together. They’re your aunts and uncles and cousins, my great-aunts and great-uncles and second cousins and third cousins, but I realize now that I spoke with them very little because I mainly watched them while they talked with you. You made everyone laugh. Everyone there lit up when you walked in the room. I was proud to be “Johnnie’s daughter,” even though I sometimes felt unknown, but in the way that never really bothered me because I hardly knew them either. But here they all still are, just the same.

And different. Older, hair whiter, more canes and walkers. Not many reunions left. And also, the second and third cousins of mine grown up like me, with families: new wives, new husbands, new kids and babies you never knew. Like mine. 

Here he was, on my hip, taking it all in. Uncertain, seeing only the familiar face of your sister, his great-aunt Mona, who he knows as the fun lady who brings him goodies she finds on local free sites. In some ways, I think, she’s one of the closest means by which he’ll come close to you. And of all people, she’ll be the one to see you most in his child’s face, because she knew you as a child too. But then again, so did most of the people in this warm barn, grabbing hot dogs and homemade brownies and swatting away flies. I go up and hug them, say how long it’s been, they ask my baby’s name and when I tell them, they take in their breath and tilt their head and look at him, and without words, we all know.

Even though I know this isn’t true, my connection to all these people seems somehow weakened with you gone. I wonder if for them it might feel that way too. They forgot our invitation until the last minute, which strangely, I understand. But even though I knew I might not know who to talk to, might not even remember which names go to which faces, I had to bring Johnnie. Because I’ll never be able to fully explain you to him. I’ll never be able to show him what it feels like to be with you. But in the presence of this conglomeration of cousins on a country farm, somehow, you’re here.