After church Sunday Paul and I went to Eads, Tennessee, for my cousin Danny's memorial. Standing there with JoAnn, looking at the photo collage on CD, there was the life of a boy, a man, a son, brother, husband, father, grandfather, that I knew but didn't know. I knew him more than not, I think, because I knew him in the early years. His family was part of my early childhood and teen years, mostly only in brief visits, but those times at Aunt Margaret's were special and there is nothing like family bonds. JoAnn cried for her brother, I cried for a cousin, and for the years between when I didn't know him. Sitting with the DeWeese cousins and visiting with them, I learned I was not the only one who had not seen him in so long, but who nevertheless loved and cared for him and for family and came to pay respects to him, to JoAnn, to Aunt Margaret, although she was in Florida and unable to be there.
And meeting Danny's son, grandchildren and cousins, looking at family pictures of our Joslin/Wadkins family I had known all my life, but through another family member's camera lens, makes that family bond even stronger. Etora and Larry, though not related to me at all, immediately seemed to me my kin and said as much - that we were cousins-in-law. JoAnn is the strong link between us, along with Brian, the first cousin once removed (I think that's right!), whom I'd met only once before, and his sweet wife and children... Danny had married Debra about three years before, and she was so stricken with losing him so soon.
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With JoAnn (front), Etora, on my left, and Larry, Jo's DeWeese cousins, and Larry's wife Lou.
With Brian.
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JoAnn said Danny asked their mom when they were little, upon hearing "Danny Boy," "Is that song for me?" It was one of the songs on the CD photo collage, and yes, it was just for him. I was happy know from family comments that he was a Christian.
Jo and Danny.
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