A Case for Far Away Closeness

On Friday Tia Alicia passed away.
When I was told that she had died I realized something that has been bothering me since.

Alicia was born and raised in southern Chile. She was Ester's and Manuel's first child. My father was their youngest of a total of 5.
Of all the siblings, they are the only two that moved and established in Santiago, the capital city.
They lived in opposite sides of the city and I only remember going to visit her once. Once.
I mainly saw her in the summers when we visited the family in the south at around the same time. Even then, I don't remember seeing her after the mid-90's except in 2008 for Ester's funeral.

I know a few facts about her. She was strikingly beautiful. I often stared at the pictures of her that hung on my grandparents walls wondering if I could really be related to someone so gorgeous. I mean, really beautiful.

From what I gathered from the adult conversations I overheard (because there was nothing else for me to do there), she was a rebellious young lady and rather conceited. She was used to getting all the attention from the guys. So when a handsome man started frequenting their house she was convinced that he was in love with her, but turned out that he was really after her younger sister. Classic.

She smoked. She smoked a lot and I don't know if she ever quit.

I don't know if she was ever married. She had a daughter who for the first few years was raised by the grandparents. This daughter of hers (my cousin) is one of the nicest people you will ever meet, and so is her husband. I hardly ever saw them.

She claimed to be a hairdresser, but I have doubted that ever since that summer when my mother let her give me the worst haircut possible. Good grief, I was already feeling awkward in my body.

She seemed to be a fun lady, but I am not sure that she got along very well with the rest of the family, at least for a long time. I suppose that time helps past hurts be soothed and forgotten, but I wonder why we were such a distant extended family. Because I don't really remember having much interaction with any of them.

I am the youngest child of the youngest child on both paternal and maternal sides of our family and I wasn't even planned, so there is an 8 year difference between me and my next older brother. I was an afterthought to most aunts, uncles and cousins and I understand that, it is all about timing. We also lived far away from most relatives. These and a few other reasons that I won't bore you with right now, are why I think that I became detached from my extended family.

So there I was Friday night receiving the news about Tia Alicia when I realized that my family now lives far away from every relative imaginable and I am not doing much to prevent this detachment from happening to my girls.

"The family is ordained of God" and although the nuclear family is most important, there are valuable things to be gained from everyone in the family tree. And there are things that we can give them in return.

SO, it is now time to dust the cobwebs of family togetherness despite the distance. There are many ways that will help us get to know, love and cherish our far away family even more. So that we won't have regrets like this one.
I don't know why we visited Tia Alicia only once. But now that I am in charge of this boat, I want to make sure that our family is a very close extended family.