My Brother(s) and Me

All that's left of my immediate family is my brothers. Both of them are older than me. Yea. The 2nd oldest one, who I like to think of as my 'little brother', just celebrated his 70th year. We gathered from near and far in Many, Louisiana at the Cypress Bend Golf Resort. All his grandchildren were there, his three kids, almost all his sister-in-laws and their kids and some of THEIR kids, two of my three daughters and one of my son-in-laws, lots of nieces and nephews and 'greats' out the wazoo. Frankly I didn't do a headcount but probably my sister-in-law knows how many actually attended, but it was a BIG DO. I like to think it was proof positive of how much he's loved because he's always been a good guy. The kind of fellow that will be there for you, but doesn't try and force his will or his way onto you. My greatest joy has always been to make him laugh.




Everyone brought him a present and he spent a long time just opening and oohhhing and ahhhing. It was better than I expected it to be getting us all together again. It's a shame that ALL the family couldn't make it, but some of the nieces and nephews had other family obligations to attend to.





I think sometimes it's easy to take advantage of one's family and to take their love for granted. There are too many families that don't have the closeness that we do and any time we get together you can almost feel the presence of those that have gone before being there too. Lord knows all we have to do is look into the faces and see the resemblences of mom and dad and grandparents....some of the genes might be stronger than others, but it's sure easy to see that we all sprang from the same source.