cousins
Family
6th April 2005
Today I have received several emails from Anthony which has made me smile including letting me know one of my cousins has joined Genes Reunited. Haven’t been on that site much lately as I’ve been pre-occupied with other things but I may get round to emailing him so he can view my family tree provided Anthony doesn’t beat me to it. Anthony’s website he has created for our family tree is impressive so have become a member of that which will make life a bit easier for sharing information as I can put stuff straight on it. Rick has changed his mind yet again about viewing that flat, so I’ve agreed to it, anything for a quiet life. I still ideally want to move to another house but that seems very unlikely unless we win the lottery. Making the most of a quiet evening though as Rick has gone to a men’s meeting at the church.
*I hadn’t heard anything from any of my cousins for years so what little news I got came from my parents. Although I was enjoying doing family research my son had a tendency of beating me to information. It would cheer me up when I could actually give him information instead.
We were living in Hartlepool at the time and for a variety of reasons we wanted to move further south. It wasn’t that we didn’t like Hartlepool, we did, but travelling time to see family was tiring. Family members of mine had lived there and one of my distant relatives had been mayor of Hartlepool more than a hundred years ago.
Family Tree
Rick and I had started doing our family trees back in 2004 which is how I found my son without actively searching for him. It immediately gave us something to talk about but it also was the start of finding out some of my relatives names had been shortened or middle names used intead of first names. This was quite challenging and interesting at the same time.
Being on Genes Reunited proved to be handy in other ways including getting back in touch with one of my cousins. The last time I had spoken to him had been nine years previously at our Nanna’s funeral. Contact has been sporadic since then but of course it’s easier through Facebook. We met up again at my sister’s 60th birthday four years ago along with another of our cousins and one of his brothers whom I hadn’t seen since our Nanna’s funeral. Sadly that cousin passed on last year aged 59 years and almost 2 months younger than me. At least my last memory of him was being hugged so tightly I could hardly breath at my sister’s birthday party.
During the early months of contact with my son was a bit up and down as he was charming one minute then nasty whenever he was in a bad mood. It was quite stressful at times and sometimes I wonder how I coped.