Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

This weekend, I am taking some time to go to a family reunion in Cincinnati, Ohio, to see my 90-year-old Aunt Chris and some cousins that I haven’t had the chance to see since before the COVID pandemic.

It’s probably been about eight years since I have been to Ohio. I have seen some of my family since then, as my mom’s side of the family has a much larger reunion in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. That reunion has been going for like 75 years for every year but the COVID year, 2020.

I can’t wait to see many of them, that were really young the last time I got together with them. The ones that are around my age I’m sure are beginning to show our age. I don’t have quite the hair I used to and probably put on a few pounds, but It’s great to get to reconnect with them.

I know many of you have family reunions around here and all over the country that you’ll go to. It might be around a holiday for Christmas or Thanksgiving. It might be a small one where you just get together, cook out and play games. 

Whatever it is, I hope you get a chance to go when you get the chance. I really hope our family doesn’t get to the place where we only see each other at funerals. With some of the people we see like that, we always say, “We really need to get together sometime,” but then that’s the end of the conversation.

The only way to guarantee that we don’t do that is plan a reunion of some kind. That might be your class reunion from high school or college. Maybe it’s a work reunion where many of the former employees come back, visit and get to know each other’s families.

As we get older, we never know just how many more times we will get to spend time with each other. We won’t get to create stories about how you pulled the upset over card masters. Maybe, there was a moment where someone said something that was either really funny or uplifted your heart.

Maybe it’s something like sitting around the piano in the living room singing songs either out of your church hymnal, or pulling out your guitars and playing them till late at night on the porch. 

It’s all of those little moments in time that we get to share that are some of the most important times in your life. 

And those moments aren’t just with your relatives by blood, but it’s also for the extended family of your neighbors, church family, work family and every other group of friends that you have. Nothing can replace the time we spend together, and that’s what I’m looking forward to this weekend.

Brent Maze is the publisher of The Selma Times-Journal. He can be reached at brent.maze@selmatimesjournal.com.