Blessings
I feel incredibly blessed to have finally met my cousin after 60 odd years. He had made the long journey from the South Island to be with his brother in Auckland in his dying moments. And yesterday, he and his family brought his brother’s ashes for interment at the family cemetery, a beautiful urupa nestled on a hillside surrounded by even larger hills, in the heart of Northland.
It was special seeing where my aunt and uncle, whom I had only met a handful of times as a youngster, were buried. They had already been joined by another son and yesterday the second son joined them too, leaving just Peter, the oldest, still alive. The Maori elders talked about my aunt and uncle, who had been quite involved in the marae in their day. It was nice hearing stories that I had never heard about my aunt. As I mentioned in my last blog, our mothers, who were sisters, fell out when we were children and thus, I hadn’t met these cousins, nor my aunt and uncle, since the family came to visit when I was about six.
I immediately saw likenesses to two of my mother’s other sisters, in Peter. As I can’t remember what his mother looked like, he may have resembled her too, but he definitely looked like these other two aunts. My brothers and another cousin look like my grandfather, so I was expecting Peter to look like him too, rather than the aunts. We had an immediate rapport and even though I hadn’t seen him since childhood, it felt like we had known each other forever. I guess our mothers brought us up with the same values they had been brought up with. In The Collective Us, I examine the part our former lives play in shaping our characters. As souls we choose the families to be born into to give us the experiences and traits we need for our soul journey in each lifetime. So, saying that, I guess both Richard and I chose mothers to give us similar values. From the sound of yesterday’s speeches, both these women were pretty strict. As a teenager, I rebelled my mother’s strictness, I am not sure about Peter. Bringing up my own children, I erred in the other direction, perhaps being more lenient than I should have been. It will be interesting as I get to know Peter better, to hear how his life panned out.
And I am so thankful that I have met him. As he said, without his recent pacemaker inserted, he would never have been able to make the journey and perhaps I would never have met him either, nor would I have experienced the wonderful resting place of my relations. It was such an honour to do so yesterday.