This may surprise most but there are still some large families around and I’m from one of them. Growing up as the middle child had it’s challenges – with always having an older brother or sister telling me what to do and on the other hand always having to babysit the younger ones. “Great” I have 9 siblings, 5 sisters and 4 brothers all living in Queensland, except 1 who lives in Sydney.
We were all very close. Our father died at the age of 58 from heart disease then 8 years later our mother died of cancer at the age of 58. Once the parents depart from a family it does seen to fall apart, I guess there’s nothing to hold it together. We all married and seemed to migrate to the inlaws family. Then as distance does it alienates people, you don’t have the same closeness. After years of not bothering to keep intouch we were thrown a hard ball. “The news that our eldest sister has bowel cancer”. Shock, horror the news was spread and I took on the job of letting everyone know.
Such a big family!
This was not an easy task as the youngest brother had not been in touch with anyone for some time. After searching the internet using his name and no luck I remembered that he had a child that would be a teenager, so the search started in facebook there else! And how lucky are we these days ” a brother found”. Between the sisters it was decided to organise a family reunion so guess who volunteered to do the job.
A location was selected, invitations went out and multiple phone calls and persistance will always overcome resistance.
The reunion happened and we had a fabulous turnout – 67relies attended and unfortunately 37 didn’t make it this time.
Just one brother missing!
The eldest brother had a few words to say when speaches came around and suggested it should be an annual event and guess who put their hand up for organising, Yes Me. I really don’t mind. The good news is that our sister had a fabulous day and she will be having an operation to remove the cancer early June and God permitting she will be fine. Please view the pictures, I’m very proud to be one of the Hill family.