Second post in a row

I got an email from my cousin Phyllis today.
She was younger than me and I don't have a lot of memories from when we were children.

But in our adult years, she has been the best about staying in touch. I had lost touch with her, but she found me on Facebook - and so we've been corresponding.

Her mother died early last year - and I sent her some photos I taken of Aunt Audrey when we visited her a couple of years ago. She said that the last time she'd seen her mother she hadn't look very well, so she was glad to see a picture of her in relatively good health.


And then she shared her feelings about my mom and dad and how supportive they'd always been of her mom, especially after Uncle Ted, my dad's brother, left the family. She said they'd gone to her civil wedding, encouraged her to go to the temple in a year, and then had been there when she did go a year later.

She also said that my parents, my uncle and my grandparents had "drawn Audrey and her family into the protection of the family circle" after Ted left. Not especially excluding Ted, but making sure that Audrey didn't feel abandoned. And she said that had been very meaningful to her mom.

I guess I sometimes just see my parents - and my mother is the surviving one - as where they are right now and not as being so involved in others' lives. But it puts a whole new perspective on things for me. My mom and dad were probably a lot like how we are now - helping others, being involved in peoples' lives, visiting, calling, staying in touch.

I remember when Grandmother Taylor died - Helen said her greatest sorrow was that those saying goodbye to her didn't really know her as she had been - they only knew how she had been in her declining years.

I look around at the older people I know (older than me anyway!!) and wonder just what they were like. Some of them I have known for 30 years and I can see the changes and I know how they were - and all of them aren't able to do as much anymore.

It's pretty important to try to see people for just who they are and have been - and to understand and value the "whole package."

That's what I want people to do for me!