Last year my California cousin D, while on a business trip to New York mentioned that our aunt was turning 80 years old. He threw out the idea that we should plan to surprise her at her home in Atlanta and wouldn’t be great if could we arrange for all of her nieces and nephews to also surprise her.
It must be said that making this trip was made all the more important because my aunt is the last surviving sibling. My dad died in 1994 and my cousin’s dad died when he was 8 years old. To say that I was on board, wa an understatement. I have many fond memories of my aunt growing up and think she is just a wonderful person; strong, honest and funny. It’s funny that her late husband seemed the complete opposite and her kids are again more like Uncle A.
In the subsequent months, since D and I decided this was a great idea, he spent what I can only imagine many hours, searching for and talking our many numerous cousins who live all over the country, some of these cousins, I have never met or seen in over twenty five years. As we all met up at the hotel near my aunt’s house, it was a wonderful moment to meet up with cousins who know are fathers and husbands and I loved watching my daughter meet up with cousins her own age. It just brought back memories of my childhood hanging out at my grandmother’s house and running around the backyard for hours – another time, right.
As we snuck around to the back of my aunt’s house and waited on the deck, surprising an 80 year old on her birthday seemed like maybe not such a good idea. Lucky for us, my aunt is super healthy, seriously, the night we went to surprise she was on her way to a church run (or a walk.) Want to see an 80 year old woman be totally surprised to see a group of people stream in from her back door, watch the video. It is a hoot!!
We spent quite the fantastic weekend. Our aunt brought out the old photo books of our family and told funny stories of our respective parents. Isn’t it sad when we are young we don’t care about our parents and when we do care it’s too late.
One wonderful thing did come of our mini-family reunion (not all cousins could make it), we decided to have another meeting in two years. The question is where. My aunt offered up her time share in Cancun (who knew she had a timeshare in Cancun??) but her daughter hates to fly (again who knew?)
Does your family meet on a regular basis? Any suggestions on a neutral location?
What a great thing to do. I wanted to see the video but it says private.
Oooh how fun this must have been to reminisce with family that you haven’t seen in a long time and to celebrate 80 years of greatness!! When we had a 90th surprise party for my grandmother, she lived in an apartment and we were actually able to rent their hall so it was really wonderful and convenient!
We have too small of a family to do anything like this, but I think your surprise was fantastic!
We have a large family and don’t get together often enough. Cancun sure does sound fun though!
What an amazing surprise! It sounds like it was a wonderful day full of laughter, smiles, and memories! I tried playing the video but it is marked as private. I’ll check back later if I get a chance to see her reaction.