A GOLDEN TREASURE

 

This week has been very reflective for me.  Through the Poff (my Mom’s maiden name) Facebook family page I learned of a cousin passing away this week.  This one was especially hard because Denny was the person I always thought of as my first friend.  His mom, my Aunt Bunny, babysat me bunches when I was little, so I spent a lot of time with him and his sister, Terry Lynn.

I have a ton of childhood memories of Denny, Terry Lynn and I playing together at their house and the Poff Family Farm.  It all ended in 1957 when my family moved to Florida.  I never regained that connection with him after I moved back to Cincinnati in 1968.  Somewhere in there Denny joined the Navy, got married, had a bunch of sons, moved from Ohio to Tennessee and eventually contracted cancer. 

I did miss him.  Many years later I made a feeble attempt to reconnect with him at an uncle’s birthday party, but it didn’t work, I think he saw me as a stranger. 

So, today, before I sat down at the computer, I counted up all the Poff cousins.  I think I got them all, 34, according to my count.  Of that group, 10 have passed. And it makes me sad.  Being the 3^rd oldest cousin in the group, oldest granddaughter, I guess I see more of my life behind me than in front of me, and I realize that of that group I only got to know 6 of them well.  Part of that is because we moved to Florida when I was 9, part of it is that some of them never lived anywhere close to my family, most were so much younger than me that a connection just didn’t happen. 

I think I missed out on a golden treasure.