here is a sad fact of my life ... I am sitting here scanning the slides that were at Lucy's house [my grandmother in NY who has passed away] ... and there are all the pictures of my aunt and uncle [dad's brother] and their kids ... and I thought it would be nice if I sent them all these pictures ... I saw that part of my family at my grandmother's funeral in March of 1994 ... my uncle hadn't spoken to his mother in at least 12 years and neither had the rest of his family ... in 1999 I saw my cousin Jon's email address in a whois search I was doing [since we have the same last name it showed up when I was checking to see if I had changed the last name in all my registries] ... I sent him an email and we corresponded briefly ... maybe 2 or 3 emails ... then out of the blue in September of 2000 my uncle emailed me and said he heard I was living in NY and invited me to their house in the Hamptons for High Holidays ... I declined ... he wrote me like the day before and I just wasn't up to being the only representative in my family there ... [my aunt is extremely competitive ... and I had heard Jen had gotten married so that was something to show off ... plus I knew they would ask all sorts of questions about my parents and brother that I wasn't prepared to answer] ... before the funeral I can't remember the last time I had seen or spoken to any of them ...


so now I am trying to find any of them through the internet to no avail ... it is sad ... an entire section of my family is just gone ... it is weird ... but I guess that is how some families work ...