I got back from a big family gathering today for a family member who died. I got to meet a lot of family members I hadn't seen for24 years(srs), meet some people from her life I had never met before (friends of hers from her childhood... whom I never knew of), and I saw a ton of really old photos of the family + friends. Photos from all points of their childhood and early adulthood. It was kind of surreal meeting all these people where everyone was taken aback we hadn't seen each other for so long, yet everybody (including myself) was a culprit in never having met up for a big chunk of our lives. As if it's a way our whole family is, like it or not.

It's kind of a chit feeling having family members get old and die and you feel like you didn't get to know them as much as you really should have. But again that seems to be the overall mentality my family has: go off and do your own thing and later regret you didn't get more involved with their lives and their background, like that's a conscious decision people make rather than something that just sort of happens.

So how closeknit is your family? Do you know them moreso or less than your friends and social circle?

Close-knit af

So close we're like the Lannisters