One of the things I remember most clearly about my childhood is that it was crowded. Not crowded in a “Hey get the hell off my foot and give me back my damn Barbie you dumb stranger” kind of way but crowded in that there were always lots of people around. Aunts, uncles, cousins, people I loved very much and who always made me smile.

In particular, there were cousins. My sister and I spent what, when I look back on it now, seems like hours every day in the summer at Neena’s pool with our six cousins. The long days in the sun would stretch into barbecues in the evening where the kids (of whom I was the oldest and, I am certain, attempted to express outward disdain at being “forced” to spend my time with these “children” although in all honesty, those summers are some of my favorite memories) would crowd around the diving board to eat our hamburgers and hot dogs and count the minutes until we could get back in the pool to swim at night because swimming at night was like so totally awesome…

The girls outnumbered the boys, five to three, and we took full advantage of that as little girls (and, let’s face it… big girls) are likely to do. And from oldest to youngest I think we span a more than ten year age difference. But somehow, for at least a few summers, I don’t remember that mattering one bit.

There were Fourth of July fireworks and Labor Day family reunions. And we were kind of like a little gang. A pack of tanned and sun bleached kids running around pushing each other in the pool, playing Marco Polo and jabbing sparklers in each others’ general direction.

Then somehow… it all stopped. I’m sure we all went in separate directions of our lives. There was ice skating, dance lessons, soccer, summer camp… all the things we fill our lives with to keep us busy and “engaged”. But I’ll be honest, those summers felt quite engaged to me. Of course its entirely possible that my teenage assholery was part of the culprit, I won’t lie… it left quite the wake of destruction. But it seemed that we kind of… split in two. And while each “half” stayed very close and continued to stay very involved in each others’ lives, very rarely did the two cross paths.

But due to the rash of, well, death we’ve seen these past few months we’ve all been seeing a lot of each other again. And guess what? Those cousins of mine? Who were awesome kids and played such a central role in the movie of my childhood? Well hot damn. They grew up into kind of fantastic people. (Okay, fine. I’m pretty sure they’re all Republicans but I guess I can let that slide…)

So in light of my personal theory to always try and find a flower in the shit (which could probably be put much more eloquently but no less directly) , I’ve decided that something good is going to come out of all this sadness and loss. It’s time my shrinking family learned how to stick together. I genuinely LIKE these people. I’ve got a pool and by god… we’re having a damn pool party this summer. We ARE the freaking grownups and nobody is making us wait thirty minutes to swim in the dark this time.