I was walking into the Carver Recreation Center in Johnson City, Tenn. last Friday with two of my cousins, Lynn and Robbie Stuart, when I heard some kids on the playground say: “There are those people who were at Grandaddy’s funeral.”

The words hurt. Deeply.

“Did you hear that?” I asked my cousins. “They think we are just people who attended the funeral.”

Earlier in the day, we had attended funeral services for Frank Harris, my mother’s oldest brother. Jesse Harris, her youngest brother, had died two months earlier. I was already thinking about how age had been depleting our family when I was reminded that those of us left behind are not as close as we once were.

“Cuz, we said this day would come,” Lynn said, reminding me of our earlier conversations about our family growing apart. “It’s already here.”

As much as I hated to agree, I had no choice. At one time, we had family reunions every year or so. We don’t have them anymore. Instead, funerals have taken the place of family reunions. And even at funerals, relatives don’t get to know all of their people.

Family reunions used to serve that function. Mama, Aunt Julia Mae and my cousin Bertha Mae never cared for how we cracked on everyone, but their disapproval did not deter us. I confess that I was one of the ringleaders and the more they told us not to tease one another, the more we were determined to do it.

Lynn, Robbie and Phil – the sons of my first-cousin Hattie – delighted in the family reunions as kids and today remind me of things that had been long forgotten. At one reunion, Phil, barely a teenager, was accompanied by a young lady. What did he do that for? I declared that she was a Rent-a-Date and that Phil had to return her by 11 P.M. Robbie could not have been any older than 5 or 6 when he decided to join in the fun and say something that caused his mother to give him that I’ll-get-you-later look.

My cousin Little Buddy, took a look at Uncle Henry’s hair and renamed him Don King. Another cousin, DD, stayed with my Aunt Julia Mae until he was in his 50s and probably wouldn’t have left then if he hadn’t gotten married. Little Buddy dubbed him “Dick Clark – the world’s oldest teenager.”

One year, Uncle Buddy wore some red socks to the reunion. “Who cut you on the ankles?” I asked him. The next year, Uncle Buddy pulled up his pants legs to show us that he was wearing black socks.

With my family, it’s a laugh-a-minute anytime we get together. Phil threw Little Buddy a surprise birthday part in Knoxville one year. Buddy had driven over from Nashville with the woman he was dating at the time. Generally, we try not to crack on guests the first time we meet them. But Buddy’s date kept taunting us, pretending to know so much more about him than his closest relatives. At one point, she said, “I’ll be the one sleeping with him tonight.”

Thinking about the times that more than a dozen cousins crammed into my Aunt Julia Mae’s three-bedroom home, I retorted, “We’ve all slept with Buddy in my Aunt Julia Mae’s house. That’s nothing new.” Everyone nodded in agreement.

Now, as someone said, nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Our family is falling apart. I have sisters and cousins who missed one or both of the recent funerals of my uncles. Of course, the standard excuse was that they had to work or had something important to do. We were all supposed to be at work and nothing should be more important than giving a final sendoff to relatives. And the fact that I need to mention this is testament to how far we’ve drifted apart.

Aunt Julia Mae, now in her late 80s, has been titular head of the family since Big Mama died in 1968; she is the one that keeps us together. And when we hold her funeral, it will probably be the last time that many people will gather as a family.

A couple us decided last week that we’re going to revive our family reunions. Every Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, we’re going to hang out in Johnson City, our transplanted hometown now that no relatives on that side of the family are left in Tuscaloosa, Ala. We’ll probably start small and grow over the years. Perhaps one day, relatives will know one another and not see family members as people who happened to have attended the same funeral.