He’s gone.  The last member of our parents’ family has left us.

My Uncle Alden—Aldy to us—was a still reflection of his father (Grandpa Pedersen was a gregarious Danish farmer), an echo of his older, stoic brother Norm and the personality opposite of his playful brother, Roy.  Aldy was the youngest of three brothers and the last survivor of 11 siblings in the Hans & Hilda Pedersen clan.  Our family still misses the Pedersen sisters, from oldest to youngest:  Caroline, Viola, Virginia, Esther (my mom), Gladys, Myrtle, Verna and Florence.  The original nuclear family is now complete in the next dimension, but that leaves us feeling as though we are alone in this wilderness.

It hits hard; not just because we’ll miss a man who was a quiet beacon of light in a world filled with the noise of our darker contemporary culture, but because we’ve lost that last strand of tether to those who’ve provided our family’s anchoring rope to our past. And it’s hard to imagine how we’ll keep it together without them all.

Aldy was a reserved, soft-spoken and unassuming, gentle man.  I most remember him as the solid conservative father of my cousins with whom I spent some great days and nights as a young child and teen.  He was a solid, steady and loving presence in his children’s lives as well as those of his grandchildren and now great-grandchildren.  His quiet demeanor was not presumed to be dull, uncompromising or unaware, however.  A father who would unobtrusively offer a beer to someone with a hangover while holding back a smirk is not someone to be trifled with.  He knew what we were about, yet he allowed us to enjoy our youth and to make those minor mistakes that led to enlightenment.

My cousins, his children, are now facing that feeling of orphanhood that so many of us have already known for some time.  Aunt Judy died shortly after my mom left us in 2021, toward the end of the pandemic.  I know that Uncle Aldy has missed her terribly these past five years, and having witnessed his remaining sisters’ funerals had to have been some of his hardest days.  The weight of his grief has now become ours to bear.

We are now officially the oldest generation.

I won’t expound upon his character or his relationships with his family.  Julie, Vickie, Chris, Lisa and Linda can do so much better than me.  They’ll have myriad stories of his cool guidance as well as his humor and warmth.  They’ll tell us of how he and Aunt Judy enjoyed all their offspring and brought them together regularly—whether making Norwegian lefse or just enjoying an afternoon at home.

My course of thought finds me examining our own generation—its failings but also its prospects. Have we truly pulled together our families to celebrate our roots and our common bonds enough? Will we be able to keep our ties to one another strong through the years and to foster new ties among our own children who show little interest in reaching out to extended family? There are those among us who constantly strive to make certain of our strength as a family, and there are those who leave it to others. 

Our family has been fortunate to have those who pull us together annually for a family reunion that is envied by many. Social media has afforded us a window into each other’s world that helps us keep in touch in a way that wasn’t possible a couple decades ago. There are many families who don’t know each other in the first place, but we’ve been familiar with one another from our earliest days when our parents brought us to the Pedersen farmhouse for family gatherings to celebrate each other, the holidays, or even just the weekend. And those of us who lived further away from most—Uncle Aldy’s family included in that—appreciated the connection with cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents. We look backward upon those days fondly and reminisce about them when we get the chance, to which our children and grandchildren may groan, but we also look forward to knowing the newest generations who follow. We have to welcome and recognize each new addition as a continued link in the chain.

We know that as the generations progress, the bond will be diluted, not from negligence but by the natural progression of things.  When you look at a family tree, and someone refers to a cousin of the next generation as“once removed,” I believe that is because of that natural order. We can’t deny the inevitable, yet we can hope that through perseverance, our family roots are deep enough to weather the ages as well as the storms. Our tree nomay not be fast growing; it can have deep roots and a hard wood that can suffer even a firestorm and survive as long as we continue to nurture it.

Uncle Aldy is looking upon us now and hoping for us all to reach out to our family members who need that connection.  It doesn’t matter if you haven’t been to a family reunion in years or even if your family doesn’t have one scheduled.  Strive to attend one now, or get together and plan one if you can. And if you can’t physically be there for one another, use today’s technology to learn from one another, to help each other understand the past, to connect to previous generations and to celebrate the struggles, the hopes and fears and the triumphs of our parents, their parents, their grandparents and all those before us.  Share photos, label them, and learn their stories and pass them on. 

One tradition my parents’ generation held–to which I wish we could find our way back–is the Sunday drive where we’d pile in the car and take a drive through the country. During those drives, we’d not only stop at local produce stands or drive-ins for a frosty rootbeer, but we’d also stop in at a relative’s home just to say “hello.” Now I know that our culture today pushes us away from this, as our privacy and that of our loved ones should be acknowledged. And it’s not really environmentally friendly to just drive around with no destination in mind. But why not give someone a call at the spur of the moment and ask them if it’s alright to drop by or if we can meet for lunch somewhere nearby for a piece of pie and coffee? Some of my fondest memories of my dad’s uncles, aunts and cousins happened when they just appeared on our doorstep on a weekend afternoon for a brief visit. (No, it doesn’t have to be a full dinner or an overnight stay.) Uncle Aldy, Aunt Judy and my cousin Lisa took an hour and a half drive one day just to stop by my brother and sister-in-law’s vintage shop they’d recently opened. Imagine my brother’s delight when they walked through the door! It truly made their day, and there are photos online to prove that.

Remembering that past is great, but don’t forget our future. Reach out to our younger generations and show them that we are not just about the past. Our next generations can only learn from us if we present our history in a format they understand. Help them to understand the future through our eyes, including our history and our failures that can help them weather upcoming storms.  We can only help them by guiding them around our own mistakes.

Grandpa and Grandma, Mom andDad, all my uncles and aunts, I cherish your memories and pray that you are all together in a more joyous family reunion on the other side of our world. 

And Uncle Aldy, I will miss you.  But I know you are finally among my other loved ones who have been awaiting your arrival with open arms.  Godspeed.