Missing Ann

Last night I had a dream about my Canadian cousin, Ann, and today I am really missing her. The last time I saw Ann was in July 2003 at my dad's wake. Before that, I hadn't seen her since Cameron was a baby, maybe since 1994 or so. 

Ann is a little younger than I am, her birthday being February 2 (GROUNDHOG'S DAY) and mine being the previous October, and growing up we were extremely "close friends." Most Sundays when my mother would head to Cornwall, Ontario to visit Mémère, I would tag along to hang with Ann. We always had a great time together and got along very well for kids. I don't remember a silly fight or disagreement between us. We spent our Sundays together from the time we were little kids until we were teenagers and our lives began to diverge. Of course, as we got older our interests turned to boys, and I got to meet a lot of Ann's friends and a boyfriend or two.

Ann dated Pete (Pierre) for several years and they married quite young (I think she was 20 or 21), and had two daughters soon after. In fact, while my kids are in college, Ann is already a grandmother to a baby girl.

As I mentioned, I haven't heard from Ann in a long time. I'm not sure why that is. While we were always close, it seemed that I was always the one to reach out and reconnect. Maybe this is because right around the time Ann was planning her wedding her father, my mother's brother, left his long-time marriage for a relationship with his next wife. I think at that time my Moquin cousins started to distance themselves from the rest of the family, and we continued to communicate with Uncle Marcel, he being my mother's brother. I guess you could say the family began to choose sides, and Ann and I were no longer on the same side. I still enjoyed seeing her mom, our Aunt Eileen, from time to time when we would run into her at the mall in Cornwall, and she was always very kind to me. Aunt Eileen passed away just this past summer. 

There are ways I could contact Ann. Through the miracle (or curse) of social media I could send her daughters a Facebook message. Or, I could call my other cousin (Aunt Jackie's daughter) Brenda and ask her for Ann's phone number. I would sincerely like to see her again, but it feels a little weird to me, and I sort of feel like she's not really that interested in reconnecting with our family with all the hurt related to Uncle Marcel over the years. There was also some weirdness when he passed away that our family was not involved, with but involved our other Aunt (Jeannine) in Edmonton, where Marcel had lived during the last 20 years of his life. 

So, I think I'll let the universe take care of this one for now. If seeing Ann again is meant to be, it will happen. The only way it will happen for sure is if I reach out to her, which doesn't not feel comfortable after so much time has passed with me feeling like she doesn't really feel the same way. We shall see.