Recently, I attended my cousin Jan’s funeral. I was very grateful to be able to attend and see some family members I had not seen for well over 40 years. Jan Dunn was a darling, loving cousin, that always filled my spirit and face with a smile, with wisdom and strength. She seemed “impervious” to the perils of life in the 60’s that surrounded us all then, but her smile attracted me to her, like a moth to light.

Jan was the oldest of seven, five girls and two boys. I went to her High School graduation in the late sixties. Back then, when visiting her family, mostly on the weekends, we use to watch the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday nights. I remember the first time seeing “The Supremes” on their “black and white” TV. The room was filled with kids, backed against a couch, a chair (reserved for adults), lying on the floor, or otherwise, and so  much wonderment and curiosity about that dancing, singing threesome in glittering sequence dresses, and matched parallel moves in time.  

The last time I had seen Jan was around 1987, in Long Beach California, Belmont Shores, dinner party on 2nd Street, and I met her soon to be husband, John. Of course, I was jealous of him, and felt protective of her, since I’d always felt a special connection between her and I, that I didn’t ever want to be broken. But I was a young man then, and “change” uncomfortable to my determined spirit, albeit unmanageable at times, in life. John turned out to be a wonderful husband for Jan, and both were wonderful parents of their three girls. Beautiful ladies now, I unfortunately have never had the chance to know, due to life distances, and my so many years in mid-life – living on the east coast, Thousands of miles away.

I have recently come to realize, I could have seen her, her family and others in 2003, and come to know them again. It was my mother’s funeral on January 14, 2003. I have only now, in recent months, over 20 years since, have come to know, anything about my mother’s funeral and that day in January 2003.