Photo from morgueFile.com

What is my grandfather’s brother called? I think he’s my great uncle but I’m not sure. I wanted to write this post while it’s still fresh in my mind so I’m not going to look it up, but as we start to live longer thanks to technology, how will our families change?

What prompted me to wonder was smoked turkey. I was eating Kansas City style barbecue at Big Daddy’s, (claims to be the farthest north southern barbecue and I believe it) and I realized I’ve never met more than one person from my grandfather’s family from Missouri.

As we live longer, will we be closer, or more isolated from our relatives?

Will we end up with so many it will be impossible to keep track of one another?

Or will we have more time to get to know one another?

Will we assume the others will be around a long time so we’ll skip those family reunions more often?

Going back to words for relatives, do we have or need the words to describe that many generations at once?