LIFE REVISITED — Sharon Mark Cohen

When my cousin Shari visited last year from her home in New York State, I requested she bring her father’s reel-to-reel movies from our childhood. Using modern technology, I desired to have them made available to watch on the computer. What a gift that was.

When our son Moss came to visit, he helped me send a link to the video to share with others via email. Watching the films was a nostalgic experience. The footage includes show-stopping scenes of my parents and three older brothers, and Cousin Shari and her two older brothers with their parents.

Aunt Fannie and Mrs. Nalebuff (Shari’s grandaunt with whom Aunt Fannie shared an apartment in Newark, New Jersey), and our Uncle Jakey and his family living in Louisiana were also captured in the film. Jakey was one of my father’s three younger brothers (he had one older brother and my Aunt Fannie was their only sister).

Ironically, with all my work on the family tree and connecting relatives, I’ve never met my three first cousins who grew up in Louisiana. Pictured in the film are my Uncle Jakey’s children Sarah Ruth, Laura, and Donald (see Who’s Your Daddy?, dated March 1, 2022, at sharonmarkcohen.com).

As in last week’s blog post featuring my Cousin Hank’s home movies, some of my uncle’s reels date back to before I was born. In a way, that’s a good thing. It allowed me to study the make-up of the family and their way of life before my birth. I can now envision what I missed.

More importantly, I can feel the love of the family, which I soaked up while watching the lives of parts of my extended family revisited. Even my father's cousins who lived in Philadelphia and the surrounding area, Hank’s parents, and his aunts and cousins, were included in my uncle’s home movies.

Thanks Uncle Jerome! and Shari! The films were a blast from the past with family footage securely saved to cherish.

Now, anytime I want, I can sit at my computer gazing at my handsome, smiling Uncle Jerome, of blessed memory (See Rome Wasn’t Built In A Day, dated August 1. 2023, at sharonmarkcohen.com), “looking at me” after his refreshing swim. Then, I can watch my mother, testing the warmth of the water with her elbow, teaching my aunt how to give my cousin his first bath.

The fun continues seeing where the family spent their leisure time, and with whom. Furthermore, I can tune into more scenes of those nearest and dearest to me in life whenever I choose, and joyfully revisit my family’s past. As my cousin Norman said, and I posted on October 2, 2018, “What We Had Was Special!”