Don't you just love families? Do you? Or sometimes, is it a freaking train wreck? All right, call me old-fashioned.
Oh, hi, welcome to The Daily Grateful. I am Michael Crose, and I'm a family kind of guy. I just am, especially with my kids. Love my kids.
Got five of them. And I'd do anything for any of them. I got five grandkids. I would climb over broken glass for them.
All right, just love them. Then I got cousins. I spoke with my cousin Steve today. He lives up in Michigan.
We had a nice talk. Steve comes from the Uncle Dick side of the family. Uncle Dick was my brother Charles' brother. Did I just, did I just talk weird?
Anyway, Uncle Dick was my father's brother. And out of that family, we still have left. We have Steve left, and we have Bobby left. We have Nancy and we have Daryl, but they passed away.
But Steve and Bob, both wonderful people. And I talked to them. I, you know, I snuck up to a family reunion with my late brother 18 years ago up there. We weren't really invited.
I mean, there was like a general invitation on Facebook. And so we just showed up and it said, bring chairs. I remember this. I remember this so well.
So we brought, I went to Walmart and bought two chairs and we took them there. I wasn't going to take them back because, you know, we flew in a plane and just, you know, I would like to check these two ones here. No. But, you know, had a great time.
Met a bunch of family members out there. I didn't know. Had a wonderful time. It was just so good to catch up with family there.
Then I got another cousin who is my uncle George's daughter and my aunt June's daughter. And she don't talk to me anymore. And we used to talk all the time and I don't know. She got all kinds of pissed off.
I guess that's what I could say. Because I didn't stay at her house when I went back to Michigan 18 years ago. And to this day, she holds it against me. And now she's not talking to me over it.
I said, OK. You know, I talked to my brother about it when he was alive. He says, what are you going to do? You know, if, if, OK, you know, that's what I said.
I mean, I miss her. I love her. I think she's cool. Her mother was my aunt June.
Her father was my uncle George. Uncle George was the most decent man I ever met in my life. Absolutely loved him. And June used to drive me bat shit crazy, but I loved her dearly.
I mean, I could tell you aunt June stories and my God, if her daughter heard those, she'd be so pissed off at me. I might anyway. But I, Aunt June was a wonderful woman. Aunt June and I had wonderful conversations.
I mean, very salt of the earth personal conversations, even though she drove me bat shit crazy. There was a time. Let me just say, there was a time when everybody in my family around here, my mother, my sister, they were all pissed off. They didn't want to talk to Aunt June.
She was like, leave us alone. Go away. And then my son Tyler was born 44 years ago. Tyler had Down syndrome.
And we're sitting in the hospital and I'm just, you know, trying to accept all of that and, and just trying to, to get with all of that. And Aunt June showed up and we saw her. We're in the, in the hospital room with my wife and, you know, Tyler, and we saw her getting out of her car and coming. And, and, you know, the, uh, I said, I'm gonna go out and talk to her.
I went out and she said, I'm here to see that your son. I said, okay, here's what you need to know. He has Down syndrome. What's Down syndrome.
A nurse explained to my aunt June what Down syndrome was exactly. And she said, okay. She came into the room and she took my hand and she took Michelle's hand and she said a prayer. I will not reveal to you that prayer, but it was so personal.
I mean, oh my God, 44 years. And I'm still thinking about it. It was so personal. And so, and my, my mother and my sister are sitting there watching this.
And immediately all the bad feelings that about Aunt June just disappeared off the face of the earth. And I've never been more grateful for anything than on that day on, on October 5th of 2000, I'm sorry, of 1980, my aunt June came into that room and held our hands and just right off of her head, said this prayer, this very private, this very intimate, this prayer that went right to my gut and right to all of our guts. And it just made the day, which I was in shock. It made the day livable.
So that's what family is. My cousin needs to get her shit together and just be part of my family. I love her. She just needs to do that.
I'm not going to tell her that. She listens to this podcast. I know. So if you're listening, Dawn, I love you.
Love your whole damn family. Always have family school. All right. That's all I got to say today on this wonderful Tuesday.
Tomorrow, you're going to be listening to a prerecorded show because a hurricane is supposed to hit here tomorrow and I will not have electricity. I'm, you know, we, we might not even have a house. Who knows? It's gonna be a direct hit.
Um, but, uh, I will be here, uh, in your, uh, you know, in whatever you listen to podcasts on because I'm recording a week's worth at least. They're all short. I went longer today than I thought I would. Anyway, for the daily grateful in beautiful Tampa Bay, Florida, it's about to get ravaged.
I'm Michael roast.