Adjusting to the ever changing circle during the holidays

Paul and I couldn't be with our children for Thanksgiving, so we joined relatives a couple hundred miles away. Thanksgiving is a great time to catch up on family happenings.
Our family circle changed this past year since my mother passed away a few months ago. She and my dad frequently spent their Thanksgiving holiday with our family since they knew it was unlikely a pastor's family would travel “home” at Christmastime.
Dad has been gone for over a quarter of century now.
Mom and her sister, Aunt Daisy, often came to wherever we lived for Thanksgiving.
A couple years ago, I met my brother's carload near I-80 so Aunt Daisy could spend Thanksgiving with Mom in Stanton while my brother's carload of family spent the holiday with their daughter's family in Minnesota.
Those Minnesota “travelers” stopped to visit Mom and pick up Aunt Daisy.
Aunt Daisy, Mom's younger sister, was to be the family historian answering all those questions we forgot to ask Mom. Alert and intentional about her fitness and vitamins, an apparent heart ailment had gone undetected. She passed away a few months after that Thanksgiving visit.
Such events remind us we do not know our departure dates.
Last June at Mom's funeral, good friends without living parents have urged us siblings to become intentional about setting up family reunions. We all agreed, but busyness kept us from planning.
During this last Thanksgiving with my brother's family in Kansas, we paused long enough to work on the reunion plans.
But our sibling circle was incomplete.
My Kentucky brother and wife stayed home for Thanksgiving. They have been busily helping their children in various states as new grandchildren or moves were occurring. Besides, that group will meet for Christmas in Florida.  
My Connecticut sister's family feasted together there, and likely will at Christmas, too. In recent years, one of her sons has spent three Christmases overseas.
We, too, cannot commit to a sibling Christmas gathering. We'll head to our son's after Christmas services. Our daughter and husband live out of country.    
With jobs scattering families, our parents' descendants live in 11 states and currently one foreign country. Of my parents' 11 grandchildren, only two live in the same state as their parents. No siblings or cousins live in the same state. As tiny ones arrive, or jobs become less secure, travel gets complicated.
In reality, as we four siblings age, our “freedom” to travel may hit about the time health issues limit the enjoyment of going.
On Thanksgiving, we four became intentional about the family reunion, thanks to the marvel of “skyping”.  
Photos show the four of us “sitting together” on the couch, laughing as we visit via internet. I'm holding “Connecticut's face” on my laptop while my brother beside me is holding “Kentucky's face”. By turning computers, we four saw and heard each other.  We did a great deal of laughing and commenting, sometimes joined by family members on webcams in various sites. We were “in each other's homes” for Thanksgiving.   
Skyping was an inexpensive way to plan toward next year's proposed reunion.
We siblings promised to finalize plans before the end of the year. Hopefully, all our descendants could come too.   
Will the reunion happen, overruling illnesses, finances, job situations now unknown?  
Being four optimists, one sibling quipped, “If the reunion doesn't work out, we could all just stay home and at least skype each other!”
It wouldn't be the same. But joyous laughter proved it could be close.
Marge Warder is a freelance reporter for the Red Oak Express, and she can be contacted at mawarder@yahoo.com.