The Ultimate Reunion: Cousins, Coffee, and a Promise

By Dean Burnette | Southern Fried Thoughts | November 7, 2026

Categories: Faith | Family

I’m Loosiana-bound this week.

That’s “Louisiana” with a little extra seasoning on it. My taste buds are already packing their bags.

My cousin Renee passed away a couple of days ago, and I’m heading to Sulphur LA to be with family. Renee was only a few months older than me. We grew up together in the days when family weren’t just names you saw at a holiday gathering. Cousins were your first friends and constant companions.

When Cousins Were Your Whole World

Back then, I need to take you back a ways to a time when families lived close enough to holler at each other across a clothesline. However, there were only three television channels and AM radio crackling through the kitchen window while Mamaw stirred a pot that smelled like heaven had a cafeteria.

Additionally, the longest screen time a kid got was waiting for a cousin to ride up on a bicycle. Cousins shaped those gatherings and adventures. Kids made their own entertainment—and often found it in a cousin’s backyard, down the road, or piled into the family car for an adventure.

My cousin had a wonderful sense of humor. She had the ability to always speak her mind — whether you were ready to hear it or not. And Lord, if you knew her, you knew she was truly one of a kind.

I can still see us at Holly Beach, we called it the Cajun Riviera, and don’t you dare laugh, because to us it was the French Riviera with better food and fewer pretensions. A whole gaggle of cousins piled into somebody’s house near the water, sleeping on floors, on couches, on top of each other like puppies in a basket. The Gulf of Mexico stretching out in front of us like God’s own swimming pool, warm as bathwater and twice as fun.

We didn’t know we were making memories back then. We just thought we were being kids. But that’s the thing about the best memories — you don’t know they’re the best ones until you’re looking back at them through older eyes.

That’s one of the gifts of growing older: the past doesn’t stay in the past. A smell, a song, a familiar name, or a story can bring it right back. And when someone we love is gone, those memories feel closer still.

Renee’s obituary tells a little of the life she lived: a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and a woman remembered for her humor, honesty, and devotion to family. She loved cooking and baking, games with friends and family, and most of all, time with her grandchildren. That is a life made rich not by headlines or grand achievements, but by the ordinary, beautiful work of loving people well.

Let me start at the beginning.

The Old Ways: When Death Brought People Together

Now, I want to tell you something about Cajun funerals when I was a young boy, because I don’t think folks today understand what we had. And I don’t say that to be one of them old-timers shaking his fist at clouds. I say it because there was a beauty in it that I want you to see.

When somebody died in our community, the family stayed at the funeral home. Not just for visiting hours. Not just for a polite two hours with a casserole and a handshake. They stayed around the clock until the burial. Family kept vigil. They told stories. They laughed. They cried. They did both at the same time, sometimes in the same sentence.

I remember Mama letting me stay overnight at the funeral home with my Great Uncle Wallace. I can’t remember who else was there — the details of a child’s memory are like fog over the bayou, you catch pieces but never the whole picture. But I remember the talking. The stories going all night long. The coffee — Lord, the community coffee — flowing like it was keeping the whole operation running on faith and caffeine. And the cigarettes. Ashtrays everywhere. Back then, every table, every counter, every flat surface had an ashtray sitting on it like a little porcelain altar to nicotine. People smoked in those circles the way fish swim — naturally, constantly, without thinking about it. Half my people had a cigarette going like it was part of the dress code.

Nobody was in a hurry. Nobody was checking a watch. The dead were honored with time, and time was the most expensive thing anybody could give.

The Food

Growing up in South Louisiana, funerals were family reunions with a cause. It was the only time we saw the far-flung Cousins, the old friends who moved to Texas and got fancy. And the food — oh, the food. The church ladies and the neighbors would outdo themselves. Funeral food is its own food group in South Louisiana. Fried chicken, gumbo, potato salad, and enough desserts to float a pirogue. I’m telling you, funeral food in South Louisiana was a spiritual experience. The ladies from the church would come in with enough to feed a small army. They didn’t just cook — they ministered. Every dish was a sermon about love. Every slice of cake was a prayer made edible. I have never eaten better in my life than at a Cajun funeral. I don’t feel one bit guilty about saying so.

And here’s the thing I didn’t understand then but understand now: those funerals were family reunions. They were the only times we’d see distant relatives, old friends who’d moved away, people whose names we knew from stories but whose faces we’d forgotten. Death, in its cruel way, gave us the gift of gathering. It pulled us back together like a magnet, and for a day or two, we were whole again.

And my heart is heavy and glad at the same time.

The Thing About Funerals Nobody Tells You

Here’s what nobody tells you about funerals, and I want you to hear this because I think it might be the most important thing I write today:

Funerals are not about the dead. They’re about the living.

They’re about the people who are left behind and need to look each other in the eye and say, “We’re still here. We still love each other. We’re going to be okay.” They’re about the hands that squeeze yours and don’t let go. They’re about the cousin you haven’t seen in twenty years who walks up and hugs you like no time has passed at all. They’re about the food, the stories, the laughter that sneaks in between the tears like sunlight through clouds.

They’re about reunion.

And if you’re a Christian — and I am, praise God — they’re about something even bigger. They’re about the promise. The real promise. Not the kind a politician makes on a campaign trail. The kind that was nailed to a cross and sealed with an empty tomb.

We will see them again.

I believe that with every fiber of my being. I believe Renee is in a better place right now. I believe she’s not in pain. I believe she’s not confused or afraid. I believe she’s home in a way that this world never quite lets us be. And I believe — I know — that one day, whether it’s tomorrow or fifty years from now, I’ll see her again and she’ll look at me with that Renee look and say something funny, and we’ll laugh, and it will be like no time passed at all.

Just like Holly Beach. Just like being kids again.

Getting Older: The Gift You Didn’t Order

Now let me talk about something else that’s on my mind.

Growing Older, Growing Grateful

I’ll be honest with you — I’m not a young man anymore. None of us are. My mama’s turning 90 next year, and while she’s still sharp as a tack and stubborn as a mule in a mud puddle (Lord, I get that from her), I know the math. I know that I’m not that much younger than her. I’ve only got a couple of aunts and one uncle left from their generation. The family tree is shedding its leaves, and I feel each one fall.

My friend Billy said something yesterday that hit me right between the eyes. He said, “The older we get, the closer we get to God.”

Now, I don’t know if that’s universally true. I know plenty of folks who get older and get meaner, or more bitter, or more set in their ways like concrete that’s already dried. But I think what Billy meant — and what I believe he meant — is that when you’ve lived long enough, you start to see the pattern. You start to understand that this life is a vapor. That the people you love are borrowed. That every sunrise is a gift you didn’t earn and can’t keep.

And when you understand that, you either get angry at God or you get grateful to Him. I chose grateful a long time ago. Some days it’s harder than others. Today is one of those days. But I’m still grateful.

Because here’s the truth: as this world narrows — as the people who raised us get older, as the people who taught us become the people we now say goodbye to — the horizon gets wider. The people who are physically walking away from us are the same ones who walked us into this life. My mama taught me what a roux is, how to say my prayers, and how to talk to strangers like they were kin. My daddy’s people in north Georgia taught me where I come from, all the way back to Scotland and the old family stomping grounds at Crathes Castle, and all the way back to the Cajun side of the family, gumbo and lagniappe and all.

How can you not be grateful for a people like that?

As Christians, we believe something that the rest of the world finds puzzling: that when a person leaves this world, they have not lost everything. They have moved. The Bible says, “For I do not want you to be ignorant about those who have gone before you, but comfort you with the same comfort we have received.” (1 Thessalonians 4:13) We believe they are in a better place. We believe we will be with them again. And we believe that on the other side of that reunion, there will be every cousin, every aunt, every uncle, every friend, all of us together, and nobody missing.

So we celebrate their life here with us. We tell the stories — the funny ones, the ones that make the whole table laugh and the one that makes the whole table cry. We tell the grandchildren about who they were. We thank God for them. And then we trust Him. And we go believing that departure is not the same as disappearance.

The Hardheaded Part of Faith

Here is the heart of it.

Now, I want to say something that might make some folks uncomfortable, but I’ve never been one to sugarcoat the Gospel. It’s too good to dilute.

Jesus saves. Not because we deserve it. Not because we’ve earned it. Not because we’ve been good enough, to church enough, or religious enough. He saves in spite of us. That’s the whole point. That’s the scandal of grace, and it’s the most beautiful scandal in the history of the universe.

Some folks get saved young. They hear the Word when they’re children, and it takes root like a cypress seed in wet soil, and they grow up knowing. I envy them, if I’m honest.

For others of us — the stubborn ones, the hard-headed ones, the ones who had to run all the way to the end of the road and look over the cliff before we turned around — it takes longer. Sometimes a lifetime. Sometimes it takes a funeral. Sometimes it takes a loss so deep that nothing else makes sense anymore, and the only thing left to hold onto is the hem of His garment.

And you know what? That’s okay. God’s not in a hurry. He’s been waiting since before the foundation of the world. He can wait for you to get there. He’ll wait for you the way a father waits on the porch for a child who’s been gone too long — scanning the road, refusing to go inside, refusing to give up hope.

And when you finally come home — whether it’s at eight years old or eighty — He doesn’t meet you with a lecture. He meets you with a feast. With open arms. With a love so fierce and so tender that it breaks you open and puts you back together all at the same time.

That’s the God I believe in. That’s the God who took my cousin home. That’s the God who will take me home someday too. And I’m not afraid. I’m not even sad, not really. I’m grateful. I’m so deeply, stubbornly, Cajun-grateful that I could bust wide open.

As Christians, we grieve. Jesus Himself wept at the grave of Lazarus, so nobody needs to act like tears are a shortage of faith. But we do not grieve as people without hope.

We believe our loved ones are in a better place. We believe we will see them again. We believe the family reunion ahead of us will make even the best Cajun funeral gathering look like a warm-up act.

No more funerals. No more goodbyes. No more sudden phone calls that knock the wind out of you.

Just reunion.

Leaving and Returning

Here is what the trip is: I leave Savannah Monday morning at six, I come home Wednesday night at ten. It’s a short trip. It’s a short life. We’re all on short trips.

But here’s what I’ve learned about departures and reunions: every departure is practice for the reunion. Every airport, every funeral, every long drive down a dark highway at night is a rehearsal for the day when the whole family — every cousin who ever lived, every aunt and uncle, every mama and daddy, every child and grandchild — stands together on the other side and nobody is missing.

So I go to Lake Charles. I bring my gratitude for my wife, who is the rock that has kept our whole family steady for decades. a team around me that can handle things as well or better than I can. I bring a plane ticket I found on Google Flights for a price that made me say, “Thank You, Lord.” And I bring my appetite, because my taste-buds are going to get some serious exercise. Gumbo. Rice and gravy. Smoked boudin. And I am not going to be the one saying no to any of it.

I want to thank all my cousins. Every one of you. You know what a gift you are to each other, and you know what a gift you are to me.

I want to thank my family for holding each other up, the way you have.

And I want to say thank you, Lord, for my mama, who is still here at 89 years old and still teaching me. Thank You for the family I have. Thank You for the grace that will get me through November. And Thank You for Renee — thank You for letting her be my cousin, and thank You for keeping her in a better place, and thank You that I will see her again.

Until then, I’ll be Louisiana bound, and I’ll probably be at that funeral home long before the coffee runs out.

Life is short, y’all. Love your people. Keep them close. And trust God — even when you’re stubborn enough to make Him wait on you.

I’m heading down to Sulphur, Louisiana, to be with family. To sit in a pew at Our Lady of LaSalette Catholic Church on Tuesday morning and watch my cousin laid to rest at Big Woods Cemetery. To hug people I haven’t seen in too long. To eat food that’ll make my cardiologist weep and my soul sing. To remember. 

Rest easy, Renee. Save me a seat at the table up there — and tell Mama’s people I said hello.

See y’all down the road, friends. I’m Loosiana bound.

— Dean Burnette, Grateful USA Citizen

All Louisiana-born-and-raised cousins, family, and friends: if you’re headed to Sulphur or Lake Charles this week, you know where to find me. There’s a chair with your name on it and a plate coming. And if you can’t make the trip, do what my cousin did her whole life — call somebody, say something true, and love the people in front of you.

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