This summer I have been on rather a special journey down memory lane – all the more special because it was shared. I visited my 89-year-old cousin in Germany. He remembered our first ‘adult’ meeting – I was 17 and he 20 – and I found myself touched that he remembered I was wearing a dress with red spots. Together we traced the years when he was rejecting his pietistic background and eventually embracing Marxism. Then he jumped the decades and remembered with such pleasure the UK tour of family I arranged for his 80th birthday – East Anglia, Sheffield, Perth, Worcestershire, London. An hour of conversation and then he had to rest – and then we started again. A precious 24-hour visit…

Sheila Maxey is a member of Ingatestone United Reformed Church, Essex

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This is an extract from an article published in the September 2024 edition of Reform