I know what Phillip feels like. My mother was the communication link that kept everyone up to date on family news. After she died, my father forgot to tell me his brother-in-law had died for several months. My brothers and their families have drifted away from me. Neither of my sisters-in-law are interested in hosting holiday gatherings with my younger brother pointing out that their house is too small for gatherings and my older brother's family just being unwilling.
My favorite Aunt & Uncle or my cousin (their daughter & son-in-law) have hosted all the family holidays for the last several years. When my mother was still capable of hosting, the holidays were traded between my mother and her younger sister so neither hosted both in one year and Thanksgiving & Christmas were rotated between the two houses. We did the rotation for about 20 years. I live in a studio apartment, so I won’t be hosting any gatherings here. By default, my favorite Aunt & Uncle have become the Matriarch & Patriarch of our two families. (My favorite Aunt & Uncle, and her younger sister are the only ones in their generation with fully functioning memories, two older aunts are having memory problems and my mother was the oldest. We don’t really have much to do with my father’s family, but my father’s older sisters have both passed. The oldest sister’s husband was the one mentioned above. The other sister’s husband is apparently still alive, as are the youngest brother and his wife.)
As we have gotten older the larger family has drifted too. My youngest cousin only talks to me. I hadn’t realized that until my aunts complained about him never returning their calls, emails, or snail mail. So now I’m officially his contact from the rest of the family. My aunts were worried that I’d drift off too – and I probably would have except that I wanted to be at least a little part of my nieces and nephews lives. But that hasn’t worked out very well for me since I haven’t seen my younger niece in a couple years and it’s been about 7 or 8 years since I saw her brother or their mother.
My older brother rarely communicates with me. My younger brother is supposed to be my family contact, but I usually only hear from him 2 or 3 times a year. He occasionally tells me when family or family friends have died.
I should point out that only two of my cousins have gotten divorced – the one who only speaks to me and the older son of my father’s oldest sister. Everyone else is still married. So unlike many other families, that isn’t the reason for the disconnection. That a pretty good record for my parents and their seven siblings (6 marriages), my two brothers and our 13 cousins (I think there’ve been 14 weddings if you count the post-divorce marriage). There’ve been at least 3 or 4 weddings among the next generation including my older nephew.