Too cool not to share Not (FF)
My wife of almost 26 years has always wondered about her dad. Who was he? Where does he live? Does he ever think about me? Why hasn't he tried to find me? He must not love me.
Her mom and dad were married in late 1952, my wife was born in '53. Something happened to cause him to leave, she divorced him, remarried and moved away leaving no forwarding address. He didn't forget her, he just couldn't find her because they moved so often from state to state and city to city. She says they would sometimes get up in the middle of the night, pack up and leave before "he" got home. Her mom married often and moved often.
Last month I signed up for Ancestory dot com to research some of my family for my kids. I pulled out her birth certificate and did a little research on her dad. It took a little doing but in about a week I came up with enough information to find his mother's maiden name. I then got his social and learned that the man I was researching had died in California in 1981. I was bummed, but kept reaching out on the internet and finally googled the mom's maiden name and got a site called findagrave dot com. There it was. The whole family with individual bios on mom, dad, 3 sons, grandmas and etc. The person who put the info on the site referred to the folks as grandmother, uncle and so on.
My wife contacted him through an email address on the site, explained who she is and that they might be cousins. Then she waited, and worried and fretted. She went to work, fretted, came home for lunch, fretted then after work she went to the beauty shop. Then the phone rang. It was her cousin. She wasn't here to take the call.
After receiving the email he called his parents and asked if they knew if his uncle ever had any children. His mom said he had one daughter, said her name and where she was born. She said her brother-in-law wrote or called or maybe stopped by in Michigan and told them about it. She still remembered the name.
After I talked to him for a few minutes I was so emotional I was afraid he'd think I was a big baby. I promised to have her return his call and hung up. I called my wife at the beauty shop and told her what happened. That he had called. That the whole family wants to meet her. The "whole" family consists of an uncle and aunt and their two sons. But get this. They live 2 1/2 hours from us! They've lived there for years.
When she got home we prayed and then she called and talked to her cousin. Afterwards she called her aunt and uncle who are 85 and 89 years old. It was a tearful and joyous reunion. They had always known about her but had no idea where she was.
When her father died in 1981 in Groveland, CA (on the edge of Yosemite NP) he was cremated and his ashes scattered over the Hetch Hetchy reservoir and the Tuolumne river basin.
Now we have several pilgrimages to go on this summer.
1. Go south to meet the family next weekend. While there her cousin is giving her a box of her father's things, photos and what not.
2. Go to New Jersey to see the gravesite of Granny and grandpa.
3. Go to Yosemite and pay our respects (and maybe throw a fly) into the Tuolumne river.
I'm just sad that it took so long for this kind of closure for her. She says she's 57 years old and it's like she was just born today.
I'm either going to, coming from or thinking about fishing. Jim
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