loosing family

Miriam has 3 sibling, all with the same mother and father.

There are step brothers too, a total of 4 of them, but that is a different story.

This week we got news that her oldest half brother Wayne had died. He was one that was not recognized as part of the family until very recently, since his mother did not marry his father. One of those old family secrets that is not really a secret for as long as the principles had hoped. We only saw Wayne a couple of times.

Would we contact Miriam's other 3 siblings.

So I called her little sister. None of them are too good about keeping in touch, btw. The phone number was no longer in service. The last time we saw them she had obvious Dementia and her husband, who was older than her, had had by pass surgery, had lost a hundred pounds and looked really bad.

It is my fault I did not keep in touch with them. Sister's husband used to call me from time to time, but not recently. I will always regret that one.

So what do we do? I tried to get in touch with the next sister: Ellen. We had a couple of old phone numbers, but I looked her up on the white pages and found her address and phone number. The address was the same she had had for many years.

That number was not receiving calls, I was told. Sounded like it could be true, and I had no other number.

That leaves Miriam's only full brother. He does not have a phone. I will call the place where he used to work full time and now works a bit now and again and see if he can shed any light.

I am not optimistic.

So, Miriam has lost a big hunk of her family. Neither of the girls have children we can contact (only one son between them and he has been on the lam for decades.

Miriam cried tonight as we talked about it. I won't bring up the subject again.