I proably had one of the bet­ter expe­ri­ences of my life this week­end. It would take sev­eral very long posts to tell you the whole his­tory of my fam­ily life, but suf­fice it to say, for now, that it was com­pli­cated, sad, dis­rup­tive and utterly not nor­mal. I have said before that I will tell you the tale but that still remains for another time. What hap­pened this week­end was a series of events that started a few months ago. An aunt of mine, who lives in the town I grew up in, saw, and than sent me, an obit­u­ary of a cousin of mine on my dads side. She had Downs syn­drome and had died around the age of 43. In the town I grew up in, my dads mother lived, along with her other son and his fam­ily. My dads only brother. For what ever rea­son I was not allowed to visit with them but I did any­way. We had left my dad when I was three and I never saw him again until his funeral. Although I stayed in con­tact with my grandma and saw my cousins at school, I never really spent any time with them. I grew up, left town and no con­tact with them again. Upon receiv­ing the note from my aunt, I decided it was time to grow up. I wrote my aunt, who had been mar­ried to my dads brother and is now near 90, to just make con­tact and to request pic­tures of my dad, his brother, my grand­par­ents, basi­cally any­thing from that side of my fam­ily. She imme­di­ately responded as did a cousin. They sent some pic­tures along with an invi­ta­tion to join their fam­ily reunion which hap­pened to be this last week­end. It is really hard to put into words what all of this has meant. I am still pro­cess­ing a lot of it. Phys­i­cally we had all aged but almost all looked like I remem­bered them. 36 years changes a lot, but not the basic per­son­al­ity of the peo­ple, and they were as funny and open as I remem­bered them. They wel­comed me with open arms and any awk­ward­ness I may have ini­tally felt was soon gone. I felt it nec­es­sary to tell them some of the details of my grow­ing up and they were astounded and sad­dened that they hadn’t known. As I was dri­ving to see them, I had real­ized that I had no clue what my grand­moth­ers last name was. I had always thought her an only child but came to learn she had 7other sib­lings. Amaz­ing. My grandpa also had sev­eral broth­ers and sis­ters. To live all these years and not know that. Sad. I learned so much fam­ily his­tory my head is still spin­ning. They are thank­fully send­ing me a fam­ily tree of sorts because I can­not pos­si­bly remem­ber it all. A fam­ily. Just there, wait­ing to be found. Lost but not for­got­ten. They told me what they could about my dad. Gave me the few pic­tures they had. No one really knew him, but I did learn my aunt, who was mar­ried to my dads brother, first dated my dad. I asked for some dirt on him but she just blushed and said no. I still do not rec­og­nize my dad in pic­tures. I sim­ply did not know him. He was an alcholic from the age of 14 until he died at the age of 50. They tell me it was really sad as he had all the mak­ings of either a pro­fes­sional bas­ket­ball player or major league pitcher. They say he was unnat­u­rally ath­let­i­cally gifted. They say they hardly knew him. Yet, despite all this, they opened their arms and their hearts and said wel­come home. I now have 6 more cousins, their spouses, and their com­bined 15 chil­dren and I under­stand my aunt also has 13 great grand­chil­dren. They have sec­ond cousins they have never met also. The most bit­ter­sweet gift they gave me was my dads army hat. Iron­i­cally, the only pic­ture I had of my dad until this last week­end was of him in his uni­form. We have noth­ing else of his. He died a pau­per and drunk, lit­er­ally in the streets. You can­not imag­ine the range of emo­tions that went thru me when I held it. I am not keep­ing it. You see, there is some­one who needs it a lot more than me. My old­est brother is due to come for a visit in a few weeks. He does not read this blog so I feel safe in telling you that I am going to present it to him along with the framed pic­ture I have of our dad wear­ing it. This is my gift to him. I hope it begins to heal years and years of many hurts. He was older than me and remem­bers a lot. More than a lit­tle guy should have had to see much less remem­ber. He won’t talk about it and is still angry and bit­ter. He has found it impos­si­ble to for­give. I hope this holds the key to unlock­ing his heart. You may think it was only a hat, but it was our dads hat. He had a fam­ily. Now they are once again our fam­ily. I had let myself lose my dad and in doing so I lost a huge part of me. Maybe now I can start to feel whole again.  Lost than found.  Amaz­ing. Have a good one.