Estranged Family

[Belsnickel]

So an uncle of mine passed away yesterday morning and his obituary was in the Tribune Review, today. Now, I have two memories of this uncle. One is when I was three years old and at my grandmother's funeral. The other was about twenty years ago at a sportsman's club in PA during a gun raffle. He didn't communicate much with his family and early on his wife divorced him and took their son (who was born about 3 days after me, I think, but I know in the same room I was born in as they discharged my mother and admitted his mother right after) with her. I don't know her name, but I know his, but I have had no contact with him since my grandmother's funeral.

I was reading his obituary and I noticed that, apart from there not being any service at all because of all of this estrangement, there is no city listed for his son. This tells me that my family still in PA doesn't know where he is these days. Over the years I've pondered trying to reach out to him, to find him on Facebook. His name isn't all that common and so I can narrow it down, but I have no idea what to say. I think I may have found him, today, actually, but I hesitate to send a message. "Hi, this is your older cousin by three days that you haven't seen in 30 years, how's it going?"

My dad's name and city is in the obituary, and so is my other uncle's, so I feel like maybe waiting to see if he reaches out would be best. I don't know for certain if I have the right person narrowed down on Facebook and so I don't want to go sending out random messages to people, and even if it is the right person, how do I know what his attitude will be towards his father's side of the family with whom he has had no contact with for the majority of his life. His fathers alcoholism is what spelled the end of his parents' marriage, and so I don't know how he feels about all of that.

Anyway, just kind of thinking "out loud" about all of this and seeing if anyone else has experienced similar situations and how it went down.

[*wildcats forever*]

I'd send the message, introducing yourself and give him a brief summary of why you're contacting him. What's to lose? You aren't in touch with him now, are you? Could be a good thing.

[Benton]

I got into my family history a few years ago. I was googling my grandmother (mind out of the gutter) and found her mentioned on a genealogy site.

So I looked into the site and found it was ran by a woman from California. She said — according to the site — that she was my grandfather's niece. My grandfather had one sister, who married and had a son. So I called my mom about this bastard child. I thought she might know about her long lost cousin. No clue. She called her brother, he didn't know. I looked a little more into the person and got an email address. My uncle sent her an email and... turns out, it was the son. She had dropped out of the family decades ago, had a sex change back in the 90s and — now in her late fifties or so — had wanted to know more about the family so she got into genealogy. She was pretty excited the family reached out to her.

Just trotting that out to say your cousin may have a reason for not having a lot of contact. It could end positive, or not. But you won't know till you reach out.

[*Awful Llama*]

[SunsetBengal]

Nothing at all wrong with sending the FB friend request to family that you have not seen in a long time, or in some cases ever met. I have done so, and have connected with several cousins that I had not seen since being single digit age, and several that I had never even met. Sometimes it's good, and we hit it off. Other times it can be stale. No harm in reaching out. And this is coming from a person that was taught as a child to never speak until spoken to...

[Belsnickel]

So no luck on the Facebook thing, but my dad and other Uncle did manage to find my cousin and his mother. They are actually supposed to be meeting with my uncle, today. I didn't know they were up to this but they wanted to make sure that they knew of my uncle's passing and so they sought them out. We'll see what comes of it. My dad's health will not allow for him to travel. We've often talked about how there will likely be only 2, maybe 3, times he will be back to Pennsylvania (his aunt's funeral, potentially his brother's if he does something stupid, and his own), so it's hard to say if I or my dad will ever see them but we are hopeful there can be some reconnection made.