Lost and Found

Last Saturday the 27th, I got a late Christmas present. As a child, my mother showed me a picture and told me about a brother and sister from my father's previous marriage. When I was in high school my mom and I began looking for my "lost" brother and sister off and on we tried searching the internet for them. Then last week my mother lost the phone number wanted me to find one of our family friends that we have known my whole life. I looked on the internet for this friend and found her son on myspace so I created a myspace page in order to email him. Then I figured since I already had gone to all the trouble to create the myspace account that I would try to find my brother.

To my great suprize I found him! He emailed me last Saturday and it has been amazing to hear from him. As some of you may know my father died when I was just 2 years old, so I never really got to know him. As a child I often wished I could have asked my half brother and sister about Dad. I always thought since they were older that they must have had this great relationship with him that I had been denied since his passing. But now since talking to my half brother I have learned that Dad was unable to have much of a relationship with any of his children. Divorcing his first wife caused many problems with visiting his other two children so he was unable to have a relationshiip with them. And for my two brothers and I we were too young, Michael being just 5 when he died and my younger brother Earl being yet unborn.

Through this experience I have learned a valuable yet sad lesson which I pretty much already knew. Divorce is so hard on children. So many divorces end with the nearly complete separation of husband and wife leaving the children most often with the mother left to wonder in vain about thier father. A lot of kids are left only what thier hurt and angry mother tells them about their father. I wish the world were kinder, I wish divorced parents could be kinder to their children. Its so important for children to know and learn to respect both their mother and their father and the decisions they have made. I am deeply grateful to the promise my husband and I have to never divorce. Maybe we all be more sensitive and careful.