Back in September, I wrote a piece entitled "First Contact" which highlighted my efforts to reconnect with lost relatives. Just last week, another cousin, finally did respond to my reach out to him. He is the half cousin of the first lost cousin who did reach out to me back in September. The experience has been nothing short of amazing.
If you can imagine knowing about someone your whole life, but never having the chance to meet that person, then you can imagine that is what has happened here. My mother's youngest brother, married a beautiful woman after he migrated to NY from the deep South during the late 1960's. Their marriage was unfortunately short lived due to his less than honorable behaviors. The ex-wife (my aunt) and my mother stayed friends for many years, that is until my aunt moved herself and her two children back to the South.
Most of us 35 and older can remember when long distance calls used to cost almost as much as your entire local calls on your phone bill combined. There even was an all out war during the late '80's through the late 90's for phone companies to sign subscribers up to local and long distance phone call memberships which packaged their calls into a lessor bill. Then came the cell phone and cable companies adopting phone call capability. To make the long distance phone call prices even lower, by the mid 2000's along came VoIP phone calls, also known as Voice Over Internet Protocol. This three headed competitive monster grew throughout the 2000's decade and has made separate charges for long distance and local bills a thing of the past.
Now today with the cellular phone, cable and VoIP explosion, we can make long distance calls with virtually no worries about a long distance call impacting our cellular bill like land line phone calls used to. Unfortunately for my mother and aunt, they missed that curve. Too much time and too few calls over that time had left them with fond and friendly memories from a time in the '70's and '80's long past.
I was always curious about my aunt and her two children when I was younger. My mother could never find my aunt's number by the time I was well into my 20's. Then I got so busy with my own life, wife and children I never took the time necessary to press any of my other known relatives on the matter. My uncle passed passed in the mid 2000's. His life had taken some difficult turns and he never, ever took time to for the welfare of his two long lost children down South. I remember my grandfather not being too proud of my uncle's behavior up in New York and the issues he got involved in.
Well, I've been calling myself a modern man, who is not afraid of using Social Media and modern computer technology. This has paid off. I've traced my family roots back to a man born in the mid 1860's. He was the father of my grandfather, my mother's grandfather, my great grandfather. He was either born a freed slave or freed after being born a slave. His children, my grand aunts and uncles stayed mostly in the South but some did migrate as far North as Ohio.
Then I did the ultimate. After confirming his partial information, via an online family history search company, I reached out to my long lost cousin via the Social Media. He, his sister and mother have all reached back to me and my family. It has been nothing less than cheers and tears. We have all agreed that we cannot change what has happened in the past, but we can change how we interact with one another from here forward.f We must go past the Sins of Our Fathers for not keeping us together and find a way to acknowledge our common heritage and existence. I've chronicled the emotions of this history in my poem "The Sins of Our Fathers".
There are other relatives that I would like to bring into the fold. Those relatives include my cousin's half brother who still lives in the NYC area. I am still hoping to hear back from my extended relatives up in Ohio. I feel as if the spirit of our great grandfather is somehow coming alive through me and calling for his offspring to finally reach out and greet one another after 50 or more years of being apart.
Reach back to me family. Reach back.
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