Ravin's Ramblings

Tuesday morning a 50 year old mystery was solved. With the help of some strangers from Colorado, the support of my sister, and a report from the National Transportation Board of Safety, I learned that the brother I had never met passed away in 1993. He was one year younger than I am now when he died. Life is not fair and sometimes it is down right cruel.

Tuesday afternoon, I had the horrible task of telling my terminally ill father the news. I would have given anything not to have to tell him but he was going to find out if I told him or not. I wanted him to hear from a family member instead of a stranger or God forbid, reading it on the CNN ticker (I will not go in to why that was a legitimate fear). It is the worst thing in the world to rob a man of hope. We were all so sure this story would have a happy ending.

For the first time in my life, I find myself having serious faith questions. I never wavered when my father was diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma. I never wavered when I nearly died after my son was born. I never wavered when my sister nearly died in a car accident or even when my husband went to war. This event, though…it’s too cruel.

Why is it that this cannot have a happy ending? My father held on to hope for nearly 50 years that he would find my brother, who was just a little boy when he was stolen from him. He kept his faith. He never faltered. We searched for years. Thousands have been spent trying to track him down. It is adding insult to injury knowing that in addition to everything else, we were most likely scammed. That parasites just saw an opportunity to make a buck. Why did my father not learn of this before now? Why was he never informed?

At first, I only felt how it affected my father. But now that I’ve had some time to think and absorb, there is a definite hole in my life. A void where there had always been hope and purpose, and now there is no reason to keep looking, no hope of meeting my brother, of seeing he and my father reunited, of ever even buying him a beer. I don’t understand how I can mourn the loss of someone I’ve never met, but I am. It’s there, this empty space where my brother was once out there and alive somewhere, and now he’s not.

I find my faith somehow…lacking when it comes to this situation. I’ve been curious on what other people believe. After a few glasses of wine last nigh, I probed my friends somewhat relentlessly on their experiences with the afterlife. Did they believe in ghosts, did they believe in reincarnation (apart from the Christian beliefs), did they think that you might get the opportunity to do it all over again. Would it be possible that somewhere out there, my brother is still hanging around, waiting to send a message to my father, or coming back in the form of a newborn babe.

I find that I want the bible to have gotten it wrong, that we don’t have to wait until we die to be reunited with our loved ones. That there is still a possibility for this story to have a happy ending. I suppose if I were Catholic, I would feel guilty over this. But God and I are tight. He knows I need some time. And I know my Dad’s happy ending went to someone else.

There is divine irony in this terrible story. When I was 16 years old, two years after I stole my first glimpse into a shoebox that was the remains of this other life my father had before my sister and I were born, I decided I was going to look for my brother. There was this new thing out there, called the internet, and maybe I could use it to locate him. So I enlisted the help of my best friend, Jon, and he brought me a list of everyone by that name in the United States and their addresses and phone numbers. I contacted all of them. One was the same age, and many other similarities. They were both C. Brian and went by Brian. Instead of sharing my brother’s birthday, he shared the day but the month was one month earlier. He also had not seen his father since he was five. Unfortunately, the more we talked, the more we learned we were not actually related. His father’s name was Edward and his mother’s name was totally different.

Crestfallen that he was not my long lost brother, but still feeling a sort of shared camaraderie with him, I did what I would want someone to do for my own brother in that situation. With my friend Jon’s help at procuring the information, a list of all of the Edwards in the US that shared the same name as his father and their contact information, I sent it to the other Brian. I included a note that wished him luck. I never heard from him again.

However, a year and a half later, I got a Christmas card from his mother. She included a letter and a photo. The other Brian had been reunited with his father. Their happy reunion occurred a few months before his father’s death. I always thought that story was proof of God’s divine intervention. A butterfly flaps it’s wings in the Amazon and the result is a dying man gets to be reunited with his son before he passes over. Now I’m just filled with the question of why. Why does the other Brian have a happy ending but my Brian does not?

If only I had more courage. If only I’d started my search a few years earlier, maybe I would have found something. If only...If, if, if….why, why, why?