Finding Family In Unexpected Places 2/2

      Anyway, so I set up a date and time to come meet them, think it was that very day after work, and I sat down with them to have a talk about my father. They were raising a little boy, I can't remember his name, but his mother was my father's niece (his sister's daughter), but she had died some years ago from AIDS. I never met any of them, so her death shouldn't have bothered me much, but it did. Just the fact that she died before I could ever know her kind of upset me. But, the meeting went well, and they gave me a lot of information, some of which I was not prepared for. I found out I had eight other brothers and sisters! ARE YOU KIDDING ME? What did my father do, whore around from the time I was born? Gods almighty how pissed was I? I could not believe that my father was not raising any of these children, the same as he had done with me.

      Soon after the meeting with the two aunts of my father, I met one of my sisters and her mother. She was six years old, and sweet as can be. Her mother had information for another of the mothers who had two children who were also my siblings by my father. I met a younger brother and sister that day as well. It was a little overwhelming, but being the oldest, I felt very protective over these new found siblings, just like a momma bear.
      It wasn't long after meeting these new family members that I moved from West Virginia to North Carolina, got married, had a child, and an apartment fire, which cost me all my valued contact information for my new siblings. I was heart-broken that I had lost this information, and had no way of getting any of it back at the time, due to our financial situation. We didn't even have a phone so that I could try to reconnect with the aunts. It was very disheartening.
      This brings me to the year 2010. Facebook can be a devious devil, but also an angel of hope. My sister, who was six years old when I met her, found me on Facebook. From there, we systematically tracked down all but two of our siblings, these being under the age of 18, and their mother preventing them from knowing anything about us, so for now, we bide our time until they are 18, and can make their own decisions whether they want to know about the siblings or not.
      Just recently, we were able to reconnect with the last of the older ones. It's like Christmas every time we find a new sibling. At first, I worry that they will have no interest in knowing about the family, but that has yet to be the case for any of them. It's very exciting finding out what they have been up to, and how they feel about finding out they have a much larger family than they ever thought. However, it's also very heart-breaking to hear some of them speak about how sad they were growing up and wondering why our father wanted nothing to do with them. Some of them even knew they had siblings out there by him, but did not have names or ways to find them. Of course, all of this just pisses me off even more, knowing that our father has done this to them, has no interest in ever making it right, and is too worried about where his next drug score will come, to ever be a father. Grr! I hate that man.
      I have spoken to him three more times since that one time back in 1994 when he called me after writing me two letters. The second time he called, I basically told him to bugger off, because I had found out about all of the children he had fathered but never raised, and I was so pissed off, I wanted nothing to do with him. Last year, I tracked him down, but only so I could get the information about the family that only he knows, because his aunts have since passed away, his sister and uncle are both dead, and I wasn't sure how to find his father, until recently. Suffice it to say, there are many letters in the works in order to connect with these extended family members.
      It is very exciting but also frustrating. Because I am the oldest of nine children, I feel responsible for keeping everyone together, so that we never lose contact again. We've all spent way too much time apart from each other, to ever go through it again.