It's been a year, so much has changed.

It was a year ago today that my wife discovered the notice announcing my biological father's death. At the time I was both surprised, and strangely disconnected from the news, not unlike reading the obits of strangers in the local paper. I'd never met the man, hadn't really given him much thought throughout my life, and then to get that bit of news.

I'd always assumed I'd meet him, at some point in the future, on my terms. That, obviously, wasn't going to happen.

I started digging into his background, trying to get as much info as I could on his (and my) immediate family. Lots of offspring and ex-wives floating around there. Wow. On paper, the guy sounded like he couldn't keep it in his pants. What was his dealio?

I compiled a rather extensive list of folks who were directly related to him (ex-wives, kids, siblings), and started branching out from there (daughters-in-law, nieces, nephews, etc.). I then started scoping around on Facebook, and performed searches, trying to gather as much info as I could about the people I was most closely related to (my bio-siblings).

I wasn't really sure what I would do with all that info. Would I ever contact anyone? If not, what was the point of pulling all this info together? Maybe just to satisfy my curiousity? An exercise in information gathering? Who knows. If nothing else, his death (which I considered premature at 62), gave me a legitimate reason to reach out and get some facts as to the cause of death. Should there be anything I should start looking for in my own health?

I did manage to work up the courage to call my dead bio-dad's sister, shortly after getting the news that my bio-dad had passed. She seemed rather remote (and who can blame her), and delivered some information I found rather shocking, none of which I'll go into here. She also provided the number of his first ex-wife, and the name of a buddy he'd known since high school. His cause of death, which was probably highly preventable (if not treatable), gave me a great sense of relief. With that pressing detail out of the way, I wasn't sure I would contact anyone else. I mean, I had the health information I sought, would contacting anyone in his family cause a ruckus? I certainly didn't want that.

11 months passed, and the pressing question of whether to contact anyone had largely fallen by the wayside, though I occassionally wondered if the aunt with whom I'd spoken had passed along to anyone that I'd contacted her. If she had, I wondered if they might be expecting me to make contact. They certainly didn't know how to reach me. If they had been expecting me to drop a dime to say "Hello", were they disappointed in not hearing from me?

I finally decided that it wasn't up to me to be the roadblock. I'd reach out a single time. If I heard from someone, great; if not, that was fine, too.

I crafted a fairly lengthy email, then sent it out to the two of my 4 bio-siblings, for whom I had email addresses. I then pinged each of them with a Facebook message to contact the siblings I'd managed to get through to. One of my emails, immediately bounced, indicating a bad email message. Only 1 sibling got the email, but he passed it along to the others.

To date, I have been in email contact with the youngest brother, but have not heard from any of the other sibilings. I am going to speak with my youngest brother on the phone this afternoon, and what is the 1-year anniversary of discovering the news about my bio-dad's death.

I've also heard back from the first ex-wife, who was nice enough to send me a fairly detailed history of my bio-dad's life, and a few pictures. She said she was going to write out a detailed work and health history, but I've not heard from her in over a week, so I may never hear from her again. That's OK, she owes me nothing, and was nice enough to reach out and answer some questions I had.

She also contacted the high-school buddy, and he reached out to me. We met last Sunday at a Starbucks in Kirkland. He was nice enough to bring me a couple copies of the memorial service program and a picture of their time together in the Air Force boot camp (10 days after high school graduation), in Texas. There they are, my bio-dad, and his buddy, at 17 years old. What a trip.

I'm not sure what else is in store me and my bio-sibs. Am I going to hear from the others? Are we going to be friends? I don't know, we'll just have to see how all this plays out.

It's all too interconnected...

I'm not a FaceBook user. I created an account a few years ago before I quit my job, largely because I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Some young kids had been hired out of college and were raving about how it allowed them to stay in touch with their college friends and family. I'm old school. The people I wanted to stay in touch with already had my contact info. My family is local. Contact me? Phone or email. Easy.

With the discovery that my biological dad passed away last year, I've been on sort of search to find out a bit more about that side of my family. I turned to Facebook to help see if I could piece some of that information together. FB, as much as I avoid it, has been very helpful. It turns out that side of the family is rather large, and rather complicated. It is hard to know exactly how the branches of the family tree are related to each other, but I did my best to try to piece things together. I'm sure my understanding is incomplete, and wrong in some places.

I've browsed numerous Facebook profiles, and I'll be damned if I haven't come across 3 people I know who have links to my biological siblings... I'm sure if I dug deeper, I might find more. Strangely, each of these connections were made through my previous employer. I guess given the size of the previous employer it shouldn't be that surprising, but the "degrees-of-separation" aspect to it is strange. Some of the connections I'm ambivelent about, but others I'd rather not stir up. Two links trace back to one bio-bro, and one traces back to another.

Need to continue digging...

UPDATE: Geez... I just found another. Through what would seemingly be a very tenuous connection, I just found another person I knew in high school, and that was a LONG time ago...

Let's tally:
3 connections through my former employer
1 high school connection

Kevin Bacon can't be that far behind.

It really is a small world.