I've been away from PB since last March, when my mother died. I had a lot to do, mourning, handling all her affairs, coming to terms with everything after a year of taking care of her which emotionally and physically drained me.

And then, in late July, something was placed in my lap, figuratively speaking, that I still cannot figure out why, from a spiritual point of view. I'll tell you basically what it was but this will sound like a movie. Part of me wishes it was one.

A got a call in late July from a local hospital, asking if I knew a certain man with my same surname. I said that he was a distant cousin, I'd never met him but I knew who he was from my genealogical records and the fact that my late father used to go fishing with him when I was little.

Anyway, he had been living in a very bad part of town, was financially destitute and suffering from mild dementia, and was very dehydrated and emaciated. The social worker found him and called the ambulance.

The hospital SW looked in the phone book and found only me as a next of kin. I had to go to the hospital to sign paperwork to admit my cousin into hospice care (they tested him, found out he had advanced cancer), even though I'd never met him. I didn't even know if he had any children.

After I did that, I got to meet him. He mumbled something about being a veteran, etc but I just figured it was dementia setting in more.

The SW then told me I should start making burial plans, since they didnt expect him to live out the week. I asked her for the key to his apt, because I knew if he was in fact a vet, the military would handle the burial.

I went to his apt to try to find his military discharge papers. Miraculously I found a worn copy. I also found all his medals! He had not been just babbling after all...he was a combat vet of WW2, had fought in one of the bloodiest battles of the war, in Okinawa. He also took part in liberating the Philippines, and occupying Japan (this was all on his discharge papers.)

I realized that if I didn't arrange the proper funeral with military honors, he might not get it. So I set to work, contacting the funeral home, etc I also grabbed some correspondence from his apt that looked like letters from people to him...I wanted to go home, do so research, see if I could find any closer next of kin than me (he was from a part of the family that never kept in touch with the rest of us, long story it seems!)

Anyway, I figured out from the mail that he had a son but they had become estranged decades before. I tried to find the son online...I tried pay search engines...nothing.

I kept searching even right up to the funeral...and two days before the funeral, I finally hit some pay dirt. I found some letters sent to him in the 1980s from a girl who sounded as if she were his daughter, yet she had a diff last name. I tracked her down via the internet, and found out she was from a relationship he'd had years before, in the 1960s. Her mother always told her my cousin was the father, but had no proof. The girl said to me, "Now that he's dead, I guess I'll never find out for sure."

I said, "Well, he's dead but not buried". I then called the funeral home and asked them to remove some samples of his hair (follicles intact), for a DNA test. I then sent them to her via certified mail.

If she turns out to be his biological daughter, I will give her whatever I rescued from his apt when the landlord cleared it out the day after the funeral. It seems she is the only child he has left (one of my cousin's neighbors told me his son, whom I could not find, actually died about 10 years ago.)

I can't even begin to explain how frazzled all of this has left me. I don't understand why G-d gave this to me, so soon after losing my mother. I really didn't think I could handle something of this magnitude so soon, but somehow I got through it.

I'm just happy that my cousin had the funeral with full military honors that he deserved. From what friends with military backgrounds tell me after seeing his discharge papers, he saw some of the most horrific fighting of the Pacific theater during WW2...neighbors and the social workers told me he suffered from PTSD, alcoholism and nightmares. And at the end of his life, drug addicts in his neighborhood had been taking advantage of him (he, apparently, was a very trusting, kind old man, with dementia that didn't help matters.)

After having to live like that, I was happy that he got the respect in death that he did not get in life.

I'm a different person, in some ways, after all of this. I just don't understand why G-d sent this my way. I guess I'm telling you all of this to let you know that the wound is still fresh, and my heart is still very much on the outside of my body after all this. I came back to PB to try to put this behind me, take my mind off of it, put it on other things (debating always did help me with that!) But I'm still very emotionally freaked out from all this.

Well, welcome back, it's not the same with out the other side.



And as they say: "Everything has a meaning, somethings you just have to let it play out and watch it unfold."

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"And Lord, I pray that you would guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their god is bigger than you, if that happens. So I pray that you will step forward and honor your own name with all that happens between now and Election Day."--Rev. Arnold Conrad

My mom used to say that "Everything happens for a reason". Then I remember something Mother Theresa once said: "G-d never gives us anything we can't handle...I just wish He didn't trust me with so much."

Scorpio Rose,

What a beautiful thing you did. Thank you for sharing the story. Yes, I believe Divine Providence gave you an opportunity to step into the shoes of a saint, and you stepped right up to the plate!

May all Heaven's blessings fall upon you for your kindness and compassion.

May you be rewarded a hundred times over for what you have done!

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"Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes." -- Walt Whitman, Leaves Of Grass

My belief is all things are composed of a circle. You just opened a circle within your extended family that had been almost closed.
Probably your parent knew and cared for this cousin and you were able to do for him what they would have done.
The way you extended yourself shows the beauty within you.
May you always walk in the Creator's rainbow.