Brother Where Art Thou?

My mom's oldest brother left the family many years ago. Nobody knows exactly the reason but him. People have speculated that he didn't like my grandmother's second husband. That could be the case but like I said nobody knows but him. For years he lived with my great grandfather which would have been his grandfather and he spent some time living with my great aunt who lived next door to my aunt. Then he moved out on his own and my great grandfather only saw him maybe once every 6 months and then it went to once a year and from there it went down fast. He was lucky to see him every 2-3 years. He didn't even know that he had died. My great aunt said that he came looking for him and she had to tell him he had died. From what I heard when my grandfather was sick, his dad, he worked for the city of some city, and my grandfather's second wife kept in semi touch with him, when he wanted to call her probably or come by whenever. He had changed his name, nobody knew if he legally changed it or not but I heard over the years he went by many just to make it harder for anyone to find him.

I remember the last time I saw him was probably when I was 14 or 15 and my aunt brought him to our house. She had seen him at a store or something and he followed her to our house so we could see him too. He gave us a number to a phone that was disconnected and numbers to an address that he moved from decades ago according to the woman that lived there. I thought it was pretty pointless to ask him in the first place since it was obvious that he didn't want to stay in contact with his family.

After that, maybe about 10 years later my mom happened to be working with a woman who told my mom she was dating a nice man and she showed my mom a picture of him and it was my uncle. My mom told the woman it was her brother and a little of the story. A year later she told my mom that they broke up.

The last sighting of him was at a funeral for my mom's first cousin, and his too. This cousin was a big deal in the community so practically everyone who was anyone had heard about her passing and the funeral so my sister said that she was standing there after the funeral holding her youngest son and out of the blue a man walked over to her and asked if she was my mother's daughter and she said yes and he introduced himself. They talked briefly before he disappeared into the crowd.

It is sort of funny that both my mom and my aunt, my mom's younger sister, both talk about him from time to time like they had just saw him yesterday. Neither have seen him in decades and if they saw him today they both probably would not recognize him since he should be about 82 years old now. They don't know if he ever married or had kids or even where he lives. But, every now and then my mom will say his name and ask if he has been around lately. My answer is always the same. No he hasn't but her other brother has. Her younger brother comes over about once a week or so.  She even asked him if he saw him and he laughs and says no not in years. My aunt had a birthday earlier this month and she said oh she had a birthday and her brother's birthday is on the 18th. I never knew when his birthday was nobody ever talked about it. But, she knew. But, that doesn't surprise me because she always kept up with everyone's birthday's.

All I know is that brother has been on both of their brains. When that used to happen my grandmother would say that the person must be doing something when two or more think about you at the same time. I don't know what he is doing but I hope he is doing well. I also hope that I never dated one of my cousins, his kids-kids back in the day and not know it. (LOL)