Life Stories
FACEBOOK AND FATE
MORGAN ST. JAMES
Normally this feature is written by one of our contributors, but on the weekend of January 7, 2017 something so special happened, I decided that this issue’ s Life Story would be one of mine.
It was Saturday night, and I was getting ready to go out for the evening. I looked at the clock on my computer, and saw I had about 15 minutes before I was to be picked up. So what does one do in a situation like that? Um hm. Go onto Facebook and check a few things.
I scrolled down past a few messages and came to one where my Facebook friend’ s husband has cancer and they were talking about treatment. So I looked at some of the comments and was stopped dead by the name of the second commenter. Lisa’ s name included“ Shifrin” before her married name, which is my maiden name, and it was spelled exactly the way my family spelled it. I looked closer. Could this possibly be a long lost relative? It isn’ t that popular of a name.
My father died when I was 17. We had moved to California when I was 13, and a few years after he died we lost track of most of his family in Chicago. I knew I had several cousins, and remembered some of them from when we lived in Chicago, but as time passed, our contact with members of the Chicago was as frozen as a midwest winter. I stared at the name again as excitement built. I clicked on the link to that person’ s page.
Yes! She went to college in Waco, Texas. That was where my beloved Uncle Bernie lived. I quickly dashed off a message asking if she might be a relative, and gave my father’ s name. Since I had a few more minutes, I went back to her photos and scrolled through them. The first one that I took more than a glance at was an older photo of a youngish man holding his little daughter’ s hand. I was struck by his resemblance to my late father. So I kept scrolling.
Then it happened almost simultaneously. An older black and white photo of a young man whose face I immediately recognized jumped out at me. It WAS Uncle Bernie who had passed away in 1994! Just as I was pondering that, a return message came in. The name that had grabbed my attention replied,“ Yes, we are related. I am your Uncle Bernie’ s daughter from his second marriage.”
OMG. I realized she and her brother had visited my home in Woodland Hills, CA. when Uncle Bernie traveled to California to see his other daughter in the late
FLORIDA, 1949
1949 PONTIAC MY DAD DROVE TO FLORIDA
ME AT 17- THE YEAR MY FATHER DIED
THE FIRST PHOTO WHERE I SAW THE RESEMBLANCE TO MY DAD
WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE
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17
WINTER 2017