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Father and daughter reconnected after 45 years... kind of

Father and daughter reconnected after 45 years... kind of

Posted: 22 Nov 2014 10:49AM GMT
Classification: Query
My mother never knew her father, and after I used ancestry.com to help her find out about her mother's family impressed with the information and how fast we got it, she dared me to find her father. That was in 2012.

On February 15, 2014 after spending 20+ hours on facebook, public regristries, calling 411, at 7:58 PM I made a phone call to a woman named Sonia. After a few questions concerning a mutual connection I told her "Ma'am, all these dots connect, and you're my aunt." Puzzled, she begged me to explain how this was true and after mentioning the fact that there was a sister carrying their last name - something Sonia's father had told her and her siblings to be true - she stopped me and said, "I knew it! I knew we had a sister and we've been trying to find her! How? Where is she?!"

I walked back into the house and my mother overheard my conversation and locked eyes with me as she turned pale, shaking her head with a strong "No! Tell me it's not true!" look on her face, I turned to the phone, asked Sonia one last question and passing the phone to my mother, tears like Niagara, I said "Mommy, would you like to talk to your sister, Sonia?"

After about 40 minutes of crying in Spanish, my mom passes the phone back to me and Sonia, in hysterics begs me, "Elliott, I know your mom is a little shaken right now, but please convince her to come to us, I don't care that it's late! I want to meet my baby sister tonight!"

We go.

By the end of the night we'd exchanged a folklore that matches on both sides of the family - Grandpa was sitting in my pregnant grandmother's kitchen eating chicken soup in a white wifebeater tank top, and Fina (Sonia's mom) also pregnant, comes knocking on the door to take back her husband. Talk about drama, but that's neither here nor there.

We exchanged photographs of eachother and my mother finally got a photograph of what her father looks like. He is alive and well today and lives in Puerto Rico. He left in Jan of 2014 to the island after winning a battle with lung cancer (Yay, papa!)

He became very emotional when he received the phone call from his eldest daughter, Yvetter, saying that his daughter Sandra had finally found them.

Jokingly, before the night ended and we left Sonia's home, her brother, Anibal said to us, "I don't know if this girl is really my sister; I want a damn DNA test!" - I got home and compared photos of my grandpa to my mom to see if there was any resemblance, and I emailed the results to Sonia saying: "Tell Anibal we don't need a DNA Test."

Thank you, ancestry.com - and other sources too! Now where's my airtime!?

Sincerely,
E.Lassi-Lugo

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