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Family, Insainity and Facebook
2009-11-09, 10:47 p.m.

Throughout the better part of my life there has been one truth: My mom's brother (Uncle Mike) does not associate with the family.

There are a few pictures of him, his wife and my older cousin (Adam) at my grandparents' house or around for a holiday, but that was in my very, very early life. Sometime around my 5th year, they disappeared from existence. This is figurative, of course, because they still lived in the same house, to doors down from the high school and essentially everything was the same but there was no longer a family tie there. I remember one time going to my uncle's house with my mom and brother and her walking up to the door. I don't think she ever made it inside, but walked back up the driveway to the car yelling obscenities at my uncle. That was the last time for that...

I'm told that Mom and Uncle Mike were close as children, so I can only imagine how heartbreaking whatever it is that happened must've been. It's one thing to have a deceased sibling by way of fate; I'm not sure how I'd feel if my brother were still alive but chose the "I'm dead to you" route. Wow...

I think I'm a little hypersensitive to this considering my brother's death, but it does add a new perspective. I wish he were here to talk to about this. I know he'd have had something to say. Oddly, I wonder if TJ's death is related at all to the recent weirdness via Facebook.

So, the point... I've been Facebook-friended to my younger cousin, Allyse for some time now. I can't say I wasn't surprised when she accepted, as I had no idea she even knew who I was, but we've never communicated, so maybe she still doesn't? She has something like 600 friends, so I'm sure at that point it's hard to know who you know and from where, but maybe that's just me. So occasionally, I search through her friends to see if her brother, Adam, ever joined the ranks of us Facebook zombies since I did know him in high school. It was a rocky start, but we eventually did become acquainted by way of being in Marching Band together and him being in my ex-boyfriend's circle of friends. It was nice while it lasted--I wonder sometimes if he thinks ill of me following my breakup with my ex, but in the end, it doesn't matter much--we haven't spoken since high school. Another 12 years lost...

In Allyse's friends I found someone who, without a profile picture and name slightly altered, I strongly suspected to be my uncle. Besides being friended to Allyse he was friended to someone who appears to be married to Adam and all of the other friends were older, consistent with his age. So I sent him a friend request, kind of as an inside joke between myself and myself. I toyed with the idea of being a supreme smart-ass and using the "suggest friends" option to suggest all the rest of the family who is on Facebook. I decided against it--it's not really my style. I prefer to hang back in the shadows with a "I see you..." grin. Anyway, I expected that if it was him he'd kind of get a "damn, they found me" frustrated look and ignore my request, and if it wasn't him then the person would ignore me anyway.

He accepted.

My first thought was "it wasn't my uncle and I've just friended a total stranger." Well, it is my uncle, though still a stranger. No communication yet, but I can't help feeling like this means something. On the other hand, I wonder if they're not laughing at me because they figure I'll think it means something. A day after the friending, my aunt (uncle's wife) clicked the "like" button to the posting on my uncle's page (that probably doesn't mean much to someone not familiar with facebook). That's doubly odd because the family always thought that she was involved with the disappearance from existence.

So strange...

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