Estranged
To connect to my family, my three sisters,
and my three brothers,
I purchased a membership on Ancestry.
I found the tree my niece created
it didn’t contain a fourth sister.
We are estranged;
I no longer belong to them or they to me.
Not belonging means you don’t exist.
People who no longer belong to their families
are horrible people, right?
Serial Killers who commit terrible crimes,
and whose names and faces
are plastered across the nightly news
don’t belong.
Their families scurry for cover,
changing their phone numbers and addresses.
Many homeless people who roam the streets
don’t belong.
Their tired, worn bodies
found frozen in cardboard boxes
after a January snowstorm
lie unclaimed in the local mortuary.
Searching for my ancestors
to find my people, my connection
led me to another lost niece’s family tree.
We both search for connections in the past
on genealogy websites
because those don’t exist in the present.
I texted with her in June,
and we shared pictures.
She sent me a photo of her daughter
with a sweet, shy smile
who looks like my mother.
I sent her snapshots of my grandsons,
chubby-cheeked, like their grandmother.
Last week, Ancestry sent me to her tree
to look for clues about my grandfather.
Under my parents’ pictures
I saw my younger brother’s name
with two dates and a dash in between.
He died in February.
I messaged his daughter
She said they had a big funeral
“Why didn’t you come?”
Nobody told me.
I no longer belong to them
nor they to me.
We are officially,
Permanently,
estranged.
About the Author: Amy Smyth Miller is a soon-to-be (happily) retired educator of 30 years. She lives in the beautiful Pacific Northwest with her husband, Captain Crusty, and their rescue dachshund, Oscar Meyer Wiener. She has published essays in Persimmon Tree, Muleskinner Journal, The Healing and CPTSD Chronicles, and Legacies: A Whatcom Writes Anthology. Her Memoir, HOME, will be released on September 15th.
Image Credit: Paul Klee “The Harbinger of Autumn [green and violet gradation with orange accent] (1922)Public domain image courtesy of Artvee
As It Ought To Be 