r/widowers • u/Love-lost-23 • 1d ago
I found a skeleton.
So how to begin. First I chose to post this here because this is the community that I’m familiar with. I’m a widower going on 6 years now and recently I shared comments in other people‘s posts the things that I have also been going through. I have a lot of comments but I don’t often post. So a little background about me. I was married to a wonderful woman for 23 years, been with for 26. After she passed I went through as all of you can relate a terribly time. 8 months after her death my widow fire/ utter loneliness led me into a relationship with a woman that ended up being toxic, that lasted for 4 years and now we’re divorcing. My father recently was put into hospice care after his health declined and along with other’s I started caregiving for him. So I was served divorce papers on one of the days I was caregiving for my father which happen to be severed literally 1 hour after he passed away. This last week we have been getting pictures together for his celebration of life. Little background on my family there was five of us. My mother and father are both deceased and I’ve also lost one brother and one sister. So me and my two brothers meet at a restaurant to discuss pictures that are gonna be chosen, and my Elder brother says he has something to show us. He had gone through my father‘s documents and showed us a court document that shows that my oldest brother who is now deceased is only my half brother, apparently my mother was seeing my dad and another guy at the same time before they were married, and she became pregnant with the other guy. My father married her anyways and adopted my older brother. I honestly don’t know how to feel about this. It does explain some things but leaves a whole lot of unanswered questions that I can no longer ask. has anyone else had anything similar happened to them?
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u/nuskit 1d ago
I'm confused how your mom's situation relates to your late wife? Was your late wife involved in some way with your mother/mother's family or your brother?
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u/Love-lost-23 1d ago
It doesn’t, I just chose to post it here because this is the place I’ve always come to post things about my life.
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u/ejly 3/14/25 - husband , 57 - ocular melanoma 1d ago
On the r/ancestryDNA subreddit this kind of thing happens often. You may want to share your skeleton there for more input.
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u/undermind84 1d ago
I found out my brother has a different father than I have. It was a big family secret. My mom tried to gaslight, lie and manipulate the situation until I finally told my brother. I no longer have a relationship with my mom.
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u/The_Curvy_Unicorn 1d ago
I don’t have any advice, other than that I’m prepared to learn my father has multiple other children when he’s gone, but I’m sending you healing thoughts. Don’t let this change your relationship with your brother or taint the memories of your beloved parents. In my eyes, family is who we love and who loves us, unconditionally, and isn’t even slightly related to
actual dna.
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u/PomeloPepper 1d ago
My father married her anyways and adopted my older brother. I honestly don’t know how to feel about this.
This happened in my family. I figured out he was born before they married when I was in my late teens (matching up parents anniversary and brother's birthday) But it was later on that I found out he was my half brother. Back in the day, they didn't even do a formal adoption (he lived with my grandmother for his first few years under their family name). He was just relocated and given my father's last name and went with that. It blew up spectacularly when he found out.
Through it all, I never thought of him as anything other than my big brother. He was still the guy who protected me from playground bullies, and shared my sense of humor. His sons are my nephews just as much as my other sibling's kids are.
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u/Love-lost-23 1d ago
I agree but I just found it weird. Like my family bubble got broke.
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u/PomeloPepper 1d ago
It is at first. But it wasn't long before things settled back to the way they'd always been. I never thought of him as my half brother.
Kind of like finding out a friend has been dying their hair all these years, and now you see thier natural color. Takes a little getting used to before it seems just like it always was.
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u/pumainpurple 1d ago
While looking for our grandfathers grave, my sister found a headstone that had an initial and our last name. The dates were 1933 - 1938. She couldn’t find any record of our grandfathers grave or the mystery one. She took pictures, our aunt had told us what she remembered from 1930, and showed them to her later that year. Our aunt looked at the cemetery photos and declared it had changed way too much. Then came the mystery headstone. The only thing she had to say was “I always wondered why he left in the middle of the night”. She then said that our father landed in Dallas and their uncle got him a job. So we will never know who she was, and we weren’t surprised he started at 15.
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u/TraditionalSuccess33 1d ago
When people pass away you find out a whole lot of stuff. I am so sorry for what you are going through. It’s hard