So, so sorry to hear this, Cartooniverse. PM me if you’d like to discuss it further or if I may help.
I had an uncle that I’ve only seen in a WWII photo hanging in my grandmother’s room. My oldest sister has a vague memory of him because he scolded her about something, when she was young, but that’s it. He was long gone before I was born. My Dad said that he returned to Hawaii after the war, then moved to the New York and never came back. In my Dad’s words, “He’s either a millionaire or in jail, either way he doesn’t want to be found.”
About a decade ago, I finally heard the rest of the story from my Mom, decades after my Dad passed away. My grandfather disowned him because he was marrying a white woman (I’m Okinawan/Japanese) and this was in the early 50’s. He must have had a change of heart, because two of my other uncles also married white women later.
Sometime in the 60’s, my grandfather went to visit my uncle, but my uncle refused to meet him at the airport…
About a decade ago, my Mom, sisters and a couple girl cousins had dinner with his only daughter that came to Hawaii because said she always wanted to his side of the family to which he said “You can meet with them when I’m dead.” (Yep, my Dad and he had a way with words!) And she did just that.
Another memory and one of the many reasons I have no interest in doing an ancestry search, too may skeletons in the closet.
I don’t know and don’t want to know the whole story, but my paternal grandfather was disowned by his family for some reason. Whether it was because he immigrated to Hawaii from Okinawa or left Okinawa because of the disowning is unknown. I do know that he brought his younger brother over from Okinawa and that’s the only family member I’ve ever met. To my knowledge, my grandfather never returned home. When I asked him why he never visited his homeland, his translated answer through my Dad was “There’s nothing there for me.” This is the same story for many immigrants, but especially for those who came to Hawaii expecting to return home, but where too ashamed to admit they weren’t able to be the success they thought they would be.
As I talked about above, my Dad did meet someone in his family in Okinawa and brought my Aunt’s ashes home, but I think he just met one person there and never talked about his family there.
My paternal grandmother was a picture bride, so there was never any talk about her family. And I think my maternal grandmother was also a picture bride, so again no talk about her or my paternal grandfather’s lives before coming to Hawaii. Just that they came here at a young age expecting to return home, but married, had children and stayed here for the rest of their lives.
I think my maternal grandfather did visit Japan a couple of times, but IIRC, my grandmother didn’t go with him, the reason given was that she didn’t like to fly. Hmmm…
My sympathies Catooniverse. My brother did that to my mother (and by extension me) 15 or so years ago. It takes time, but It does get better.
My father had a one-month brother who died during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918. He was never mentioned and we only found out about him when my grandfather turned 100 and we dug around the family history.
My father’s mentally ill sister cut off contact with everyone in the family. After several failed attempts to contact her, the rest of the family gave up. After 25 years or so, she allowed a little contact with some nieces and nephews, but only after her parents and siblings had all died before her.
My condolences on the loss of your older brother who you never knew. I guess everyone reacts differently to this sort of thing. My wife had several older siblings who died at birth, and while the loss of these children absolutely devastated my wife’s mother until her dying day, it’s never particularly seemed to bother my wife from what I’ve been able to tell.
But (IMHO, of course), I can’t see why your youngest sibling would be so upset over finding out the circumstances of their birth. At least their birth was planned and desired.
Lots of people don’t have that. Me, for example. I was the result of an unplanned pregnancy in my mom’s freshman year in college. This changed the course of her whole life. If anything, I’ve always felt a little guilty about this, even though it wasn’t my fault.
There are other examples in my family, too. For instance, it was common knowledge that my grandfather really wanted a son, which always made me wonder about how the four daughters who were born first felt about this. 
if a son had come along sooner, one or more of them may never have been born…because after my uncle was born, my grandparents didn’t have any more children.
I’m so sorry for your loss. I presume it’s similar to grieving for a child lost to death.
I wish you peace.
I agree everyone’s reactions to these sorts of family oddities are idiosyncratic. Just adding some more explanation FWIW to anyone listening. …
For us all, it was mostly the shock of discovering all this so late in life. If I’d been 7 when they told me about my late older brother I doubt it would have been a big deal then or since. Nor was it a big deal 6 months later. Prior to this thread the last time I thought about this event was the last time a thread like this came up years ago and I posted to it.
Like everyone else, our parents were some ways short of being ideal people, but they were conscientious parents and we thought them to be pretty scrupulously honest. Not knowing all those years felt like a betrayal. Well intentioned, but a betrayal nonetheless. What else might we have been left out of? That all this came out a few years after Mom & Dad were gone and the extended family was gathered together after Grandma had just died put some extra spice in the sauce.
For youngest bro it was “I’m only alive because he’s dead”. A form of survivor guilt common in war and multi-fatality accidents. It’s not a lifelong problem for him, but it was a weird few weeks to absorb the new reality.
All of everyone’s life is highly contingent. How many sperm were in competition that night you or I was conceived? Tens, if not hundreds, of thousands. What if a different one had won the race? At a minimum you or I might be she not he. Or materially taller, shorter, smarter, dumber, etc. Or a thousand other minor variations.
How many trivial decisions by your parents or by yourself have affected your path to your current middle age? The mind boggles. But sometimes you get a clear crystalline vision of one particular branch point and of the difference in the two routes. That clarity can be unsettling. And doubly so when it was about a branch point now decades in the past.
There was a great-uncle on my Dad’s side who was said to have disappeared. That is, he left and no one knew where he had gone. He was not disappeared in the sense of this thread because that side of the family couldn’t stop complaining about things he had done if their lives depended on it.
I’ve been gathering some family information over the years. A few years ago, the great-uncles death information was released to the internet. He died in Camarillo State Hospital, a mental hospital. So there may have been a person or two who knew where he went, originally. It would have had to have been one of the great-greats, though. None of the greats were any good at keeping secrets.
When I was 15 years old, I found out that my father had a former wife and family (two daughters). I.e., I had two older half-sisters that I didn’t know about until my late teens. My parents were immigrants from Europe (to the USA), and his ex-wife and daughters were still back in the old country. The reason we were finally informed was because my sisters were about to spend a summer in the old country visiting extended family, and my parents figured this information would eventually slip from someone.
At first we were all shocked - me and my three older siblings. Pretty quickly we all just put it out of our minds. A few years later when I was in college, I became angry. Why did my parents keep this information from us? I felt like I was robbed of the opportunity to have a relationship with my half-sisters because of some stupid reason that doesn’t make any sense. I know divorce was rarer and more shameful in the 1950s, but cutting off all contact just seems crazy. (I believe now it was my mother who pushed for this “arrangement”. And my dad just went along with it. Went along with abandoning his children. SMH…)
Luckily there was a happy ending. After my mom passed away, my father reconnected with his daughters. We visited them in Europe, and they visited us in the States. I am now on very good terms with my half-sisters, and have stayed with them a couple of more times on vacations to Europe. Luckily they were very welcoming, and more-or-less forgiving toward my dad. I feel very fortunate to count them among my extended family.
You should’ve met Charles Lindbergh: Charles Lindbergh - Wikipedia
Mentioned it before - Mom was born Amish, she left for her rumspringa and worked in an aircraft factory during WW2, decided she liked being ‘English’ and went to college, met my dad and married. I have an entire half of the family not only have I never met, but couldn’t even do more than name her 3 brothers because the names were mentioned to me when she was telling me about growing up.
My wife’s brother is almost like that. For a while he lived with his older brother, but they didn’t get along that well. One day while older brother was on vacation, he moved out. He didn’t even lock the door behind him.
He is in sporadic contact with another brother, so we know he is still alive. But that’s about it.