52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Week 43 Prompt - Lost Contact

2024

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 43

Prompt – Lost Contact

My mother's brother was Wallace Alvin McLaughlin who was born May 5, 1927. My mother was 5 years older than her brother. They were never close to each other. In fact I would say that they were indifferent to each other. My mother married when she was 16 years old and Uncle Wally was only 11years old. 

Vivian Sullivan and Brother Wally Sullivan ca. 1933

Uncle Wally went to university and got his Civil Engineering degree. Uncle Wally and Aunt Phyllis married in 1950. They had 5 children over the years. They lived in many different places within Saskatchewan, Illinois, California, Brazil and eventually settled in Waterloo, Ontario. I feel because of this we rarely visited with them. As a child I remember maybe two times that they came to visit us in Saskatoon. As cousins we really had very little in common. None the less they were our aunt and uncle and cousins. Uncle Wally and Aunt Phyllis did visit Bill and me and the kids while we lived in Regina. I think about 1987. Their mother, my grandmother, Mary McLaughlin died on August 1,1989. They came for the funeral where once again we reconnected. 

The next time I heard from them was when my cousin, Debbie contacted me in fall of 2000. She was organizing a Golden Anniversary party for her parents and had invited me and my siblings to come out to Waterloo to celebrate. Unfortunately none of us was able to make the trip.

Aunt Phyllis and Uncle Wally wintered in Arizona every year. In 2006 we travelled down to Casa Grande to visit them. This was my sister Betty and her husband John, my sister Bonnie and myself. We actually had a pretty good time together. I told them about my beginning work on our family tree and asked Uncle Wally if he could add any stories of him and our mother when they were kids. There were a few but in the end he said he really didn't remember much about that time with his sister. Fair enough.

April 2006 - Uncle Wally and Aunt Phyllis

 

April 2007 - Bonnie, Betty, Aunt Phyllis, Wendy and Uncle Wally

After this Aunt Phyllis and I shared some letters back and forth. Maybe one or two during a year. She would let me know how they were getting on and about her kids. She kept me in the loop when Uncle Wally needed his heart bypass surgery. And when they discovered he had lung cancer. Then a few years later in July 2009 she called me to tell me that Uncle Wally had passed away. It was a two and 1/2 hour conversation about his illness, decline and death. She felt the health system let him down by not allowing him to take radiation or chemotherapy or operate on the tumours. I listened and she poured her heart out about everything.

Shortly after that she sent me a parcel that she boxed up for me which was all grandma McLaughlin's photos, documents and certificates that Uncle Wally had. She said since I was doing genealogy that some of the things might be of interest to me. Other wise she would just throw them out. Oh goodness me the items were birth certificates, marriage certificates, naturalization papers, a letter about grandma's second husband being a “foundling” and other equally impressive family heirlooms. 

My Grandmother's Documents, Bound Leather Books and Envelope with Letters

 Over the next few years Aunt Phyllis and I had a few phone chats which were never less than an hour or two. I always wrote notes on the conversation and then sat afterwards writing it out. She did eventually tell me family things that I had not heard before but long suspected. He was really my half-uncle. None the less over the next decade our phone chats were less and less. She developed macular degeneration and couldn't write or read very well. Eventually she moved closer to her daughter, Debbie who could assist her. I did not have Debbie's address or phone number so I really lost contact with them. After a decade I started looking for her obituary in newspaper.com. And for many years I did not find one. Oddly enough as I was preparing for this blog I thought of how I had lost contact with Aunt Phyllis. I checked one more time and found her obituary. I was saddened by this but deep down knew she must be gone. 

The sadder part was that in the obituary she mentioned that she was predeceased by her eldest daughter, Dawn (born 1952). I definitely was not expecting this. I have spent the past few days checking on line for an obituary for Dawn. I only found a possible grave site in Ontario which had no birth date or death date on it and thus can't verify it. I did track down another person's family tree that included Dawn and all that was written was 2021. That is all I know for now. Since Aunt Phyllis died November 10, 2021 she must have died just before in that year. I wonder if it was related to COVID? I will continue to look into it.

Sadly I lost contact with my aunt who had given me so many family insights over the past 20 years or so.

Wendy