My wife’s mother passed away just a few weeks before we got married. For weeks prior to that, my then-fiancee had been doing everything she could to contact her mother’s family. They had been scattered throughout the greater Chicago area, moving from place to place as best as they could afford, with phone numbers changing as rapidly as locations. Over time, it became to tangled a web to try to unravel. My wife’s mother slipped into a coma on July 4th 2003, and passed away July 14th. My wife and I married on August 9, 2003. Bittersweet.
A few weeks later, my mother-in-law’s best friends held a little memorial service in her honor in Chicago - at the very church where my wife’s parents were married. We were fortunate enough to go. During that time, my wife and I spent several days trying to track down her mother’s family, with each lead ending with another rumor, another possibility, another dead end. In the end, we stopped actively looking. My wife kept looking every once-in-a-while, always meeting the same conclusion.
Until about 2 months ago. Through Facebook, my wife managed to find the profile of a cousin she knew back when this cousin was a child. After a day or so, she finally managed to get in contact with her mother’s only known living relative, her Aunt Joann.
Aunt Joann was so thrilled to hear from Caroline, she actually burst out in tears, having thought that she lost contact with my wife forever, and now magically, they had been reunited.
The irony is never lost on me that this happy bliss was destined to be short-lived. Within a few weeks of finally finding her family, Aunt Joann was diagnosed with an advanced cancer, and the diagnosis was not favorable, especially given Aunt Joann’s age and current state of health. She has been in a steady decline for weeks now, every time we talk to her, her speech gets a little more halting, a little more slurred. She’s tired now very quickly. My wife and I both knew immediately, having gone through this before, she doesn’t have long.
Caroline began talking to her cousin very earnestly about setting up a fund for her eventual passing. Her family is of course on state aid, my wife is an unemployed student, and I am holding down a 40-hour job and going to school. Times are tough everywhere, I know, but since we are the only ones who have any sort of passive income, most of the financial burden rests with us.
We have set up several ebay auctions with various items for sale to help raise some of the money we need to cover these expenses. Please take a look, and if there’s nothing there that you’d like, please share the link with as many people as you can.
UPDATE: 25Mar11
I have now added a PayPal donations button to the right. If you wish to help out financially, please click on the donate button on the right.
I thank you for your time.
Love,
JC
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