Searching

Searching for someone who has left no tracks for over 40 years is very difficult. Only the Social Security administration knows where she is, and they are prohibited from telling. All searches have led to dead ends. According to SSA, "she is alive" as one SS employee said, or as the 800 # person said, "we have no record of her being deceased." Is someone illegally using her social security number? Social Security will forward a letter to her address. It then becomes her purogative whether or not she wants to make contact. This is probably what I am going to end up doing, which may actually be the best anyway.

If I was writing a script for a movie, I would want her return letter to say that she was doing well. After a few years, her life took a positive turn. However, she did not want to contact us because of her respect for the family that took care of us and eventually adopted us after our aunt died. Actually, as I think about it, I can imagine many different endings.

One might be that she ended up marrying an oil tycoon. She has been searching for us all of this time. However, that is very unlikely, because if you have someone's first two names and their birth date, you can find them in a few minutes using almost any people search program.

Another ending is that she has been in a psychiatric hospital or nursing home all of these years. She has been unable to take care of herself. We get a letter from her power of attorney giving us a few details, but will not disclose her location.

An ending that I have thought about often is that she is a shadow person. Our entire life she has shadowed us and knows quite a bit about our lives. I must have seen something like that on the Twilight Zone when I was young.

Maybe Catholic nuns took her in, she became a nun, and spent her life working with Mother Theresa. The reality is that we will probably never find her -- by her choice or consequence. She has remained a mystery for many years. As my aunt wrote me years ago, she is an enigma.