Discovering more of my identity and an aunt I didn't know I had, pt. 2

The first time I talked to my relative "Maria" was in a parking lot of the Big Y Supermarket.

Maybe it's an odd place, but I was planning on just leaving a voice message before I grabbed a few things at the store. She wouldn't pick up, because I had rehearsed what the outcome would be as her not picking up. I had two sentiments lined up for what I would say, depending on her voicemail.

The phone rang once. She wouldn't pick up.

The phone rang again. She's not going to pick up.

Midway through the third ring, she picked up. I swallowed hard and gave a broken hello.

"Is this Maria?"

"Yes, she said."

"This ... It's Emily."

I was defensive. I wasn't trying to be.

I'd had an experience a couple years back where I'd met a family member that described an unsavory experience with their father, an uncle that called me Emma-Lou-Lou. He was nothing but kind to me, but the man she described was nothing like that. There's something about meeting someone who shares a depiction of someone that's different of yours that can splinter a memory. I couldn't let that happen again. Because my Papa was one of my favorite people in the world and I wouldn't be able to accept that he was anything less than that.

Lucky for me, Maria didn't seem to notice. There was an air of nervousness, but having interviewed strangers for a living, I attributed it to that; we were strangers.

But as tight as my shoulders were as I was bracing for accusations, I felt a familiar comfort. The conversation was natural. I didn't know anything about this woman, but I felt comfortable as we switched from topic to topic to topic. We didn't just talk about how we could be related. We talked about how she cared for animals. My Papa liked animals. She wasn't trying to prove anything to me. We were just talking and getting to know each other. I could have never expected or rehearsed for the conversation to go like this. Before I knew it, one hour had passed. I liked her.

She had lived nearby. She said she had three daughters, one of which had attended a high school that was 20 minutes away from where I went to high school.

She told me about how she'd heard about my Papa. Her story isn't mine to share and I won't. I will say that she had learned at one point that he was a police officer in the town nearby. She also spoke of trying to get up the courage to go see him and waiting in a driveway, which turned out to be my Mum's driveway, one afternoon. The afternoon she decided, as it turned out, was shortly after my Papa had died. Whatever it was that made her decide not to knock on the door that day, I'm grateful, because things might have been different.

As time continued to tick by, we wrapped up the phone call and I walked in the store with a nervous excitement. I wasn't sure what her connection to me was just yet, but it was there. There was no denying it. I felt it.

I tried talking to my Mum about it, but I know she had a really hard time with it. Again, there are so many feelings involved with this. Her identity as the oldest sibling might somehow be changed. And as silly as it sounds, even though he was gone, having an additional family member meant somehow sharing someone we loved with someone we've never met. As we continued to talk - Maria, her daughter Ali and I - I encouraged Mum to communicate with Maria. We also wanted to find out if Maria was in fact Mum's sister, so I encouraged Maria and Mum to get a kit through Ancestry. Maria went first.

The results were again confusing to me.

Maria and I matched as potential first or second cousins. She and I shared 851 centimorgans across 41 segments, which was more than I shared with my cousin Jennie, who I shared 755 centimorgans across 38 segments with.

What does this mean?