Searching

I have a new quest. I was asked by a friend to help find her stepson. My friend would like to know where her stepson is, if he is alive and well. She is unsure if she will share this information with her husband. It is a portion of his life that has long passed and he doesn't like to talk about. It is quite a story.

Years ago, there was a family like many others struggling to make a living. Well it seems the wife had wandering eyes, and when the husband discovered his wife in bed with a younger man, the husband confronted the wife and her lover, he shot his wife in the leg. Well as you can imagine this must have been horrifying for the two small children. The husband was sent to the State Penitentiary, he served his time. In the meantime his wife divorced him, took the children and moved away. The wife has since died. Enter wife number two, who I am very good friends with. Her husband is not the same man that he was earlier in his life. His time in "the pen" changed him in many ways. He doesn't drink anymore, he put his life back together and has paid his dues. He is good to his second wife, she adores him. It is part of this love for him that makes her want to find his son, her stepson. She says "Well, we aren't spring chickens anymore."

I am really torn about this situation. On one hand, I would love to find her stepson, on the other hand..does this Father really have any right to rest easy after all these years? He shot the kids Mom for crying out loud, he could have killed her instead of just wounding her. Did he provide financial support for these kids? What right does he have after all these years to make contact with his kids?

The kids, their Mom is dead, their Father was a criminal, their Stepmother who they don't know from adam wants to make contact with them. I am not sure how I would feel??

I do know that their Father made a bad decision that must have affected the rest of their lives. Do they hate him? Do they wonder if he is alive or dead? Do they care? Is it too late to forgive? Well it will be too late someday.

But I tell ya, this man their Father has become is worth knowing, if he can forgive himself enough to go forward and reach out. I hope by that time my research will have come up with some results, something to reach for, and maybe someone reaching toward him.

So I will search. Why? Because I like a good mystery solved. I have searched before, once on the Internet with wonderful results. Prior to that I helped a friend find her birth Mother, I gave her some suggestions of places to look for information, and they were reunited. It was quite a journey for her, she then found her birth Father but only after he died. Some stories never have a happy ending.

Right now, I have a name, a birth date, place of birth, and a last known location. It's kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack. If anyone out there in the blogging world has any good suggestions of free Web Sites to search, please leave me a comment:)