My family (me, mom and dad) are not very close to my dad’s side of the family.  He has 3 brothers, 2 older and 1 younger.  His oldest brother committed suicide a few years ago and left 3 adult children, one of which is mentally handicapped.  Donna had an aneurysm in her brain when she was 16 and she’s been in assisted living facilities for years now.  Every once in a while we would hear how she was doing from my grandmother, but since she’s not a fountain of knowledge, we only heard bits and pieces.  It never occurred to us her dad left nothing for her when he died.

About a year ago Donna’s younger brother and sister, Robert and Lisa, found me and mom on FB.  Seeing as I barely remembered Donna and Lisa and couldn’t remember ever meeting Robert, I thought it would nice to get to “know” my cousins.  Robert and I had a few brief encounters and I never really interacted with Lisa at all.

Mom and Robert communicated some through email and a few things she told me kind of made me wonder (mainly his motives for getting in touch with family).  Then a few weeks ago he posted something on FB regarding the apartment he was building for Donna.  I thought it was really sweet but he didn’t say anything else about it.  Then last week he posted some pics of Donna’s apartment.  The place was in poor shape and the landlords didn’t sound like they were really staying on top of the maintenance.  Then Robert posted pics of her new apartment.  He didn’t tell Donna and had planned to surprise her over the weekend.  My heart just melted.

Monday morning he posted a video on FB of them giving Donna her new apartment and it brought tears to my eyes (I would post it but he has it private).  I couldn’t believe he’d gone to so much trouble and expense to help his sister out.  Mom emailed Robert to let him know we thought it was such a wonderful thing he’d done and that’s when she found out his dad left nothing for the kids!  He left nothing to help with Donna’s expenses, he just left nothing.  I hadn’t heard good things about my uncle growing up but I can’t imagine being so selfish as to not try to provide something for your kids!  Anyway, that is another story.

I just can’t really express how wonderful it is to see what Robert has done.

~k