2089 Looking for the cousin...

Thursday, October 30, 2008

I spent a lot of time today searching online for my cousin, Dean Morris. I have very little information. I haven't seen him since about 1963.

He's a swimmer. He was supposed to be on the US Olympic swim team (or so my mother told the story) back when Mark Spitz won all those gold medals at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich (West Germany). Spitz wasn't going to go at first for some reason, my mother said funding, but that doesn't sound reasonable given that he was already pretty darn famous. When Spitz decided at the last minute to go, and they were all packed for the plane, cousin Dean was bumped from the team. He was devastated. At least, that's the way my mother tells it.

Anyway, I do know Dean was a serious swimmer. I don't know where he went to college, or what career he pursued, but it's pretty reasonable to assume he still swims. He's tall and dark - looked a lot like Joe Namath when both of them were young. He was born probably in 1946 or so, in Buffalo or Tonawanda, NY, to Betty and Richard Morris. I don't know his middle name, but I seem to have the initial "R" stuck in my head.

He has a sister, Linda Joy Morris, born in late 1943 or early 1944. I'd like to find her, too, but with women it's not enough to know who they were - you have to know who they married, who they "belong to" now. (Damn those stupid patriarchal customs that define women not as themselves, but by who their male owner is.... )

Anyway, there are a few thousand "Dean Morris" internet hits. You'd think "Linda Joy" would be rather rare, but there are several of them, too. I thought I had located a reference to her in Long Island, but it happened to mention that her mother had died in the mid-80s, of Alzheimer's, and I believe aunt Betty was still alive in the early '90s, so it's probably not her.

Aunt Betty may be still living in the Tonawanda area, but Uncle Dick died a long time ago, and she remarried, and I don't know who her current male owner might be.

Frustrating business.

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Today is the seventh anniversary of Jay's departure. In my belief system, now is the time that I must emotionally release him. It won't be easy. Especially since he had promised to wait seven years for me before he moved on.

Sigh. It's time. I feel it.
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