A Surprise

I had a real surprise yesterday morning. The phone rang but it was "unavailable" which I never answer because it is crap all the time. I arranged with my family and friends in Germany, which also come up as unavailable, to hang up and then call again right away. Well, that happened yesterday and I thought I would hear either my cousin's, or friend's voice, but the voice was that of a stranger. It turned out it was the daughter of my cousin Horty's from Cologne. You could have knocked me over. Horty was in an auto accident when she and her husband drove back home from our place in Suemmern, where we were stationed. She died 3 weeks later without regaining conscience. It actually was a blessing because she had a totally broken body. Isabel was at that time about 9 months old. My aunt, Isabel's grandma took care of her for about 3 years and then Isabel’s father married again and my aunt saw her only once about every month. That was very hard on my aunt.

I was in contact with Isabel off and on until my Aunt died at 93 years old. Isabel told me all about it but then the email contact somehow broke up over 10 years ago. You can imagine how surprised I was to hear her on the phone. We talked about half an hour and have since exchanged photos. Isabel's computer crashed and she lost all he email addresses for awhile and then tried to email again but by that time I changed my email address and her emails to me came back to her.

In the meantime Isabel has been divorced. She has two grown daughters who live with her at the moment finishing their education. Looking through old photos and correspondence from my aunt the other day she found our telephone number and decided to see if we still had the same number.

I am so happy to have contact with her again. She and my other cousin are the only relatives I still have in Germany. We were a small family, nobody had many children.

See you next time something nice happens