My lawyer had fancy shoes and a fancy degree. He was childless.
It has been nine months of enduring an ongoing legal process, with fears of a failure, but my case comes to an end in a successful execution. Now, there are important decisions to be made in order to avoid paying a lump sum tax and I am having to learn quickly about investing money.
But then, I am interrupted. I am interrupted by a hobbyist-researcher via the ancestry.com website. Her client wants to talk to me. I am not totally surprised by this inquiry as I know a little bit about a family secret and perhaps this will be the topic of discussion, if there is going to be one. Some relatives disapprove, with much anger, for me to proceed, but contrary to their wishes I go through with the connection because I feel a Deja vu and the mediator is very polite.
The client, a woman, is the descendent of John-James*, the adopted child of a childless couple. Bilingual, conversive, and informative, I do not regret talking to her at all. Through her sharing it would become clearer to me that my life, along with my associations, had been defined by an event I had no conscious knowledge of.
However, why the synchrony at this time? - the connection between my zero net worth status, that is no more, and the conscious knowledge of this distant family system. Was this secret family, initiated by a childless couple, sucking the joy out of my life all along? Did my worthlessness on paper pay for the sins of how their family was created? It would be injustice to think of just myself as a sufferer as the woman would eventually reveal to me how she and her family had suffered also.
Of special interest to me, the eerie coincidences of names I learned about, would further define my method of how to investigate family systems. By the end of our email conversations I thought, can I trade in some of my family members for you? - the unsmart and unkind, the oblivious secret-keepers, the money hoarders. But, too much has transpired through time. Our paths must separate. I wish her luck in her journey.
*Real name variation
Posting soon: Saving the Childless Couple