Finding an adopted (older) sibling...

[ZEROSPHERES]

My half brother was the result of an affair my dad had with a woman at his work. No one suspected the affair but when I saw the baby he looked like my older brother who had passed prior to my birth but whom I found his 8x10 baby pic in the family photo box in the closet. I showed the 8 x10 and everyone who saw it remarked at what a wonder pic it was of Stanley (her baby). I announced my unscientific findings and it caused a stir that resulted in my parents divorce and the breakup of the other family. My father married that other woman and at her request I was never allowed to see them. She denied the affair and her former husband was compelled to pay child support for Stan as he grew up with my father and his mother. From the time I was 12 until I was 31 I saw my father only 3 times. They never told me of his death in my 31^st year and I never heard from them until I stumbled across an obituary of his second wife, Stans mother. I was 57 by then. I sent condolences to the funeral parlor and they communicated them onto him and his family. I asked to attend the funeral and was told absoutley not and I knew why. The lie Stan's mother had foisted on him and his siblings from her first marriage was still in effect. The funeral home refused to give me the info to communicate directly so I went online looking for my brother. That is when a flag that had recently been contributed to a WW2 flying museam in Georgia appeared on the screen. It seems a handful of liberated GIs had signed that flag and the museam was looking for any living POWs or their family members to contact them them to solve the mystery of how it came to exist. (A living history). That flag acted as the touchstone that brought me and Stan together and he told me he had had to wait until his mothers death to confirm he was my brother. That he had heard rumors of my dismissal from their lives and the reason for it. That it was his older sisters that were refusing my coming to the funeral and never wanted me around out of respect for their mother's wishes. He informed me that his mom and my dad were to be burried together in the WW2 Vets cemetery by months end. That my fathers ashes had been sitting on the mantle for 27 years and he wanted me to attend my fathers funeral that included a 21 gun salute. I went and Stan's sisters would not talk to me and later cut ties to him for this gesture. So I guess I got to see my dad one more time or at least feel close to him one more time in a most surprising twist of events.

P.S. Stan is my brother. Later confirmed.