The Invisible Mourner: Saying Goodbye to an Aunt I Never Met

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Well…I went. I’m glad I did.

I didn’t know if I’d attend Aunt *Jane’s funeral until the last minute. Even then, I sat in the church parking lot for a long time before going in. The church was five minutes from my house. I arrived early so my bio siblings wouldn’t see me driving in if they were in the lot. I’m glad I did. I watched them arrive and walk inside while I stayed far enough away not to be noticed.

I felt like a bit of a stalker. But seeing them actually calmed my nerves. I knew that once they were all there, I could slip in through the back door and sit in the last pew unseen, which is what I did.

I had never been in this church before, so I didn’t know the layout. I asked one of the funeral attendants outside if she thought I could walk in quietly after it started. She said yes. I didn’t know if opening the doors would be dramatic or noisy. That would have been my worst scenario, and kind of funny-not-funny, if that made all kinds of noise and they all turned around. She offered to walk me in, which I appreciated.

The funeral got off to a late start, so I arrived just a few minutes before it began. There were only about 25 people in attendance, but I had expected that. She was 97 and had no children. She outlived most of her friends. I could see the backs of one of my bio brothers, *Tony, and my bio sister, *Donna, in the front row. I could see my bio cousins, the children of Jane’s sister *Harriett, in the second row. I had done enough social media stalking to recognize those great-nieces and nephews and their spouses in the other rows. I could see my cousin *Claire and her husband in the second row.

I quietly entered and was startled when another funeral worker approached. He softly asked, “Are you family?” Wow. I should have expected it, but I didn’t and froze. I shook my head no. He showed me the sign-in book and said I could sit anywhere.

I signed the book, noticing others had included short messages beside their names. Thinking, what the heck, I wrote, “My deepest sympathies on your loss.” Then I slipped into the pew in the last row.

And it was both bittersweet and lovely to hear about Jane through Harriett’s children, who all spoke about her. I felt moments of profound sadness that I never knew her, but I also hung on every word and saw the love they all had for her. That made me happy. It was a confusing mix of emotions to sit there and see the family I most likely won’t ever really belong to, yet we share the same DNA. It’s like I’m simultaneously a family member and a ghost. Very weird.

None of my cousins (Harriett’s kids) know about me. When they stood at the lectern or greeted each other with the peace, they sometimes turned around in their pews. If they noticed me, they might have been puzzled by who I was sitting back there. There were a few other people scattered throughout the church, too. But Jane was well known in the community, so they likely brushed it off. I wasn’t in eye shot of Tony and Donna.

The more I sat there, the more I felt I had every right to be there. So instead of slipping out before it ended, I stayed. Maybe it was a little bratty of me. Because I knew my brother and sister would walk right past me during the processional out of the church. Donna saw me when she was about four rows from me. And she looked shocked. Then she looked away. She and Tony walked by my pew, looking straight ahead.  I’m not sure where my other bio brother was, but he lives in Florida now, so maybe he couldn’t make the trip.

I hung around the church after people left for the cemetery, taking some photos of the flowers before they were brought over. I took a few photos of the inside of the church and of a stained-glass window dedicated to one of my biological family members. This church was a big part of some of their lives.

The cemetery was a few miles away. I ran errands and waited until I was sure the family had left before going there. I brought my Aunt Jane pink roses and placed them with the funeral wreath on her plot. I took some photos. And then I went home.

**pseudonym

This is my NPE story of discovering in 2015 that my Dad was not my biological Dad. If you’d like to follow along, I encourage you to start at my first post of the series HERE.

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