COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE!

I call up a program on the computer.  It is no surprise; nothing has changed.  I'm sure the answers are here -- Yet, I have no idea where or how to begin.

I stare at my wife's family tree.  Parents, unknown..  Grandparents, unknown.  Great-grand, great-great grand, great-great-great grand... Unknown.

This puzzle has persisted for over 60 years.  I've worked on it for 24, most recently with DNA...  What progress has been made?  There are names, clues, tantalizing tidbits of information --  \but what goes where?  The one, most certain name is almost as old as the Nation...  Actually goes back to before the Constitution.  11 children.  HOW THE HELL DOES ONE FOLLOW THAT?

I check blogs,  books, data, triangulate, run up against unknowns...  when two 3rd or fourth cousins are adopted and know no lines, you're stymied.

Yet I go back, again and again.  I hope for an epiphany, some sort of apocalypse to help me solve this.  Yet, the tree remains blank.

I can't even construct a "Lazarus" from this stuff.  Haplogroups are fine and dandy, so far as they go... but when you suspect the closest cousin is on the father's side, and that closest cousin is female,what the hell do you do?

Unanswered Emails.  Unnoticed messages.  uncooperative closer relatives.  Hidden records and demands for cash before any information is given (regardless of whether it actually exists!)

This leaves me in tears.  It makes me want to scream, break things...  I want to quit.  Yet I continue on, day after day, and when someone new pops up, I check... only to find missing lines -- another dead end -- which I could help if I had information.

I don't know how much more I can take.

Today, I make a call out to all of my wife's closest family  -- parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, first and 2nd cousins...  This hide-and-seek game is 63 years old.  It's time to end.  COME OUT, COME OUT, WHEREVER YOU ARE.  The game's over.  Show yourselves!