Thread by @mikeryan

Today is my first Father’s Day without my dad and, as advertised, it’s pretty miserable. As I sit here at my local neighborhood watering hole, I think it’s time to discuss what happened to me this past week. Settle in for a thread. It gets weird.

Last weekend I went back to Missouri for the first time since my dad died suddenly in November. He didn’t want a funeral so I had no reason to go back and I’d been putting it off. I wrote about the trip on Friday, but I left out a big part: bit.ly/2JXTqZO

A couple weeks before this trip my mom said she wanted to have a “serious talk in person.” After assuring me it wasn’t health related, I kind of forgot about the whole “serious talk.”

So last Thursday when I got to St. Louis she wanted to have “the serious talk.”

She sets it up by saying she knows how hard this has been for me, going through this by myself. In that my parents separated around 1990 and without siblings, it’s kind of all been on me alone.

(At least family wise. On my mom’s side I don’t even have cousins. Though Kate and a lot of our friends have just been the best and you know who you are.)

So my mom now seems very, let’s say, anxious. And she tells me, “I have something of your father’s you should have.”

She hands me this packet filled with documents and pictures. I start reading through the papers and looking at the pictures. One of them is of my father holding me as a baby. But I looked closer and something didn’t seem right...

Right as it hits me my mom says, “Your father had a son before we got married that he never wanted you to know about ... you have an older brother.”

And then my mom says, “And the mother named her son after your dad. Your older brother’s name is Mike. Mike Ryan.”

So I have a secret older brother with the same name.

So I’m living the worst indie movie ever made: Sad white guy living in the BIG CITY goes back to the Midwest after his dad dies and learns he has a secret older brother with the same name.

So with the help of @stvanairsdale and my old college pal, @Dave_Matter, with the information I have, we find him. I’m going to leave these details vague, but he lives in a state that is not Missouri (or New York).

So not really thinking *anything* through, I called him. I called my older brother with the same name. The only number I had was his work number, so, yep, I called him at work.

The first time I called I got a receptionist who said he was preoccupied. “Do you want to leave a message?” I thought about going “all in” on this message for the comedy of it but decided it was better to call back.

And you have to understand, I’m freaking out a bit! I’m just driving around St. Louis County not knowing what to do with myself. Finally I pulled over in the parking lot of a Burlington Coat Factory and called him back.

(The next day when I told a friend this story I was informed Burlington dropped the “Coat Factory” part. To me this is bigger than IHOB.)

So this time when I called he answered. Here’s a tip in case this ever happens to you: Turns out if you call someone at work and say, "hello we have the same name and I think I'm your brother," that person will get mad because they think they are being pranked.

After he hung up on me he called back. After offering as much proof as I could that I wasn’t trying prank him, it started to hit him. He didn’t know about me either.

And the thing is, understandably, he *hates* my father. And I think me calling brought out a lot of repressed feelings he had and I didn’t really think about that before I called.

And now, seven months after my father’s death — slowly starting to come to grips with what happened — here I am on Father’s Day, reevaluating everything about him.

Reevaluating a father who decided I didn’t need to know I had an older brother. Reevaluating a father that, for all intents and purposes, abandoned his other son and wouldn’t have anything to do with him.

So, I’ve been texting with the other Mike Ryan, my older brother, a bit this week. Off and on. At this point I’m leaving it up to him. I feel terrible about bringing this all back to him. He told me he has kids. So I have nieces and a nephew I never knew about.

People ask “what do you want out of this?” The answer is “I don’t know.” And it’s not entirely up to me. But I’m willing to see what happens and I think, so far, he is, too. At least with some understandable reservations...

Shortly after I spoke to him for the first time @LaneBrown called and had the best analogy: "Your mom told you, a trusted source. He learned from a phone call that popped up 'Mike Ryan' on caller ID. You are living the Charlie Kaufman version. He's living the David Lynch version”

So that’s it for now. I went to Missouri to mourn my father and search for answers. I left knowing I now have an older brother I never knew about. Who has the same name.

This has honestly been the weirdest week of my life.

My new “weirdest things that have happened to me” list:

4. The dick pic Tinder thing

3. AbracaDebroah

2. I have a secret brother with the same name

1. The “Ben Affleck is a ghost in Argo” guy