"Sorry for Everything"

Dad never talked about his brother much. I've only pieced the story together from speaking with my auntie who in turn had based her version of events purely on a handful of postcards she received over 50 years ago.

Don was a dreamer. He left the UK in 1953 and paid his passage on a cargo ship that left Southampton bound for New York. Although his exact whereabouts were never known, it appears that he was washing pots in a sleazy Manhattan hotel in the Summer of 1955: an English school friend of his on vacation in upstate New York, and visiting NYC for the day, saw him quite by chance - in his kitchen whites - on the steps of the hotel and arranged to meet him in the bar when he came off shift. Don never showed.

In addition to the five postcards his sister received between 1954 and 1963, was a letter dated August 1st, 1964. The last communication from him she ever received:

"Dear Maj, sorry for everything. Getting married on Saturday. That's Betty on the red blanket. You'd love her. I do. D x"

And that was it. Until 1970, when Auntie Maj received a letter from the Home Office marked Private and Confidential. It said, quite matter of factly, that Don & Betty had been involved in a road traffic accident between Poughkeepsie and Newburgh, and were both pronounced dead at the scene. A cremation had already taken place and there were no wills, no estate and no personal effects. It's as if they never existed.

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I'm away for a few days tomorrow. I'm conscious of the fact that I still have two remaining items in this silly little series of mine. I want to run them back-to-back but am waiting till I can locate a missing photograph. Hopefully I'll find it before Legacy Blogger is, like Don 50 years ago, withdrawn from service.