Family puzzle pieces

I got a bug up my butt yesterday to officially start doing research on my family.  It's all I could think about last night and today.  What's interesting is that I found out my late great-uncle's 100th birthday would have been March 5 and I found a bulletin where my father won a weightlifting competition on March 5, 1988.    And I found this on March 5.  Yeah.  Both deceased sides of my family gave me a sign to start this!

My mother's side is a cinch.  Every time I think I've hit a dead end, I find more connections and information that bring the puzzle together.  I love seeing all the different lineage sprouting from people on the tree I'm making on ancestry.com.  My cousin is also a huge help.  She was born in '43 and has either met so many of the family that I haven't or had more records than my mom did.  My grandmother remembers quite a bit, but not in as much detail with some family members as my cousin.  I'm finding lots of interesting papers and history from my heritage.  Thank goodness Mom saved all this stuff!

There is a fascinating article about my great-great-uncle Simon Nicholls, a former major league baseball player at the turn of the 20th century.  He died of typhoid fever when he was 28 but not before leaving his mark on baseball and having two children.   His son was the greatest uncle ever to me, and I cried my eyes out when he died on Halloween in 1992.  He's the one who would have been 100 yesterday.   

What's really giving me agita is trying to dig up my father's lineage.  My father was a psychotic piece of shit who died of a heart attack at 38.  I was 10.  The man was just manic and overdid everything, including abusing a young daughter and her disabled mother.  He was the black sheep, and his family, who met me twice, essentially shunned me.  My grandparents were both dead by the 70s.  So, I know nothing.  Nada.  Well, that's a lie, I do know a few things.  I believe my great-uncle is still living in Philadelphia if Google is to be trusted.  But I have an aunt out there....never met, don't even know her last name.  I don't even quite know what my father's full name was since my grandfather changed their surname in the 50s (he was Sicilian, draw your own conclusions).  I have family nearby that have a different last name than me.  That's how whenever anyone asks me if I'm related to so-and-so, I can confidently say nope!  I gathered all the pictures I have from my father's life and just need to grab the slides.  There's not too much helpful about them except that they used to call him by a different nickname.  I vaguely remember my mother mentioning that with him, but I just can't pinpoint it. 

So now I'm totally lost over finding who they are!  I just want to know lineage and medical history, nothing more.  I don't want to get to know people.  They made their stance perfectly clear 20 years ago, and I am perfectly fine with dropping my surname and starting my own family.  The only person I have an interest in meeting (if she's even still alive) is my aunt.  Still, I'm going to have to go to Philly and dig up things, I know it.  The internet has just too much information sometimes. 

I also need to find the obit of the family friend who was supposed to be my godfather before he was mugged and stabbed to death in 1982.  We have two of his paintings up in the house, and I just found a card he gave me for my 1st birthday.  I just wish so dearly that I had gotten to truly meet him.  My grandmother has always wished he was my biological father, as I could have been spared so much pain, and maybe life would have been different.  Or if he hadn't died so early, he could have protected us from my father.  But still, life happens for a reason, and I may not have met the people in my life who are so dear to me. And I know that not meeting L would have been the worst thing that could have happened to me.  The man is truly my soulmate. 

This is all very therapeutic, but very frustrating.  I'm desperately trying to put together the pieces of my background before I move on with my life.  I know it won't happen overnight, but I'm trying my best.  It just gets so frustrating sometimes to see all this family sprouting from my name and knowing that I wasn't a part of so much.  That's ok, my life was weird, but it's still disconcerting at times.