Tag: sister | David Coveney

Finding a missing person in South America (and elsewhere)

I promised, ages ago, that I’d write up some tips on how to find somebody who’d gone missing in South America. Recently I had an email from somebody in the same situation which has spurred me into action.

Since 1997 I’ve found or been found by my mother, my brothers and my sister. Here I’m sharing some ideas and tips that I wish I’d known when I started.

Before I start

What I’m going to tell you may help improve your chances of finding somebody who’s missing. It may not, but I suspect it won’t hurt because these are things to add to what you would do naturally anyway. I can’t promise they’ll make any difference, but had I done them I may well have found my father before rather than after he’d died. But hindsight is always perfect. Hopefully by sharing this I can help you.

Whether finding my father would have made my life or his life any better, I don’t know. And you’ll have to think about that for your own situation. Sometimes people hide or disappear for a reason, and finding them may not help. On the other hand, they may have no idea that actually they’re still loved in spite of what’s gone before. Who knows?

I hope that if you use these tips they help you achieve what you need to achieve. It’s not easy missing a friend or a family member. It’s not easy finding them. It’s not easy reconciling what’s happened. The important thing is to be open, forgiving, and at peace with yourself when you set out. If you want them to say sorry, to be humble or to suddenly love you then you should probably not start out. If you want to show them your love and be a person in their life, even if that’s a small part of their life, then go for it. Anything else is setting yourself up for disappointment and heartbreak.

I’m going to refine this post over time. It’s not cast in stone. What you read is based on nothing more than my own personal experience and understanding. It’s not definitive. You will have your own things to add.

So let’s get searching

I’m going to break this up into a few parts to break down the problem.

1. Gather all the data

You’re going to need every address, phone number, email, photo and location possible, because that’s where you’re going to look. You can do a lot of this without leaving home, if you’re organised. Get it together. Scan or photograph everything so that you can store it somewhere off-site like Skydrive or Dropbox. These will be important documents in your search – don’t risk losing them. Don’t carry them with you on a trip. You’re going to use this data to create a one page letter and email to send out to as many people as possible.

2. Think about differences

There are key things that will differentiate the person you’re looking for compared to those in the country they’ve settled in. Language, looks, and so on. But there will also be their interests. Were they big tennis, pool, or football players? They may have taken it up in their new location. List everything that is distinctive about this person relative to where they live. I’d divide this list into culture (languages, country of origin etc), interests (sports, pastimes, hobbies), and work.

Then, tackle each one. If you’re dealing with an English speaker, perhaps they’ve tried teaching it in order to make some money? It’s a common way for travelling types to make ends meet. If they’re mad keen on pool, they probably headed off to the local pool halls. If they’re computer programmers, they may have tried to do that. This gives you targets in your search.

3. Find the matches

So, now you have a list of things about the person, and some data. Start to work out how to match things up.

For example, with my father he liked pool (and billiards and so on), gambling, drinking, watching sports, puzzles, and he spoke English and Spanish. With the data I had there were about 12 cities which he seemed to have written from and talked about. So, for English I need a list of all English schools in each of those cities. For pool, every pool and billiard hall. Gambling is trickier – but casinos can be worth checking out. For sports and drinking, think sports bars. Link things together. You have limited resources, so look at the best possibilities based on the data and knowledge you have. Did most letters come from one city?

Then there’s the most important – embassies, consulates and honorary consuls. At least, that’s what they’re called in Britain. You need to contact as many of these in your target regions as possible. The people who work at these places are often well connected within their local communities. They may not be able to facilitate directly, for confidentiality reasons (after all, not everybody wants to be found) but they can pass a message on.

4. Time to get organised!

OK, you know what you need to think about, now it’s time to get organised. I’d personally create a database or spreadsheet into which all this data can be pumped in. That means you can later run a mail merge to produce letters to each of these targets. In my naivety I only sent mail to all the embassies in South America.

5. The letter itself.

You’re going to create a letter describing the person you’re looking for, his or her names, and, most importantly, photographs. Nowadays colour printing is cheap, so scan in those old pictures and include them in the letter somewhere or on a separate sheet. If you’re on a budget, use a black and white laser printer.

So, you found them. Now what?

This is where it gets tricky. You find your missing person. Depending how that happens, you either have to initiate contact, or make friendly contact happen.

Here’s another list…

1. Don’t assume it’s really them

You get an email back. You need to meet up, perhaps, or something else… perhaps they need help? Do be careful you’re not being scammed. There are a lot of people who are hungry, poor, or plain greedy and they might just seize the chance to get some money out of you. Be wary. If you’re meeting them for the first time, ensure it’s in a safe, public and neutral place.

2. The pain

Here’s another potential issue – depending on the nature of the separation, establishing a fresh link could be incredibly painful. They could be in a relatively bad way. They could be angry about being found. They could be happy, but emotionally messed up about it all. Do not underestimate the problems here. Be prepared to be strong, to walk away if you have to. If I’d found my father and he’d tried to manipulate me like he did when I was a teenager then I don’t know for sure if I’d have coped. I’m far stronger today, but who knows? Would I regress? It’s impossible to tell.

So, make sure you have support on hand – either with you if you’re meeting in person, or on the end of a phone line.

3. And then…

Once you have re-established contact… you now have the long path. My sister and I coincidentally started to look for each other around the same time and we worked out where we both were. She approached me first, after months of deliberating about how to do it. I’d similarly been waiting for a while, and worrying.

The thing you have to remember though is that it’s not all going to be just like a normal relationship. The gaps and the different lives you’ve experienced will make things different. You won’t be visiting each other every week, or acting like brother/sister or mother/daughter for the rest of your lives – the relationship will take time and real work to make things happen. You’ll go to social events if invited. You’ll send cards and gifts. At times it could feel one sided – you may be overwhelmed, or the other person might be. All I can say is that once you know each other you can work on filling in the gaps. Don’t rush it. It’ll happen if you give it time.

The findability thing

In 1997 I hadn’t seen or spoken to my mother, father, brothers or sister for years. I didn’t know where they lived, what they did, or exactly how they might look. My half-sister and my half-brother I knew the least.

In 1998 I found my mother, brother and half-brother in a remarkable half hour of work one lunchtime! I simply rang every address and phone number I could find and asked if they knew them. Within no time I was speaking to my half-brother, that evening with my mother. Problem solved.

My father… well, you can read the story here on this blog and then viewing the newer posts in that archive. There are twelve at the time of writing, you should start with the oldest.

My sister… this is where “findability” works out. I consciously made a decision around 2001 that I should be easy to find online. Since around then I’ve been the top ranking “David Coveney” on Google. But that’s not what she first searched for, because she didn’t even know she had a brother…

It works the other way – if you have a blog and you’re looking for someone with a reasonably uncommon name, create a post about them. If you searched for “Chris Coveney” then for years a post on this site about my father would come up highly in Google. It gave a chance. I thought my father might Google himself. He didn’t. But his daughter did. And as a consequence, Maria, my half-sister, found me a few years ago. Happy days!

This is what I call passive searching – you set everything up to make things as easy as possible for people to either let themselves be found, or to find you. Because maybe, and you can hope, the person you’re looking for is missing you too.

If nothing else, running a blog will let them know how you are – they may not want to contact you, but they can follow your life, your loves and your family in a public and open way. Obviously, be careful what you publish.

Get out there, look around, be prepared, and be open. Good luck, and I hope you find who you’re looking for. If you have a story to share, please do so in the comments section below.

The Funeral

And so it came. In a way it’s weird… I always felt there were only two likely things to happen.

First, I would find my father (or he would find me) and a period of reconciliation may take place. Closeness, perhaps never, but reconciliation would be fine.

Second, I would never find him, and that would be that. Finito.

I’d actually come to the conclusion a few years ago that maybe he’d died some time ago. In some ways it was an easier conclusion… it stopped me feeling guilty for not continuing a search or trying harder.

I don’t think I was ever ready for this. And this morning I woke up very early at around 5am. Partly because I went to bed very early, but also because my mind was spinning. I decided to put some music on. And this piece came up:

And I took a moment to try and remember what was really good about my father. I’ve told the story that shows the negative in him. The curious thing is that our negative moments in life tend to be far fewer in occassion than our positives, yet they often define us.

So I remembered:

Football in the garden when I was very young.
Him teaching me pinball – and his pride when I started to beat him, and most people, from the age of about five. I still love pinball and if I ever have the space, I’ll have one!
Going to watch Liverpool play at Anfield on several occassions.
Learning about different cultures through him, that there was more to the world than the area(s) I was growing up in.
When I was 16 I met a girl in Oostende and, late in the evening, him quietly handing me enough money to take her clubbing. He then made his excuses and dragged away others to give us space. He continued in this vein all week. It was just a holiday romance, but hey…

There was more… but those are what sprung to mind. And I had my first ‘moment’ there in bed at about 6am this morning.

The next came during the funeral. But first, a little about Chilean funerals…

Culture Shift

Chile doesn’t feel wildly different to Spain, in so many ways. The climate, the landscape even… at least, when I compare it to Alicante where my family lives. Culturally it’s similar enough that you expect things to be reasonably similar. And I suppose they are. But that’s still quite different to Britain.

First things first, you arrive at the hospital with all your paperwork a little before the funeral directors come to collect the body. In our case we then had an hour or so of waiting before heading to the cemetary. I’ve already mentioned that instead of burial plots, niches are used.

And in our case, as there were only two of us at the undertakers we could ride in the hearse, up front. I was disappointed, in a way, as the hearse was simply a silver Ford Taurus Estate. With BMW hubcaps. As a car geek I was disappointed! But then in the UK we use Fords for hearses as well, so I can’t complain… but I’d still prefer to head off in a Daimler, if anyone’s listening….

In the back was the coffin, wrapped in the skin of Bungle.

I realised that if we had an accident (not entirely unlikely) the coffin was unrestrained. It would be… messy, to say the least. Still, we made it to the cemetary where I met the kindly David Hucker from the Anglican Church, his wife, a singer he’d brought along, my father’s landlady, and several of his friends.

Given that funerals tend to be arranged very quickly here, and that he had no family at all here, it was a good turnout.

We then slowly walked behind the car to the tomb, where two rows of plastic garden chairs were laid out. The Bungle-Coffin was then placed on a support, and the car left. Nearby a bell tolled.

Rev. Hucker gave a simple ceremony in both English and Spanish with accompaniment and song from the delightful guitarist. And then the moment I was completely unprepared for. Everyone who knew my father stood up to say a few words of remembrance. When it came to my turn, I fell apart. I didn’t even start talking, just sobbed.

It’s so unlike me. A few tears, sure. But sobbing? Proper, wobbly belly, heaving chest sobbing? Nope, not since I was a little kid.

Every time I remembered the good parts of my father, I went again. More than in the morning which was a single burst of tears.

After a few minutes and a few tissues I managed to compose myself to string together a barely articulate sentence. It would have to do, or I’d just be off again. I patted the Bungle-Coffin, sat down, and the ceremony was then brought to a close.

Of course, the English bits didn’t make sense, entirely, in the context, but they were familiar, which helped, I think.

Then the next new part – the coffin was then pushed into the tomb, and we got to watch the workers carefully seal it up. The flowers were then placed in front of the stone, and we took turns to quietly pay our last respects.

My thoughts have also drifted to my brother and half-sister back in Europe. The five grandchildren my father never even knew about, and the joy he missed out on with all of them.

One day I’ll explain this whole story to my new born son (and any others) and maybe I’ll be back in Arica once more.

And when we come back, I’ll give Joaquin Alvarez, the British Honorary Consul, a call. He has been amazing, taking a lot of time and trouble to help me with arrangements. He came to the funeral with us as a friend of my father’s, and has touched me with his kindness and generosity of spirit. A true giant amongst men.

Chris Coveney…the Introduction

I’ve started writing this post in Amsterdam airport…I’m on my way to Arica in Chile where I’ll be (hopefully) burying my father, Chris, who died on the 19th of July. I say hopefully not because this is something I’m looking forward to but because I face a number of legal and monetary issues with the hospital where he died.

So, the backstory….

My father was born in 1944 in Liverpool. He had a childhood disrupted by his father’s death while he and his mother were travelling to join him in post-war Frankfurt. At the age of 4 (I believe – this needs checking) it seems that this had a somewhat traumatic effect on his life. Whether it would have worked out any differently if his father hadn’t died so young is hard to know. It seems he never really bonded with his rather quiet and gentle stepfather, John.

John was one of those people that sadly get little praise in life…he didn’t have a rapier wit, good looks or intense charm. His predecessor, it seems, did. But he did do his best to provide a stable and comfortable environment for my father and grandmother (I later lived with them at different times of my life.)

Yet it seems that my father inherited his father’s flaws (a taste for women, good times and risk taking) without some key strengths (a disciplined and intellectually rigorous upgringing in particular) that would have helped my father excel. He was certainly charming, good looking and intelligent.

Family Life

My father, to the best of my knowledge, had three children… myself first, David, in 1969, Miguel two years later, to his first wife Ruth, and Maria in 1981 to his second wife Ann.

It’s fair to say that neither marriage went well. To paraphrase my mother:

He was a drinker with a vicious temper and a long arm. He couldn’t understand the word no.

There are other things I’ve learned recently which I won’t share…but the picture was of a man who couldn’t take his responsibilities seriously and, when confronted, would lash out at anyone around.

The Consequences

I’m going to skip forward now to 1985… by this point my father had been divorced twice and no longer had custody of any of his children. He’d kept me close for years, but even I tired of his temper, his constantly failing relationships and the occassional humiliation of a beating. It’s a curious thing about being smacked around by your father…the physical pain is nothing. It’s the betrayal of trust that hurts and damages you. No parent should resort to violence when faced with the annoyances of raising a child. Nor, of course, should a child ever survey a trashed kitchen following violence between their parents. Ever. I could go into the reasons why violence breaks out in domestic settings, but that subject deserves better than I can give right here.

Since 1971 my father had been working his summers as a tour guide in Oostende, Belgium. This suited him fine…a steady stream of giddy girls on holiday, few responsibilities, and plenty of nights out left him, it seems, relatively contented.

South America

By this point my father, always a keen lover of all things Spanish, had started to spend his winters in South America where he could travel around enjoying himself whilst maximising the money he earned in his Belgian summers.

This was actually a fairly calm period… I lived with my grandmother and rarely saw him. Generally I did enjoy his company, but there was always a nervousness over when he might kick off but, in general, he seemed to have mellowed.

Unfortunately, in 1987, everything changed again. I was living with my grandmother and had done reasonably well in my A levels. I’d gained a job at ICI on a trainee developer program. For me, at least the future looked good. However, like all good things in my life there always seemed to be trouble waiting for me.

Loss

Just a couple of weeks into my new job, my grandmother was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her decline hadn’t been pleasant to experience and before she was diagnosed she’d been struggling with shoulder pain that left her crying until the doctor could come and give her a shot of painkillers. Eventually it became too much for both of us. She was booked into hospital in a few weeks time… but that was too far away. I learned then a painful but valuable lesson.

The doctor could do nothing to have her admitted more quickly. I visited the hospital. No, they could do nothing either…it was a non urgent case of painful arthritis. Yet it was all too much to bear…I was in tears when a male nurse took me to one side and explained something…

They’re letting you look after her. She’s dependent on you. You want to know how to get her into hospital quickly? Refuse. Just tell the doctor you’ve had too much and you’re moving out.

Basically, I was going to have to play poker with my granny. But I went straight from the hospital to the doctor’s surgery and insisted I saw him. Three hours later, an ambulance arrived.

The next day they discovered the pain was caused by secondary metastasis (I think that’s the correct term, I’m writing this on a plane). She had advanced lung cancer that had spread through her body. She had less than a week left.

There was a dull, hollow ache inside me. I wasn’t close to my mother since I’d not lived with her for 14 years and besides, her and her new family had moved to Spain two years earlier – something that at the time had left me less than impressed.

I had my friends, Linda and Peter especially who were wonderfully understanding. And that weekend, my father’s summer job finished and he was able to arrive.

So he signed over everything. It was down to me to deal with the estate. There wasn’t much there, to be honest, and a lot of debt.

My father had his tickets for South America booked a long time earlier…in this time air travel was still relatively expensive and inflexible. I later learned that airlines usually aren’t so bad in cases of bereavement. I think he could have changed flights.

But he didn’t and just a few days later he was gone. Two days after that I buried my grandmother.

What’s crazy is that in all this I even managed to redecorate the lounge in time for the funeral, thanks to my friend Linda. It was important that in death everyone saw the best in my grandmother…

Losing Trust in Everyone

Soon after the vultures were circling…I couldn’t take over the mortgage or I’d have to pay off all debts, and I couldn’t get a new mortgage at such a young age and such little credit history…especially on a shared ownership house like this.

You see, what happens with a debt secured on property is that you hand over all rights to the lender. If you fail to keep up repayments the lender can take possession. The lender will then sell it. If a profit happens to be made then that’s great for the lender. They keep the money.

In fact, some even have a policy of quick repossessions during a buoyant market.

In retrospect I believe I was badly advised. But lacking support just trying to hold down a job and simply live right was enough to occupy me. When I was evicted from the house I lost my faith in society, my parents (sorry Mum…but you later won it back, so that’s ok, trust me) and everyone except my friends.

The council couldn’t help – I was told a single male would be at the bottom of the waiting list for social housing.

I didn’t want my fathers’s help and, by the dubious measure of taking out a loan to pay the deposit on a tiny studio flat, I had a place to live. While this was happening my father was made redundant from his summer job and announced he was going to stay in South America.

Having discovered financial wizardry I even managed to buy myself a niceish car I couldn’t afford on credit. Life had been hard, but now, I felt, it was improving.

Two months later I received a letter from my father asking for help – he said he’d been robbed of all his money and needed the money I owed him (I think he believed there was money in his mother’s estate) and could I send £1500 as soon as possible.

I had about £30 in the bank.

The next six months were hell as I sent over dribs and drabs in response to his increasingly strident letters, but I remember one triumphant moment. I’d been caught at work calling the Chilean embassy. I was in trouble until the reasons were explained to a senior manager. He put me in touch with the right people and before I knew it the Foreign Office offered a loan to help repatriate my father.

I’d done it. He was going to be ok. I’d sent as much as possible to him, borrowing money, trying to sell what I could legitimately sell… but it amounted to no more than around £600 over the months.

I went out and bought a £15 phone card to give the good news.

Son… I thought you had a good job? I need the money why don’t you have any?!

I told him it was no problem… I could get him home! I explained the loan.

What use is that? I’d be in the same situation, but in England…it’s much cheaper to live here

He was angry. And I remembered all those times he’d been angry before. The card ran out cutting him off mid-sentence. It was over. I was never going to speak to him again. I realised he hadn’t been asking me for help…he’d been asking me for money, that’s all.

Since then I stopped responding to his letters. I’d been struggling with the flat so I sold up and moved into a room. We lost contact.

Update 29-08-2010: I was reading through his letters yesterday and realised that I’d found the solution of a loan for repatriation earlier than I thought I had. I’d simply brought it up again during that last phone call and he essentially repeated what I’d said. I also think I’d continued to send him money for a while, but remained mute.

In 2001 I managed to find out that he’d renewed his passport in Quito in 1997, but that was all I had. In 2006 I was invited to a wedding in Lima, Peru, and took that as an opportunity to try and find him. I got close…searching the town of Arica in the far north of Chile. But if he saw the notices he didn’t respond. If he’d even searched Google he’d have found me for years and years. I even put a page up about him which was good enough for my estranged sister to find me with this year. In the end I reached the conclusion that he no longer wanted to find me.

And then the knock on the door in the early morning. I don’t know why the police do it that way. The officer was perfect…knew exactly how to break the news. Quickly, succintly, followed by the detail. He’d died on the 19th of July in a hospital in Arica, Chile.

I’m going to wrap this up now…it’s an awfully long piece to type entirely by phone and my fingers are aching. Hopefully I’ll be able to post it up on arrival to Lima. More soon… my plan is to document this trip, my feelings and my need to find reconciliation wherever possible. Sharing helps.