Siblings reunite Maureen Branch and her brother Ormond Williams talking about the joy experienced as they reconnected over the past five weeks. (Picture by Gercine Carter.)


One morning sixty years ago, their mother died at her New Orleans, St Michael home, sandwiched in the bed between her one-year-old baby son Ormond and her six-year-old daughter Maureen, both soundly asleep at the time.

Their story, told to the SUNDAY SUN, of the long years of separation that resulted and of their reunion, is a demonstration of the unmistakably strong tie between a sister and brother and the strength of will to reseal that bond.

Now at age 66, Maureen Branch relates: “Both of us slept in the same bed with her [mother Marjorie Johnson] and I remember her dying . . . . I remember it because there was an old lady who lived across from our house, Miss Rock, and I remember his [Ormond’s] father telling me to open the window and call Miss Rock.

“I remember the coffin being in the house as a little girl and I remember going to the funeral and somewhere along the line it was decided I would go home with Hilda McAlister, but I don’t know where he [her brother] was. I don’t recall him being at the funeral.”

That was because immediately after the funeral, Ormond was taken to live with his father’s family, the Weekes of Black Rock, while Maureen went to another Black Rock family, the McAlisters, until it was convenient for her to be taken into the Black Rock home of her godmother Beulah Branch. She was merely told her brother had gone somewhere else to live.

Separated at such a tender age, the brother and sister were growing up in different households, and as both confessed, not thinking of each other.

An emotional Ormond, choking back tears as he spoke about this phase of their life, says: “I remembered I had a sister. In the early years I would ask my father and he would say, ‘You would have to ask my aunt’, who brought me up. But the only response I ever got was, ‘We don’t know where she is’.”

All he knew was his sister’s name was Maureen.

Maureen, also in tears, adds: “All those years we were apart – he grew up in England, I grew up here with Mum . . . . Though Mum was very close with the Weekes family where he was living, the children were never discussed. I can’t honestly say growing up that I thought of him as such. In the back of my mind there must have been some thought that I had a brother, but to be separated at such a young age . . . it never even occurred to me to ask why.”

That was until her adopted mother’s death in 1998. “Something clicked,” she recalled.

“I went to Europe on a trip after her burial and I went to England after and I said I had to find my brother.”

In preparation for that trip, she had done some preliminary research and even asked her pastor, who was going to England before her, to help in locating Ormond.

The pastor did find Maureen’s long-lost brother in Manchester. She was therefore bursting with excitement when she got off the train at Manchester and spotted “this handsome young man” awaiting her.

“I said: ‘That’s my brother!’ and we hugged and greeted each other and I stayed with him for three days, and then he came back to London with me and stayed another two days,” she reported.

Ormond was by then the father of five grown children and had started a second family with infant twins.

He had indeed come a long way from the 13-year-old boy who had travelled to England alone, armed only with a photograph of a man whom he was told was his father – a father who had migrated and left him in Barbados with an aunt at age three.

The photo he held of a “stranger” matched the face of the only black man Ormond saw waiting in the terminal at Manchester and whose paternity was confirmed when in exhilaration that man cried out: “My son! My son!” It was also the first time Ormond remembers uttering the word “Dad”.

“I asked him how did he know I was his son,” Ormond recalled. “He just said: ‘It is a father’s instinct’.”

Maureen migrated to the United States at age 21 and lived there for 25 years before deciding to return to Barbados to take care of her mother.

It was a joyous reunion when her brother returned to Barbados for the first time in 2001 to visit with his sister. Though that trip was memorable, both brother and sister agree that the significance of that visit paled in comparison to what they have experienced over these past five weeks.

Ormond is back in Barbados for the second time, after again losing contact with his sister for ten years.

Reflecting, he adds: “Life has a way of turning things around. You need to grasp what is important, what is real, what needs to be done, and what was important to me sometime later was that I needed to spend some quality time with my sister again. Not with anyone else coming along, just the two of us, and I decided that a good time would be during the Christmas time, which coincided with her birthday.”

He flew to Barbados five weeks ago to be with his sister for her 66th birthday, celebrated on December 30.

“It has been 60 years since our mother died and I have never spent a birthday or a Christmas with my sister until 2011, so it’s incredible.”

As they both fought back tears, Ormond added: “When you think about it, after 60 years, after all those years, the past five weeks have been worth it.”

Maureen replied: “For me, I wanted to see him, I wanted him to be here, but knowing he was used to a big family and my lifestyle is so different – a loner not having people around – I didn’t want him to be bored though I wanted him to come. But his reply was: ‘I want to be with you’.”

Happily, the two have been spending the time basking in each other’s company, talking long into the night, filling in each other’s blanks where possible and discovering the joy of love between a sister and brother.

He said: “I believe that family is everything. I had to make this trip. It had to happen and I am a better person for it. What I have got out of it is the knowledge that irrespective of whatever happens in your life that seems irretrievable, if you have faith and trust that what you believe is right as in ‘you need to get back with your sister,  you need to enjoy company with your sister again’, you will find that happiness.

“I feel a closeness, a togetherness, catching up on those lost years. I may be emotional now, but it is a happiness, it is a joy, it is ecstasy.”

Tearfully, Maureen joins in: “I never put a whole lot into family. Family never meant that much to me, but being with my brother meant everything to me because this is my mother’s child, and her only son. It is just me and my brother; we have nobody else and the connection means a lot.

“We needed this. I am so thankful to God that he pushed and made it possible for this reunion. This was a different reunion from when we met for the first time since the separation. This time around there is more quality, a purpose.”

By Gercine Carter

Source: nationnews.com