How A Website Changed My Life & Why 13 is My Lucky Number and Day

Four years ago on February, Friday the 13th, 2009 I went with my friend and his mom to go see the new Friday the 13th movie....Go figure right? After the movie, which was awesome by the way, we went back to his house and I asked to use his computer to check my e-mail since I didn't have internet at home. He said yes and I went online to my e-mail account and the first two things I saw were from a site called Reunion.com (now called Mylife.com) , a site which I created a membership to when I was 13; I was 16 by this time. The e-mail's said "Charles Ellis has sent you a message." I quickly went to my account and logged in and sure enough there were two messages from someone by that name.

I read the first one and it basically said hello, he told me his name, where he lived and then said he was looking for his daughter who had the same name and description as my profile stated. I didn't respond to that because I wanted to read the second one before I replied. The second one basically said the same as the first message but he added that he'd really like to talk with me to see if I was his long lost daughter, because he honestly felt that I was.

I automatically replied by asking all sorts of questions that only he and my mom would know, such as how they met, what my birthday was, my middle name, why my mom and him never saw each other again, etc. After I sent the message my friend, who was sitting by me the whole time, said I should go to his profile. So I did.

I cried for the first time in 3 years because his profile's main feature consisted of two photos. One of him and his wife, and the second was my reason for crying. It was the same picture that I had on my nightstand of me at age 3. I cried for about ten minutes straigh before I got another message. It was from him and I read it...He answered every single question correctly. I replied back saying that I was his Amber, I was his daughter, that he, the man I'd been looking for since I was 13, was my dad.

He sent me a message with his phone number and his e-mail address and I e-mailed him first, nervous over hearing his voice. And I hadn't even told my mom yet so I wanted her to know, but she was at work. In the meantime, we exchanged several e-mails that day. I told my mom when she got home and she said she wanted to talk to him first before I did, to clear some more personal details up- that I won't be putting up on here.

They talked for awhile and then she came into my room, smiling, and held my phone out to me. I got to hear the sound of my dad's voice for the first time...We'd met when I was 3 years old but I couldn't remember those early memories so that was technically the first time I heard his voice.

I found out that I had a brother and an aunt and four cousins. I also found out that my grand-parents died a few years prior....It makes me want to cry every time I think about them because I've never met them and I never will...But I also found out that, like my mom, his birthday was the 13th of December, but my mom's is in January. Weird, eh? So many 13's!

We talked everyday, on the phone and through texts and e-mails. At that time I had dropped out of school because I hated the high school the tiny town I lived in had. I was studying for my GED and I remember my dad always telling me he knew I could pass it and that I was going to be able to do anything that I wanted. He knew I wanted to be a author and an FBI Agent to be a "Profiler" but he also knew that I really wanted to be an actress and act in TV shows and movies. I wanted to be able to portray human behaviors that were unlike my own behaviors and traits and capture people in the story.

Unfortunately he lived in Washington state and I lived in Arizona. But we planned on going to Disneyland, my mom, my brothers, him and myself, that is. And to the San Diego Zoo, Universal Studios and all sorts of other places. We planned so much!

But on October 26th 2009 my mom got a call from my aunt Maryann. My mom told me it was her before she answered and I watched my mom's face as she was listening. Before she even answered the phone I knew something was wrong. I could feel it in my gut. You know that gut-wrenching feeling that makes it hard to breathe so you just stop breathing for awhile? That was what I felt as soon as my mom told me it was Maryann...And I hadn't heard from my dad that day...After my mom answered she didn't talk she just listened and her face changed from curiosity to devastation and I knew. I knew.

I sat on the couch just watching her face, tears in my eyes that wouldn't drop yet. And when my mom hung up and walked to the couch and knelt in front of me and took my hand she said, "I'm so sorry Amber. Your dad passed away. I'm so sorry."

Broken. That was..is...the only word to define what I was in that moment. The tears fell and flowed and they didn't stop. My eyes burned, my head pounded, my throat was tight and dry and it felt like I couldn't breathe. I remember my mom holding me and I felt her own tears on my shoulder. It felt like I had the whole world's supply of tears and that the dam holding them away had broken.

I remember calling my best friend and sobbing out to her that my dad was dead. I remember rocking back and forth and trying to talk to her and not being able to because it felt like I had this huge baseball in my throat that clogged my airways.

I don't remember hanging the phone up or how or when my hysteria ended. But I remember hearing my mom saying that my aunt was flying to Washington the next day and said that she'd fly to Arizona first, if I wanted to fly to Washington with her. I still couldn't talk so I just nodded my head yes, even though it was pounding like my heart was in my skull instead of my chest.

We'd never met in person, my dad and I. We only knew each other through calls and texts and e-mails in eight months. But going to Washington helped me to know him more because I was surrounded by the people that got to be with him daily. And I was envious of course. I had a hard time being in his house, surrounded by all his things. I remember seeing that same picture of me on his wall. That meant so much to me because his wife, evil witch that she was, said that no matter where they moved to it was one of the first things to go up.

She let me have his two favorite shirts, his long sleeve Metallica shirt that he had worn the most and a short sleeved Ozzy Osborne shirt that he loved. I wear them both all the time. I got all his knives and daggers because we both had discovered that we loved swords, knives and daggers, and dragons...I'm going to get a tattoo on my back, in between my shoulder blades of a sword down my spine, with one dragon wrapped around it, with its head laying on the hilt of the sword, and another dragon wrapped around the sword, upside down, a claw grabbing the the blade. I'm still working out the color details, but they will be medieval dragons.

I have to save a lot of money for it though as it'll have a lot of detailed work.

Anyways, 13 is and always will be my lucky number and day. I always look forward to Friday the 13th when happiness and sadness...It was always a joke with my dad and I about how we found each other on that day. Any time it's the 13th I have a good day because I know my dad would want me to laugh about it and still love it as much as we both did when he was alive.

As for that website, Reunion.com (Mylife.com)....I wish I could say thank you to whoever invented it. It changed my life forever, and I will always be grateful for the time my dad and I did get.

But that's my story about how a website changed my life and behind why 13 is my lucky number and day. At least, most of the story. Wink.

So for those of you looking for someone, or trying to reach a goal or dream....Never give up. I looked for three years and finally reached my dream of finding my dad and getting to know him. No goal is unreachable, and I believe no dream is unreachable either.