Late to the news conference

This year I sent my brother and his wife a Christmas card.  I’m not the best when it comes to keeping in contact with him.  He’s my step brother, 11 years older than me, and we never had much of a relationship over the years, especially after our mom died.  I suck at family dynamics.  I would send out the random birthday card and Christmas cards over the years, but rarely received anything from him.  Anyway, the card was returned to me.  So I started to do a little research because I’m thinking, is he dead?  I finally was able to contact one of my nieces and come to find out, his wife divorced him and took everything.  First thing that popped into my head was, “that bitch.”  Not very nice, I’m sure.  I’ll find out more details this weekend when I can talk to my niece for a longer period of time.  They had been married for quite a long time.  It was my brother’s second marriage.  His first wife died unexpectedly when their kids were still in high school.  It was a very sad time.  When he remarried, I wasn’t too impressed with her, but I kept my opinions to myself.  Like I told my husband, she wasn’t someone I would want to be friends with.  I feel bad for my brother.  He’s not young anymore and I think a lot of married people assume you’ll just live together and take care of one another forever.  I don’t know what I can do for my brother, but once I get his contact information, I’ll give him a call.   I thought he had all of my contact information, but if his ex-wife kept all of that type of information stored somewhere, he probably won’t know where it is.  And for the last 15-20 years or so, our old landline has been used exclusively as an internet connection.  We live in the sticks – but that’s another story.  Anyway, we had the same phone number for decades and it was just hard to get rid of it, even after we switched to cell phones.  He might have had that old number and tried to call me, but I would never have known.  I tried to connect with his ex-wife through an Instagram account I found, but I’m sure she just ignored me.  Spiteful woman.