REUNITED: Two sisters reunite after 15 years thanks to bingo
Imagine losing contact with your family and finding each other in the most unlikely of ways...
We can't imagine not being able to chat to family during these tough times. But more than that, we forget about those families that have become estranged for reasons that are sometimes out of their control.
When it comes to these two sisters from England, who are both fans of bingo, it seems that something so random allowed them to find each other after 15 years of being apart. The last they saw each other was when they were teenagers.
Amanda Paterson had a hunch while she was in a bingo chatroom that the woman she was chatting to was her sister. Call it intuition or a sister-sister connection, because their usernames were not a giveaway when it came to their real identities.
They both took a liking to bingo because their mother was a fan and she would take the girls with her. The sisters enjoyed bingo because of their childhood memories associated with it. After their parents divorced when they were younger, the two took it quite badly and therefore this caused a distance between them.
When the elder of the two, Amanda, left home, Melissa and her lost touch with each other until now. Melissa ended up staying in their home town that whole time.
The sisters both admitted that as time passed, they both thought of one another but were afraid of reaching out due to the fear of rejection. Melissa even went on to say that they both were quite stubborn.
I didn’t want to interrupt her life and I was also scared of the possibility of rejection. We’re both quite stubborn, so we both just kind of dug our heels in. It became longer and longer since we’d spoken and reached a point where I wasn’t sure if she would even want me in her life.
Amanda said that one day after being isolated for some time due to the lockdown and her daughter having chicken pox, she craved some adult conversation. So when she went onto the Mecca Bingo Chatroom to find someone who was from her home town, she struck up a conversation.
The sisters shared a close bond as young girls and Amanda started feeling something whilst chatting to Melissa. We call it a sisterly bond... she said that she couldn't quite explain it, but whilst chatting she found out that Melissa had gone to the same school as her. Amanda followed her gut and typed out, Hey sis, and Melissa responded by saying, Amanda?
And that was the end of it. They had found each other again and they weren't going to let this pass them by. The two have committed to spending more time together as a family.
A happy story for the weekend...
Image Courtesy of Unsplash