Jan
08
it is no secret that i am adopted. after the birth of Lil'K i was forced to do a little thinking. health wise i was going through things that were a bit scary. things that my mother had gone through. that ultimately led to her having a hysterectomy when i was three. which led to her being on hormones. which as we all know led to her death. facing the same surgery in my near future started to worry me. it made me think long and hard about my medical past. and more importantly, my lack of knowledge about my medical past. the fact that i now had a second child, whose paternal medical past i had no knowledge of either. being adopted, and in the mid 70's at that, you can imagine that the 'passing on of information' was not quite as open as it is now in some cases. i literally knew very little. i knew the agency used. that she was musical. had brown hair. was 21. and that i was a mix of irish, dutch and indian. the tribal headdress kind, not the in the sand with camel's kind. and that the possibility i was given up was that she wanted to head to medical school. but that was the extent of what i knew.enter Lil'K and my need for learning more skyrocketed. but how on earth could i do that? my adoption was obviously closed. my birth mother used an agency that in my area is known for their 'wayward home for expecting young mothers'. or back in the day that was the case. i started by contacting them. no help. i could pay an astronomical amount of money and send in an application that if happened to match another party would allow me to receive information. so i put my information out on a couple of adoption sites. by the time i forgot about it i received an email from an adoption search agency. in the email it only asked if the number shown was my birth certificate number. it was. the number matched a birth certificate from my birthday with only 'baby girl' listed. but with a name under mother. then the same number is shown with my name, my mother and father as well. she said it was unusual back then for the same number to be on both. they would usually give a new number to the birth certificate that went with the adoptive parents and child. so it made things easier. she was able to give me my birth mother's name. her parents names. the name of her mother. and another relative as well as his address and phone number and the fact that at one time she had lived with him. of course, i could not fathom calling that number. i just kind of sat on the information for a while. do not get me wrong, i would google the shit out of the information i had. but just could not act on it. i googled for quite a while. years even. but did not get the push i needed until early 2012 when my cousin and i started putting together our family tree. i decided to start another one on the side. you would not believe the information that can be found on those sites. so i entered my birth mother's name. i found a picture of her. from high school and nearly fell out of my chair. i could not even think. i took a picture of it on my phone and sent it to August. she immediately was like WTF is that? the resemblance was striking. i knew it was her.
i continued to search for her brother. i knew her parents were already deceased. i had found their death certificates. but the brother remained elusive. and she was just kind of in the wind. i searched and searched. but kept coming up with nothing but dead ends.
school started and the holidays hit. and the searching just kind of came to a halt. after christmas i decided to look again. and the first entry in google was... her obituary. it took my breath away. she had passed away at the age of 57 in september of 2012. i contacted the funeral home that was listed as doing the arrangements. the gentleman there was very sympathetic to my story. after playing phone tag for almost a month, i got in touch with him this morning and heard the news that i was dreading. he did not do the pick up from the hospital. it was another funeral home. it was a county case. she was cremated. no living relatives or assets. it was a friend from work that made the arrangements. they did not even know where she was born at. where her parents were from. or any other information.
the only part i heard was ... no living relatives.
it brought my everything to a halt.
every. thing.
after all my searching. and wondering. that was it. it was over. no. living. relatives.
all i can do now is try to find the woman that helped make the arrangements. and maybe talk to her. i searched all day for her brother. and the other relative. to no avail.
i just have a hard time imagining that this is the end. but i have to say my heart is very heavy. i know as an adopted child that your past is always hard to narrow down. and i love my parents. they are the only mom and dad i know. the best ever. and i do not want to belittle them. but i think being human...there is an instinct to understand your past. to know where you come from. i think that has nothing to do with being adopted. i want to know the same things about my parents. especially my mom. i knew her as my mom, but growing up without her i was not able to really understand what she was like as an adult. i only saw her as a mom. i want to know about her as much as i do my birth mom. probably even more. but with both of them gone...where do i start? how do i get to my past? what will i tell my girls? i do not want them to be my age and wonder about their pasts. i know this will be something that i will have to get past. getting past your past. sheesh i sure have been working on this lately.
ughh. just one more thing to add to my list of 'shitineedtoworkthrough'
That is hard. Do try to contact her friend. At least you may learn a little something about her. What sort of things she liked to do and what kind of person she was. I am bothered by not knowing my full family history though I was blessed to know my parents.
Were your ears burning today? i just got on the computer for the sole purpose of coming to visit you and there you were on my blog. Not joking. i finished dusting and thought, Oh yeah, I need to go visit Loco Yaya : )We are in a dither at our house as you might imagine if you've watched the news. Those weighty papers were to be signed tomorrow and The Seamonkey is about to have a stroke. We have an interesting evening ahead of us.