Voice Mail Message from Birth Father’s Friend.

I had sent a thank you letter to my deceased bdad’s high school friend a few days ago. I threw in a picture of me along with a copy of my favorite picture of my bdad. It is photocopied from his old high school yearbook and it is the very first picture I ever saw of someone who looked like me!

It is so important to thank people for sharing their memories. I strongly feel it keeps the lines of communication open. I like them to know that anything at all they remember is important to me and I encourage them to share it. I don’t ever want them to think some memory is too insignificant to pass on to me. A fuzzy recollection of my bdad and his buddies riding bikes to a swimming hole means the world to me. It puts meat on the bone.

I came home last night to a message from this friend. He thanked me for the letter and marveled at how much I looked like my father. I have to admit I still feel weird when people refer to him as my father (for some reason, it is easier for me to wrap my head around the concept that B. is my mother) and I don’t know why.

I will always regret being too late to meet my birth father. My advice to people seeking out their biological families is keep at it. The clock is ticking. You may think you have all the time in the world but life is so swift. You may think you have hit a dead end but you still need to keep at it.  Look at it from different angles. Go look through yearbooks for someone who looks like you. Hire a searcher. Do some traveling.  Spend the money. Somebody out there knows your story.

Don’t be too late.

More Cards and Phonecalls.

I got a nice surprise card in the mail from B. yesterday and it couldn’t have come at a better time. I had a rotten week at work that was topped off by a car accident on Friday morning.

To make a long story short, I was the second of two cars hit by a rogue landscaping truck. I spent only an hour at the urgent care office getting poked and prodded by a kid half my age.  When did doctors get so young? I am sore but it feels like a post workout type of sore so I assume I will live. I lucked out because the nice man in the other wrecked car told me to use his name at the hospital and it turned out he was the head doctor of their radiology department. He and his wife were in tough shape so my thoughts are with them.

Anyway, I arrived home and there was a little red envelope with B.’s handwriting. Our letters back and forth tapered off when her son D.  died suddenly, so I was thrilled to see the card tucked in with all the sale ads and amazing credit offers. I always have that split second of doubt that the note will tell me that for whatever reason, B. just can’t go on having contact with me. It is a crazy thought but it always enters my mind.

It was a short note but I will give you the major points:

1. She loves me.
2. She thanked me for coming up to the cottage on the lake.
3. She was thinking that if she had decided not to meet me, the death of her son D. would have been even tougher.
4. She wants me to take care and be happy.
5. She thinks of me always (smiley face drawn next to this part!).

I called her later on and we had one of our marathon phone calls. I glanced at the timer on the phone and it said we talked for one hour and forty minutes! Friends always ask what the heck we could possibly talk about for so long. We talk about everything and nothing. I think it is a combination of 45 years of separation and the 200 miles between us.

We talked about some heavy stuff last night. It broke my heart when she talked about still having faith despite everything that has happened. She said she had a “lot of hurts” in her life starting with me, then the deaths of her father and mother, and finally the tragic loss of D. I blurted out that I thought she certainly had more than her share of loss. She wasn’t quite sure about that because she feels that a person isn’t given more than they can handle and she believes there is a reason for everything.

Maybe this is one of those life lessons a mother passes down to her children?  Her faith has been so severely tested and probably even faltered in private moments but she still goes on.  I am not a particularly religious person but I fell asleep last night thinking about what a truly amazing woman she is.

Where Am I Going?

Once again, I am at a crossroads with this blog.

I feel like I have shared my search and reunion experience completely so I am thinking of heading off in some new directions. I do realize I haven’t shared the final part of my Texas trip and my terrific reunion with my new paternal brother. It is coming! I promise!

After recieving feedback from some folks, it seems they are interested in some of the more technical aspects of my search process.  Letters I wrote, research I did, etc. As an experiment, I posted my first letter to my bmom and the search engine hits went way up!

If you have a moment, please let me know your thoughts.