The Tapestry Has Two Sides

I've been watching adoption reunion videos this past week or so and feeling an incredibly real piece of the pain birth moms face when they decide to give their child away. When I first learned I was pregnant at seventeen, I had no clue what would happen to my baby. The only thing I knew for certain was that I would grant him the gift of life. I didn't know if I would be granted the gift of keeping him, and I can still feel the pangs of panic deep inside when I remember the thoughts of letting my baby go. No knife ever cut so deep into my heart. I am forever grateful for the gift he is, for our life together, and for the man he has become. Jim, you are loved more than words can tell.

 

This is my brother Dan. When I was a little girl I thought being adopted was the best thing in the world, except I wasn't adopted. My mom often told the story of the night a six day old baby was placed in their arms, how they'd had to borrow clothes, diapers, and bottles because his arrival was so unexpected. The story was amazingly wonderful, but it only told one side of the story. When I considered placing my own unborn child for adoption, the heartache of my brother's birth mom became painfully obvious. "Don't you want him?" my mother had asked, and she had answered, "Yes, but I have nothing to offer him." 

 

Years after my brother's passing, I took my own mind back in time and grieved my own loss of him. Although I knew he loved me, we had never been close. Perhaps I had been just as much a source of competition for him as he had been for me. By the time we had something in common, our sons, he was too far away to reach, and then he was gone.

 

It wasn't until about 1998 that my experience with a teenage pregnancy and my brother's adoption story came together in an unexpected turn of events. A stranger in my town lost her father to cancer. My aunt had come upon the obituary in the local newspaper and shared it with my mom. The man's mother was still living, and she was my brother's birth mom. 

 

I remember mulling the information over in my mind, but I've forgotten exactly how it all played out. I knew there was a family out there missing my brother. I couldn't help them find him, but perhaps I could help give them answers. I don't remember how long I waited before making a connection. I do remember being scared to death, and shaking on my end of the phone.

 

The conversation resulted in us being able to share photos and stories with a sister who had been looking for her baby brother her entire life. She couldn't have known how brokenhearted I was for her, or how deeply I felt her pain and disappointment. I so wish I'd been able to give her more than stories and old photographs...