Adoption Reconnect

I am 45 years old, and I have one older brother and one younger sister.  Or so I thought…… 45 years old is not too old to discover that one has another BRAND NEW older sister somewhere in the world.

To begin, I suppose one must begin at the beginning.  On the 17^th of August I got a distress call from my Mother who lives some 40 kilometers from my house.  The call was to ask me to come through to their home on account that my Father had collapsed.  My Mother had presumed, correctly, that my Father had suffered a massive stroke.  On visiting the hospital on the 18^th of August I had expected to find my Father in a similar condition to when I last saw him.  He had been unable to use his right hand side, and was unable to speak.  Although, I must say that he was aware of what was happening around him, and could nod his head in agreement or disagreement.  That Monday was a terrible day.  I found my Father in a comatose situation, battling to breathe, a tube coming out of his mouth to a bag on the floor, and the bag was rapidly filling with blood.  I knew then that was the last time I would see my Father alive.  My Mother, powerless to help or to do anything for the man she had been married to for the past 48 years kept repeating between tears that she had “lost him”.  My Mother spent vainless time trying to impress on my Father that we loved him, and tried valiantly to make him aware of our presence and that we were there for him.  My Father passed away in the early hours of the 19^th of August.

Through the dark days, I was trying to comfort my Mother, writing the Eulogy for my Father, organising the funeral and trying to keep things on an even keel.  Being a presence for my brother and sister, and trying to be everything for everyone was one of the most difficult times I have had to live through.  It was some days after my Fathers funeral that I finally had some time to be alone with my Mother again.  I had not been able to guage how well she was coping or know how best to help her.  It was during this time that she started crying, and in a strangled small voice told me that there was something she needed to tell me.  She couldn’t speak further and so there were so many thoughts going through my mind that eventually I replied to her, “Mom, there is nothing you cannot tell me, I don’t care what it is now that you are trying to say, but I can tell you that NOTHING will sway me from loving you or respecting you, I know who you are, and I know you have always had my best interests at your heart, anything you need to say now will never sway me or make me believe any differently.”  In a small voice she told me  “I had another baby.”  Well that took a few seconds to sink in and then I realised……… WOW, I have another sibling out there…….. WOW!  “Mom, was it a boy or a girl”  and Mom said it was a little girl, by now I had started giggling, and my Mom was still sobbing, another SISTER…….. WOW, how cool!  I wanted to dance my Mom around the room, I wanted to reassure her, I wanted to hug her and make her happy again. I wanted so much, but more importantly I wanted to comfort her and take away that awful pain from her too.

To take something like this in stride could be difficult for others, but then they wouldn’t know my Mother!  Do you remember being small and just knowing absolute love, being safe and secure, and knowing that even in the early hours of the morning, just a whispered “MOM” would have her at your bedside with whispered words back “What’s the matter my love?”  Nothing was ever too much for my Mother, at 03h00 in the morning a request for a drink of water was treated with utmost importance, and never once did she grumble that we had got her out of bed.  We were raised with values, never to hurt anything, especially anything smaller than ourselves, to not use bad language – because that was a “crutch for the illiterate” to think carefully before we spoke and myriads of other things were impressed on us, that as a family and siblings we still live by and abide by today.