The year was 1977. I was on a solo trip across America via Greyhound bus and a six-week pass. One of my first stops was a private school in the mountains of Utah where my younger sister was enrolled. My sister and I had a tumultuous relationship, but we were sisters with a sister bond and I was not surprised to be welcomed with her arms open. I met her friends and her boyfriend. We spent a weekend together. It was a wonderful time. I attended their Senior Prom where my sister posed with this man she thought she would spend the rest of her life with. She wore a long blue dress.
I returned west in time to see her walk across the podium in our hometown to receive her high school diploma. She had earned all her credits elsewhere, but she was granted her request to graduate with the people she had known since 6th grade. She was radiant and expectant. I mean, really expectant.
I moved to Oregon over the summer, and we exchanged letters. She was distraught about the future of the child she was carrying in her womb. There was pressure to end the pregnancy with an abortion. Neither my sister nor I could condone such a move. The father was supportive but only to a certain point. My sister felt all alone in her decisions. In the end, she gave the baby up for adoption, but the act marked her forever. She wanted her baby, and she mourned him.
Deni died in 2000. She contracted a bizarre autoimmune disease known as “necrotizing faciitis” or “flesh eating bacteria”. It is a staphylococcal infection that makes it way into a body through an open cut and begins to work on the flesh and internal organs of the infected person. Doctors need to be trained in identifying the infection and most small-town doctors (read: rural doctors) are not. Deni was in sepsis within 24 hours of the first symptom. The hospital was flummoxed and she was loaded onto a Life Flight helicopter to Reno, a several hour flight from Ely, Nevada.
My father called me with a desperate prayer request. I sent it on to my prayer lines. My nephew loaded his little sister into a car and drove to Reno, a five hour drive.
Deni died before morning at what was then Washoe Medical Center. She was surrounded by her husband of a few months, her son and her oldest daughter. She was never to know what had become of her oldest child, the boy born in Ely and given up for adoption at birth.
That haunted me. It haunted my father. Dad gave me all the information he had (Nevada is a “closed” adoption state). The birth date, the sex, the hospital. There was really no hope in finding the baby boy.
In the years since my father’s death (where he made me promise I would continue to search) I have become close friends with adoptees and adoptee advocates. I know there is no way to open closed records. I favor open records. There may be a lot of pain involved in “reunions” but there can also be a lot of unanswered questions answered. Unresolved adoption trauma can be addressed. I have heard both sad stories but also a lot of wonderful stories of adoptees who found their birth family and managed to resolve both birth and adopted family history.
It doesn’t always work that way. I get that.
My “foster” sister hunted down her own birth mother and had a successful reunion. Her birth mother was present at her wedding where my father gave her away. She reunited with siblings, aunts, uncles. She created lasting relationships. We were all blown away (sorry for the 1970s language) by the resemblance between her and her birth mother: the way they held cigarettes, waved their hands while talking, walked, or expressed themselves. It was uncanny.
My father died in 2011. He felt guilty about my sister’s first born. He made me promise I would continue the search. But what can you do with closed records? I put it out on a few Nevada adoption sites but there’s really no hope.
Then comes new DNA research. I spit into a tube and sent my DNA off to two sites: Ancestry.com and 21andme.com. And I left it. It was enlightening as far as my genetic history: the Irish is minimal, the Scots is somewhat minimal, but the British and Germanic are strong. There’s even some Finnish and Norwegian. I’m basically a melting pot of Caucasian countries. White, oh so white.
I left it there. If my nephew – should he be out there – might eventually take a DNA test. My niece took one, but I knew we were related. My other nephew took one, but I knew we were related. And years passed.
November, 2022. A man in the Midwest took a DNA test for other reasons. He k new he was adopted. He did not expect to find his biological family, much less to find out that that family had been hoping and searching for him for decades. He knew there was an off-chance of finding things out. Still…
I start 2023 with my nephew. My oldest nephew. The one my sister mourned. The one my sister gave up for adoption. The one I didn’t really search for but the one who drove me to take my DNA and make it public so if he ever came searching for his family… he would find us.
Welcome to the Family, John. You have been loved, watched over, and mourned. I’m thankful for your adoptive family. They were angels. I know they loved you. I honor them this day. And I look forward to a year of learning about you and making you feel like one of the very large family you come from.
Jaci Dawn 