It seemed strange, looking into the face of this woman sitting opposite me in the garden. She was the image of my sister and i, and, had i passed her in the street, i would have known she was a family member.
But my sister!
It all started two years before when a letter dropped on the doormat. Dad picked it up as saw it was addressed to mum. It was from an agency tracing family members, but mum couldnt read anymore, the tears where streaming down her face. The past had finally caught up!
She knew immediately that it was her daughter trying to make contact. A daughter that she was made to give up over 45
years ago. A baby that she had loved from the moment she first felt her soft little body in her arms. A baby that she nursed for the first 6 weeks of her life and was then taken away from her. Then told never to mention the whole "incident" ever again.
Oh how she grieved for her lost daughter. It was to be her first thought on waking and her last thought before going to sleep every day for the rest of her life right up until the letter dropped through the door.
Every birthday was torture. She tried to fill her days, and sometimes this worked. Mostly her time was filled with thoughts of how her little girl was, what she was doing, was she happy, did her adoptive parents love her as she did?
Mum eventually met our father a few years later. Still sworn to secrecy, and too frightened to say anything, she never confided in him. Those days were so different from now.
Now the letter she had both dreaded but so long to see, had arrived and it was time to talk.
My sister and i were both home for the weekend. Dad said there was something mum had to tell us. Fearing the worst, we sat silently until mum handed us the letter.
We looked at each other, a broad smile growing across our faces ...... A sister, we had a sister. Throwing our arms around mum, we wanted to know all about her, we were thrilled.
But then we looked at dad. He was lost. The woman he had married had kept this secret from him. This monumental secret. He couldnt take it in. We realise then just what this meant to him. So we tempered our enthusiasm for his sake.
Dad was brilliant though. He knew what times were like then. They talked it all out, explainations, questions and answers. Why didn't you tell me? This was the only one that seem to matter to him.
How could she tell him. The ideal time was before they married but that never happened. As the days, weeks, months and years went on it became more and more impossible to tell him.
Everything fell into place. The nervous breakdowns, the panic attacks. All because she had this secret that was burning away inside her. Because she was never allowed to share it with another living soul.
Talking is healing, we know that now but mum couldnt do that.
Then came the devastating news that my sister had cancer, an aggressive form that had taken over her body. She knew her time was limited and so decided to hasten along our first meeting with our other sister.
We plotted between us how to go about it and decided that it would be best to invite her up at the same time as mum and dad were staying there. I would go and stay as well. We knew mum would be a nervous wreck if she knew so we didnt tell her until the night before.
We were all so nervous, all so excited. What if she didnt like us? What if, after all this time of mum loving her little girl, her dreams were shattered.
And that is how we found ourselves sitting opposite each other in my sisters garden on that wonderful day, 12 years ago, when we discovered that our other sister was a kind, thoughtful, lovely woman, who was just as nervous (scared stiff in truth) of meeting us as we were.
Sadly, my sister died 2 years after that meeting.
Mum went through a terrible time thinking it was her fault, that somehow she was being punished for keeping her first born a secret. Having one daughter come back into her life only to have one taken away seemed too much to bear. But we got through it.
I was with mum when she passed away seven years ago, and before she took her last breath, i held her hand, leant towards her and whispered in her ear,
"Thank you for the most wonderful present you could have ever given me mum, my sister"
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