Part Two: THE Best Valentines Gift

Fast forward from yesterday's story to February 13, 2013. Just a reminder that, at the time, I was in Victoria and had just started doing chemo. The phone call came from Maureen ...

"I wanted to get you the best Valentines gift, so I tried to get you a picture of your birth mother."

The miracle part of this -- the "blow-my-mind", "unbelievably-amazing", "I-can't-conceive-of-this" part -- is that Maureen and I DON'T do Valentines.  What sisters do? Her desire to get me a Valentines gift is absolutely, positively the result of our newly-intimate, loving relationship brought about because of cancer.

Maureen went on to tell me the following story (I will recollect the details as accurately as I possibly can.  If, however, I get a few bits wrong ... the end result is the same!) ...

My mother had listed "teacher" as her occupation on my birth record, so Maureen's hope was that there might be archives of old class pictures hiding away in some musty corner of a school library. To help her locate a picture, Maureen contacted an old acquaintance who happened to be a teacher in the right area of Alberta to do some digging. He talked to a friend, who talked to a friend and ... before she knew it, Maureen had an email with the name of my sister and brother, as well as the name and phone number of my cousin. After wrestling with what to do for an entire work day, she decided to use the phone number!

Unknown to Maureen, was the fact that one of the friends that talked to a friend knew my family fairly well.  That person called my cousin, Hub, and gave him a heads up that some woman was poking around asking questions and looking for pictures. Therefore, it didn't come as a complete surprise when Maureen called Hub to relay her story and fill him in as to why she was looking for a picture of my mother.

After agreeing to talk again in a few days' time, the conversation between Maureen and cousin Hub ended with a promise that he would do his level best to get his hands on a picture of  my mother, Evelyn. In reality, that conversation started a life-changing chain of events. The next several days were filled with phone calls, visits, and emails between Maureen, cousin Hub, my sister, Charlotte, and my brother, Kevin.

On February 16, 2013, I had the FIRST EVER communication with a member of my birth family -- an email from my sister, Charlotte. I'm sure a little skeptical about all the new information she had learned about having an older sister, Charlotte asked me to send my birth record from the hospital. The evidence was unmistakable -- the three of us were siblings! I remember appreciating so much that Kevin signed his FIRST email, "Your little brother, Kevin." I cried until my body shook when I read each new email that arrived.  I've never watched the "Inbox" icon on my email so closely, and would ecstatically click the newest message to dissect every phrase and examine each  new picture Kevin and Charlotte sent. When the very first picture of my mother arrived, I carried my laptop out to Kate's living room with tears streaming down my face, repeating over and over, "This is my mother! This is my mother!" At 54 years old, I had finally seen, with my own eyes, what my birth mom looked like.

The first picture I saw of my mother, Evelyn and her husband, Oswald.

Looking back, it is astonishing to me how quickly Charlotte and Kevin accepted the facts of who I was. They tell me the clincher was learning, from the birth record, that I had been named "Gladys Doreen" -- a name with special significance to my mother. (I'm secretly grateful I escaped the name Gladys! Yvonne is so much better, don't you think?!?) I couldn't get enough of Charlotte and Kevin during those first few days and weeks.  The emails were flying back and forth faster than pitches at the World Series. I felt hungry and thirsty for more and more information, and my siblings complied. I was like a sponge, soaking up knowledge about these wonderful new people in my life.

Here are the first pictures I received of Kevin and Charlotte.

Pouring my heart out onto a computer screen, I wrote emails with an ease I can only describe as uncanny.  A quiet person by nature, particularly with those I don't know well, it just felt right to open up my heart and soul, expose the real me, and pray that they'd love me even when they learned my life hadn't been a bed of roses. The only way I can describe the feeling was that I "fit" with these people - almost as if pieces of me had been missing, and now those pieces were found.

I marvel at the fact that I can love this new family so very, very much, yet love Maureen and my Mom & Dad more than ever.  It's as if, as I require more love to go around, God just fills up my heart with more and more to give.

If this was a blog about adoptees being reunited with their birth families, I would go on and on with more and more details, but it's a blog about battling and surviving cancer. I do have more to say (and will in another post in a day or two) about meeting my birth family, and how that came about. For now, however, I will remind you that cancer brings blessings into your life!

Blessings so huge, you think you will burst!

Blessings I would NEVER trade -- not even to have lived out my life cancer-free.