Thinking

Time for my Tuesday night random post.
So I've been thinking a lot about adoption. Mine in general. I was watching this show the other night called The Locator. This guy is like a private investigator or something and families contact them to find their "missing" family member.
The particular episode that I watched involved a 20 something woman who was given up for adoption at birth. Her birth mother's nurse was the adoptee's aunt. The aunt had all the information regarding the birth mother but wouldn't share. So she enlisted the help of The Locator.
So the guy finds the woman, seemingly relatively fast and brings the adoptee to the birth mothers house. This woman had a beautiful upscale type house. She was obviouslly very well off. The adoptee met her mother and then went on to meet her two younger sisters. Everyone is happy, the show ends. I'm pretty sure I would have been kind of pissed off. To see how well my mother had done for herself. Not only that but just a year later my younger sister would be born. Sheesh, talk about getting robbed.
My own story is a little different.
I always knew I was/am adopted, from the moment I could first understand I guess. One day was I was 18 my parents (adopted parents, but my "real" parents) called me to my sisters house. They said it was important and I needed to get there right away.
When I arrived there was a solom look on everyone's faces. I knew there was something wrong. Thats when they showed me a woman's obituarity. I began reading it and immediatly knew it was my mother. I don't know how I just did, and then I read my birth name listed as one of her surving children. There were six. On that day I had learned the mother who gave me life and then gave me wonderful parents, a woman who i'd never met but loved so much, had died. I also learned that I had siblings. Older siblings. I was the very last kid to be born and they couldn't keep me.
The wake was that evening, my family asked me if I wanted to go, and if I did they would be by my side. I had to go. I couldn't let my mother be buried without me seeing her face.
When I arrived there in the parkling lot my sister recognized someone. It was a woman whom she had worked with a year or so before. The woman turned out to be my Grandmother. My sister introduced me and my Grandmother put her arms around me and began crying. I cried so hard. The feeling I can't even describe. It was joy, it was fear, excitement and sadness. I went into the funeral home and met my birth mother for the first time, lying in her casket.
I then met my sister and four brothers. The whole thing was a whirlwind.
We kept in contact for some time, but it didn't last. I'm not sure why. I guess after the curiosity was settled, I didn't feel I needed them in my life. I do regret it from time to time. I think about them often. I saw in the newspaper that my Grandfather died. I wanted to send a card but I never did.
Now being a mother myself, I can't imagine the pain my birth mom went though. How can you possibly carry a baby for that long, go through the labor and birth process, and then just hand her away. I wont lie sometimes i feel resentment, but I'm so happy and thankful to my birth mother for doing the right thing and giving me to a wonderful family that could provide for me. I was lucky and blessed, and lived a higher quality life, in my opinion, than that of my siblings. I'm just sorry my birth mother had to go through that. When I look at my babies, I feel so sorry for my her and wished that she had gotten a chance to see what I've become.
Adoption is a wonderful thing. I admire the mothers who give their babies a chance every day, and feel for their pain.