Kathy and David - A First Mother's Love

An excerpt from my memoir - Choiceless: A Birthmother’s Story of Love, Loss, and Reunion

Recently, my friend Kathy — whom I had met at [Booth Memorial Hospital and Home for Unwed Mothers] so many years ago — passed away. She had reunited with her son, and she and I spoke just days before her death. Through her family, I was able to contact her son. We had an amazing phone conversation, and I shared with him stories of his birth. I was able to confirm the deep love his mother had for him, and her sadness that never healed following their separation. I was there when he was born. I held him as an infant. I supported his mother then, and [we were friends] for many decades. He was grateful to hear stories of his mother that shed a new light on his memories of her.

Kathy and I met at the home in 1970, and took an immediate liking to one another. She was three months from her due date when I arrived. It wasn’t long before we learned we were from the same home town. Her gregarious personality and infectious laugh belied her deep sadness that her love had immediately abandoned her when he learned of her pregnancy. She still loved him, and she desperately wanted to marry him and to keep her unborn child. But, like the rest of us, she was convinced that being a single mother would bring shame upon her child’s innocent head.

Her son was born in December, and for many years, I knew him as “Jeffrey.” Kathy and I both worked on the hospital floor during our time at the home — she was a nursery aide, and I was a floor and delivery aide. That privilege allowed me to witness the brief time she shared with her son. I was able to hold him in my arms, and my friend spent nearly every spare minute in the nursery with her baby boy. She was inconsolable throughout those last days with him. I couldn’t think of one comforting word that made any sense at all, so I just sat with her. “Yes,” I agreed. “He is the most beautiful baby boy, and he looks just like you!” She smiled through her tears, but there was no denying that her loving heart was breaking a bit more each day.

More than two months later, I returned to our home town after delivering my baby girl. I called Kathy immediately. Sworn to silence in a shroud of secrecy, we had only each other to talk to about our experiences and our profound grief. We persevered with as much as courage as we could muster, and shared many good times. We worked together in the same office, and in the evenings we played softball, bowled, danced and drank a lot of beer! We raised our voices in song as members of Sweet Adelines, and while cruising downtown in her 1960-something Dodge. Often we cried together as we talked about our lost lovers and babies. We were inseparable friends.

My marriage and eventual pregnancy caused tension between us. Kathy could not understand how I could betray my firstborn child by birthing, keeping and raising another. She held firm to her opinion, and had no other children. I, on the other hand, was desperate to fill the “mother hole.” My motives may not have been altruistic at the time, but I am grateful for the privilege of being mom to the two children I did raise.

Years later, when Kathy’s brother died in a tragic accident, I went to the funeral. There we embraced and healed our friendship. When I reunited with my daughter in 1994, she was one of the first people I called. And in 2001, she met her son. Jeffrey became David — and, Kathy became whole.

My friend has passed on, and left behind the son she grew to know and love, his wife and her granddaughter. Our last conversation was about her gratitude in having spent time with them. “At least he knows my family, and even though I won’t be here for him, they will.”

There is tremendous fear on all sides of the adoption triangle when considering reunion. Will I be rejected by my parent? Does my child even want me in his life? Am I better off not knowing? Will the child I raised love his birth mother more than he loves me?

When David courageously sought out his mother, he healed at least one broken and tormented soul.

We are complicated, we humans. Reunion stories have healed and broken hearts. But, the one thing I believe without doubt — Where there is life, there is hope. Life is temporary. Love is eternal.

Rest easy, my friend. The circle is completed.