Once upon a time there was a little girl who grew up adopted. Even though she dearly loved her adoptive parents, she always wanted to be part of a larger family, because she had only her parents and herself, no brothers or sisters, aunts, uncles, or cousins. When she was 17, her daddy died, and one of the thoughts that swirled through her head in the days after, was that now there was no one to walk her down the aisle on her wedding day.
When her mother became ill with Alzheimer’s, the young woman felt again the sting of loneliness and wondered if she would ever again know the security and comfort of “belonging”.
A few years later, she met a nice young man and began to trust the love he offered her. She slowly moved forward in the relationship, growing and blossoming with each new evidence of his love. She told him about the loss of her daddy, and the illness of her mother. She told him, too, about the fact of her adoptedness, but even SHE never considered searching for the birth family. It just didn’t occur to her!
But, somewhere else in the world, another woman had just learned, after the death of her own mother, that she had a sister “out there somewhere”, missing in adoption. The news shook her because she had never known or suspected that such could be true. She and her mother had always been close, and even more so as the younger woman nursed the older one through a series of illnesses and strokes. After learning the truth from her father, the woman began to search for her long-lost sister.
She went to a local judge and asked for his help in this matter. He reviewed the files and compassionately granted her request. He helped her to find the information she needed to locate her sister. They met, and formed a close relationship. The sound of the different-but-still-familiar voice comforted the non-adoptee, and the adoptee learned much about inherited traits and family commonality. They visited often, and shared much.
When the adoptee accepted her beloved’s marriage proposal, her sister was the first one she told. Together they planned the wedding day. It was a quiet ceremony, performed in a park near the cemetery where the birth mother was buried. The adoptive mother was escorted to the front row of chairs. The birth sister was the maid of honor. The birth mother’s husband walked the bride down the aisle. The local judge performed the ceremony.
A couple of years later, the happy couple had a baby, a little girl. They named her after her two maternal grandmothers, and she grew up healthy and secure, in the midst of much love and belonging to lots of people.
HINT: Sometimes, we just have to remember that adoption isn’t ALL trauma and despair. Sometimes there are happy stories! And June is an appropriate time to tell a wedding story!
[Last Story] [Back to Titles/Dates] [Next Story]
