A few months ago while in Orlando, I was helping Alex look up her family on Ancestry.com. While looking up names for her I decided to try and find my own family I had never had any contact with, my birth mother's side. I typed in the name I thought belonged to my maternal grandmother, not expecting to find much, since for years I had googled and searched with no luck. But this time, this time, an obituary popped up. She had recently passed away and there was my name, and my sister's name- and the name of other children I knew my birth mother had but never met, in tiny black and white letters. A picture of her smiling- survived by her grandchildren it said, survived by me. I took in the information slowly, she was loved it said and loved her grandchildren and great-grandchildren more than life itself. Then I noticed something familiar about the date printed at the bottom, date of her death, November 27th. Mateo's birthday.
Next thing you know I am in a cafe, waiting to meet Terry, my birthmother Gigi's oldest daughter. My birth mother died in 2006 and my grandmother last year on Mateo's birthday. And all this time they lived an hour outside of Boston, and thanks to this obituary and Facebook here I was waiting in a cafe to meet my sister, the only person alive who could answer the questions I had been wondering all my life.
Terry walked in with a small suitcase filled with photo albums and pictures and letters, She had grabbed everything she thought I might want to see, pictures of everyone I might want to meet. It was surreal to see Stephanie's dimples on someone else's face, I found myself just staring at times not sure I could heat everything being said over what was not. We shared the same womb once you and I. Grew inside and out of this woman of whom I'd only ever seen two pictures of.
Terry was not raised by Gigi either, but by Gigi's mother, Teresa instead. I listened to Terry describe Teresa with so much love and affection, the pain of her loss still so tender. She brought me a small gift that once belonged to Teresa, "she loved trinkets, she had them everywhere- she had this for 16 years" Terry said handing me this sweet little ceramic bird sitting on a branch, protecting a nest with two eggs. "I felt like you and Stephanie were the two eggs in the nest- " I gently took the trinket and knew this belonged on my altar- my dedicated space for my guiding angels, the altar that lives in my home, a home full of trinkets everywhere for which I am constantly teased.We ordered food we didn't really eat, and shared stories of our childhoods. Did your mom do this? Did your mom teach you that? Both of us with different reference points for the word mom, mine being Carmen my adopted aunt and hers being Teresa. We laughed at the ways all Latina little old ladies are the same, the things we were nagged for and the lessons we carry. I would have loved to have met Teresa and meeting her through Terry was so bittersweet. Then we talked about Gigi.
All of my life I have wondered what she was like, beyond the trauma, The only stories I had ever been told were the heartbreaking kind, The kind of grief that lives in your DNA- the kind of grief that makes you hurt in all the places I carry her. When I was pregnant with Mateo I would break down, how will I know to be a birth mother if I didn't have one, eventually landing on the knowledge that I'll at least know to be the kind of mother who stays because mine didn't. But I wanted to know beyond the pain. I wanted to know about her childhood, and her friends, did she like to sing and was she funny?
I also wanted to know Did she ever miss me? Did she ever miss me? Did she ever miss me?
Terry gently hands me a letter, the only letter she had from Gigi's belongings, found in an envelope inside of an unwritten journal except for one page with a poem. The letter is personal, and heartbreaking and gentle. in it she mentions me and my sister and how her one wish was to see us again before she died. To have us meet her mother Teresa, our grandmother. To be a family just one time. But here is the thing about giving your children away for whatever the reason, nothing can guarantee they will ever return. My chest slowly caved as I read her describe how she had a hole in her heart from not having her children, I know Gigi, I know. What a fucking family legacy.
As I sat looking through photo albums, I could feel her materialize, no longer an abstract idea of what my birth mother was like or how she lived. There she was at the beach, and there she was in a wedding dress, and there she was end of her life. And there she lives in the pain in Terry's eyes from having known her but never having had her as she deserved, a mother. There she lives in the dimples on Terry's face, the ones identical to the ones I have kissed on Stephanie's cheeks all my life. There she lives in my chicken legs, and my widow's peak. There she lived all these years.Her legacy is as complicated as her life. Even cruel at times. As I flipped through the pages of her life, I felt validated in knowing that no one is all good, or all bad. That we exist in the spaces in between our mistakes and successes. That we are capable of love that transcends spiritual planes in one breath and unforgivable selfishness in the other. That we are whole pictures even when we are broken human beings.
I thought of my baby boy a lot today. Like most days. Sweet messages popping up on my phone, we remember from friends and family. We remember. I think about his short and sweet little life.
Does he know I miss him? Does he know I miss him? Does he know I miss him?
My body hurts from grieving, my shoulders, chest, stomach. I hurt everywhere and then I remember- grief can only live where there once was love.
