North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Debbie

so then I decided the next move was after I'd spoken to Steve about it and thought about it for a while erm to go to the library and try and trace through births marriages and deaths see if I could find out more about my mother and my brother erm so I did this went up to the library I was quite enjoying it at this stage its fascinating actually I can understand how people get obsessed with doing their family trees and things cause it really is very interesting

but anyway I went up and erm my daughter was with me we'd gone together and erm she suggested well first of all you know my birth mother disappeared in 1971 she says well first of all we should check the deaths just to make sure she didn't die in 1971 which was highly unprobable because she would have been 43 but we decided that's where we'd start we'd look up the deaths for 1971 and sure enough there she was she'd died in 1971 when I was 13 so I was sitting there in the library and I thought oh this is quite bizarre and you know it was like the whole place was just carrying on as normal you know and there's people all around me like looking at family history's and whispering to each other and carrying on and I thought god I've just found out my mothers dead you know and it was like it wasn't like upsetting I was disappointed you know its so unfair you know that this has happened to me I wanted to take this further you know but I mean I wasn't grieving for her or anything cause I never knew her you know you can't really grieve for somebody that you don't actually know so erm anyway we looked a few other things up and found out who the other people we found on the electoral register were went back though births marriages and found out that erm my mothers mother had also died at a young age I think she was about 52 so we decided there was a medical aspect to this my birth mother and my birth grandmother had both died at a relatively young age so erm I thought it was quite important to get erm death certificates at this stage to find out exactly why they'd died erm but I also knew still knew that I also had an uncle that I could contact so it wasn't all lost and I also so I had a brother somewhere I could contact so I came away with all that information which took quite a long time to sort out and you know decide where to go from there and I decided I would still like to contact the family and find out you know the situation surrounding when I was adopted and erm (pause) you know what they could remember of it and also I had a brother you know that I would like to contact (pause) so erm we only had this one contact address which was for my birth mothers brother they still lived in the same town so we erm eventually Steve said well would you like to do it or shall I do it and erm being a coward I said well you do it (laugh) so he had rung them up and there had been a wait for a long period of time it took about 6 weeks before we actually managed to find contact somebody so it was quite a strange time that because erm you keep you know expect everything to happen instantly you know you think modern communications but they had been away somewhere or something but it took a long time to get through and erm they were very unhelpful didn't want to know at all erm yes his sister he did have a sister who'd died and yes she had had a child that well he wouldn't accept the word adopted but had gone away was the term he'd used erm but no he didn't want to get involved and erm it was all a long time ago and he didn't want to know erm and but he was prepared to say was that my brother Harry erm had also died when he was 23 in a car accident which was 5 years after my birth mother died he also died so I found that strange enough.