North East Post Adoption Service - Adoption Narratives - Debbie
because
my grandmother and my birth mother erm and grandfather were all buried in
the same grave and Harry my brother's ashes had been scattered on the grave
so (pause) that was all very nice so we thought we had nothing better to do
than to arrive at this church yard and put them on the grave I don't know
if you've ever looked for a grave in a graveyard but we were round and round
that graveyard for about 2 hours and fortunately it was summer it was a nice
day so that wasn't a problem though we were round and round this graveyard
for about 2 hours and erm my birth name was Marjorie and I think every third
grave in this graveyard had Marjorie on it but none of them were the right
one erm (pause) anyway we couldn't find er her anywhere and we were just about
to give up and my husband was in one corner of the graveyard and I'd wandered
off and I was somewhere else because again reading graves is fascinating you
start to see different families appearing and you get side tracked you know
and your thinking this isn't what I'm here for you know but erm I actually
found a nephew's beautiful gravestone with a little sculpture of a dog on
we'd actually found out that he'd also died in a car accident he would have
been my cousin he'd also died in a car accident when he was about 24 I think
so we found his grave so we'd found somebody's grave but I couldn't find the
grave I was looking for and there was this lady who was tending a grave in
the churchyard and erm she started to talk to my husband and erm they were
chatting away and he said oh we're looking for a grave but we can't find it
so she said well I've lived here all my life whose grave are you looking for
so he gave my births mothers name and she said oh yes she's just over there
but its an unmarked grave so there isn't a headstone so we'd never have found
it because there wasn't a headstone erm so erm she says why are you looking
for her and he said well you'll have to ask my wife she's just over there
I'll bring her over so this lady and he said erm this lady's wondering why
your looking for that particular grave so I said well actually it was my she
was my mother and she like looked at me and well I was adopted when I was
6 weeks old you know but she was actually my mother so she says well I live
next door 2 doors away I think yeah 2 or 3 doors away she was definitely a
neighbour anyway 2 or 3 doors away from her from when we were children to
when erm she died and she said well I never knew she'd had a baby that she
had adopted she was absolutely gob smacked it was obviously a big secret at
the time as these things were for a lot of people she says you know that she
already had 1 child yes and so we chatted to her for a while and erm just
as like a parting gift as she was about to go she says mind she was awful
fond of her drink (laugh) so as she went off so she obviously had a drink
problem of some sort my er birth mother but which is perhaps why her sister
was a bit resistant about talking about her so I think I actually got more
information from this conversation with this complete stranger that I happened
to meet in the churchyard than I did from her sister but never mind so we
came away and erm I haven't done anything about it since you know if you sort
of get on with your life and it keeps coming to the forefront and you say
oh yeah I really should contact Carol again you know I don't want her to think
I was disappointed in any way you know with what I found because there were
pause er how can I put it without sounding.
