...........I fell to my knees

It was July 15th. I woke that morning and checked email after doing my normal morning routine of feeding my pets. Shannon was getting up soon, at the time he was working two jobs.

I checked email and to find one from my searcher Sue. She asked me to call her when I had a chance.

When I had a chance! I grabbed the phone and headed to the back patio. The dogs came out with my and played in the yard.

Sue answered and asked me to hang on while she walked out to her car. She did a lot of volunteer work and on this day she was at the warehouse filling care boxes for flood victims. I was always amazed at how giving she was with her time. I wondered if she was born that way. When she got to her car she opened the conversation by telling me that she had to call her minister that morning as she had never had to make a call like this before. I briefly wondered what could be so important, or wrong that she had to touch base with her minister before speaking to me. Was it something she found out about me? Were my instinctual fears that something was horribly wrong with me true?

She told me she was just going to let me know what she found out, about Dottye. My initial feelings were actually anger, I got ready for her to tell me that Dottye was some sort of convict or that Dottye refused to speak to me.

I had no way to prepare for what she told me. I've gone over the call a million times in my mind and I just don't think there is ever a way to prepare fully for some things. 

Dottye was dead. ~ That's what Sue said. I wondered for just a moment if it was a lie. Maybe Sue just decided she didn't have the time to search for me and was making this up. My heart knew though, I wonder if it always knew.

She went on to tell me the details, to read the obituary to me. My birth mothers obituary. Dottye, Dottye died in a car accident in Columbus Ohio. She died that day.

It was when she told me the date that I fell to my knees.

Dottye died July 17th, 1973.

How could this be? 

It seemed impossible.

That meant that she died when I was just 13 months old. 

It also chimed in that I was hearing this, about her death, two days before the actual anniversary of her death.

Here I sat on the ground, knowing that I had out lived my birth mother.

As silent tears began to roll down my face I knew that the dream I had carried for my entire life, was dead.

The butterflies were trying to escape my gut.My mind held them trapped and would not release them. As Sue continued to speak all I could to was verbalize a uh huh or an ok every now and then so she knew I was still on the line.

My mind was spinning, I was drenched with sweat, and I wondered if I would ever be able to walk again.

I felt like a failure for not finding her sooner. That was in my heart while my mind tried to fight that feeling screaming so only I could hear "You were only 13 months old. You could barely speak then! You never had a chance."

Sue asked if I was doing ok and I assured her that I was fine. I was always good that way, you know, by lying about how I really felt in order to make sure others were comfortable.

Then she told me. 

"You have a sister. She was listed in the obituary."

I stood back up, my knees were shaking. A sister. I had always asked my parents to get me a sister.

I had one.

She must have known about me.

Sue told me she was going to work on finding my sister that afternoon and would call me as soon as she knew anything at all.

I hung up with Sue and walked in a complete daze to Shannon. I looked at him as he shaved and announced that Sue had found Dottye. He stopped shaving and was excited. I leaned my head down like a look of shame and told him she was dead. I briefly told him what Sue had just shared with me, and he opened his arms to give me a hug.

He had no words.

I had no words.

How on earth could this be my new reality?

How is it I spent a life time dreaming, wishing and hoping. How is it I had spent the first 14 years of my adult life looking for someone who could never look for me?

Remember Dottye