So Close, Yet So Far Away

In many ways, I am very fortunate. My adoptive parents were very open about my adoption, and my bio-father had, on occasions, kept in touch, even to the point of coming to visit for 2 hours on my 12th birthday. All contact was lost shortly afterward.

Around my 13th birthday, I sensed he had passed on. Thirty-one years later, I found out he had committed suicide during that very week. Having the faint memory of him on my 12th birthday with his big car and saying that turning 12 meant that I was now a young man, was more than a lot of adoptees will ever get to know and is something I will hold in my heart forever.

for California

The older I became, the stronger the need to find out who I was. Questions I never thought of as a youth were starting to overwhelm me. Though my adoptive parents could not recall much any more, my adoptive mother had kept in touch with the attorney who handled the case and managed to find his name and phone number. To my surprise, it was still current 33 years later.

It was a disappointment to have his wife tell me that he was now suffering from Alzheimer's disease and they had gotten rid of any records they may have kept years ago. Starting with my dad's death certificate, I contacted the new acting medical examiner who became sympathetic enough that when I finally contacted him with questions concerning the death certificate and asked who the person named [the informant] on the document was, he kindly dug up the hand-written autopsy report that was still on file from the previous M.E. Within minutes, I had called my dad's older and only brother, who then gave me my aunt's number. Imagine the goose bumps and tears as my wife listened while on a speaker phone, I told the elderly lady on the other end that she did not know who I was but that her older brother gave me her number.

When she interrupted me with, "MIKE you found me! WOW OH WOW!" She was the only one my father was close to, and because of that, she was the only one who knew of my existence! I was soon talking to my 1/2 brother, who is older by 10 yrs and then to both of my older 1/2 sisters and also my other aunt.

With so many found kin, I was positive that I would soon learn who my bio-mother was. Wrong: no one knew her identity or any thing. With my aunts being over 80, I had to assure them that it was alright if at one time they had known her name but over the years could not remember it. We cried and hugged.

All is good, but it's not over yet. I found out the reason my dad took his own life was due to the pain from advanced stages of TB. A while back, my new dentist informed me that what I thought was normal forming on the bones inside of my mouth was actually a disease that men can only get from their mother's side. So with that and finding an adoption attorney that I can afford, maybe I can get my records opened and possibly get to talk with my mother [if still living] before she passes.

So to those still looking, keep the faith! If it is meant to happen, it will, but not by it's self, so keep looking! Sorry for being so long-winded, but I hope this will help someone keep going and find what they are looking for.

Thanks,
Mike Ray Tilley Dodge

P.S. I might still have one older and one younger 1/2 sister yet unknown!

Credits: Mike Dodge