An ELegy For The Stranger Who Bore Me

The first time I saw my mother was well over two decades after her death. It was a black-and-white picture gleaned from a scan of a high school yearbook—a little awkward (as such photos usually are) and all the more strange for her youth. People tell me they see a resemblance; I'm not sure that I agree.

Had she not given me up, this would have been an oddity—that look at what the folks were like years before one's birth. After twenty years with little information, though, it had an entirely different dimension. I can't say that I cried, but then it's hard to feel sorrow for someone you never truly met.

My relationship with the past is contentious, as it is for most people who are disconnected from their bloodline. It's easy to fixate, to become so locked on to something you feel you missed that you don't see what's in front of you. It's even easier to pretend that the past doesn't matter, that genetics and heritage are meaningless sentimentality. For a long time, I took the latter position—after all, my mother was dead; there wasn't going to be any picture perfect emotional reunion, and nothing was going to change that. Better to leave the past in the past.

Except, there's a letter that has been in my possession for over twenty years that proves I haven't left sentiment behind. Before the pictures, that was the only thing I had of my mother and I've always kept it close at hand, even on my frequent jaunts back and forth across the Pacific Ocean. I didn't leave the past behind; I carried it with me.

Could it be that I've never really given myself the chance to let go? She was the first important person in my life to die, and I was oblivious until years later when I found her name in the Social Security death index. That's a very bloodless way to learn of the death of a parent, and it denied me the chance to go through the natural grieving process.

But how does one mourn for a virtual stranger? Here there is also a process, but the road isn't nearly so straight. There's a story here somewhere, or at least half of one—incomplete, never written to its full conclusion. Somewhere down the line, I became part of the story. I might end up being the one who finishes it.

*****

My biological mother died the day before my thirteenth birthday. There's something faintly tragic about that already, only compounded by how geographically close we were at the time.

In my youth, I spent a good part of each summer vacation in the Rocky Mountains, staying in a cabin owned jointly by the branches of my adoptive family. It was a long and treacherous drive from central Kansas to the little resort town up in the mountains. This was a minor trial for a small child, one that we sagely split into two parts when I was very young.

The midpoint, where we took our rest, was near Pike's Peak. Had we departed from that spot in a different direction, headed north instead of west, we would have been on a road leading to my other family. None of us ever even knew.

Maybe it would have made for an emotional reunion, at least for somebody. But what would it have meant for me at age six?

There's this ghastly cliche about adopted children bursting into tears that ignores a child's simple understanding of the concept of a family. What does a six year old know about genes, or paternity, or legal proceedings? Family is just that which keeps you safe—anything beyond that is a mystery. At least, that's what it was for me when my adoptive parents told me, merely another enigma for adult minds.

And so I went for years without ever thinking about my mother. Even if I had known about that detour, that theoretical reunion that waited along the road to our usual summer destination, I don't think I would have ever requested it. I don't even know how I would have reacted had I known that I was so close on the last day of her life.

*****

Before I had that picture, I had a letter—two of them, to be precise, but one which was written specifically for me. It's penned on loose sheets from a hospital memo pad, text filling both sides of each page with just enough room for a handwritten number in the top-right corner. The envelope that contains the letter is blank. The day I opened it, I had no idea what I was holding.

If I had no idea, then at least I had hope. I'd heard stories of people writing letters to the children they gave up for adoption, and some part of me hoped I might find one meant for me. I was fourteen by that point—old enough to feel alienated, misunderstood, detached from the world. Old enough to feel curious about my origins.

I suppose that I could have just asked my adoptive parents about it, and if I were a completely different person, I would have. I had eavesdropped on enough conversations to know that others were curious as to when I would ask those kinds of questions. But that sort of direct approach has never been my way, especially not on an issue as sensitive as this one. At fourteen years of age, I wouldn't have had the fortitude to broach that kind of topic. Instead, I did my research in secret, digging through lost nooks in the house and paging through boxes of old papers during those moments when I was alone.

It was a summer evening when I found what I was looking for, in a file marked "adoption" tucked away in a back room closet. The letter was the first thing I spotted, hidden in the bottom of the folder amid the legal documents and pieces of correspondence. Now, I have no rational explanation as to what came next. My adoptive parents were not twenty feet away and I wouldn't have wanted them to know that I found that file. I should have put that letter back and waited until the next morning, when I would have been alone. I should have slipped it into my pocket and taken it to my room.

Instead, I opened it and read the whole thing on the spot. Ten seconds to walk to my room was still too long a wait.

*****

Six years. That's how long I chased her ghost until I learned that a reunion would not be forthcoming.

Six years of paging through that adoption file over and over again in search of clues and meaning. Six years of registries and notaries and letters to vital records. Six years of reading that letter again on a regular basis to recapture how I'd felt when I first started.

Then, one afternoon, it was over. In a sense, I had succeeded—I found her. But there wasn't going to be a big emotional moment, at least not the kind that conventional wisdom had promised me.

And so I moved on, or at least that's what I told myself for the next twelve years, give or take.

The funny thing about grand emotional moments is that they only work because of their simplicity. The moment is supposed to be the end of the journey, the big reward for sticking with it and being true to ourselves—that's the lesson the movies have always taught us. Meanwhile, in real life, the moment is just the beginning, with the journey being what comes after the heartstruck audience has gone home.

For the first time in my life, someone important to me had died. It wasn't your typical tragedy, what with me not learning it had happened until close to a decade later, but there was still going to be an aftermath and I'd have to deal with that. Given the circumstances, denial was an effortless option. I now realize what an error this was, but a new problem presents itself: How do you let go of someone whom you never had a strong hold on in the first place?

*****

One of these days, when the Middle Kingdom loosens its talons from me, I'll have a chance to return to the Rocky Mountains. It'll be the first time I've been there in a decade. My yearly visits there stopped not long after I learned that my mother was dead. That's a coincidence, unless it isn't.

It should be a nice reunion. The cabin and the resort town are still there. I have old friends not so far away, faces I haven't seen in too long.

And there's a grave I should visit. I didn't used to think too highly of the funeral visit, that hallmark of an earlier generation. Now I'm just wondering if I'll have the fortitude to go through with it.

The road ahead of me isn't exactly untrod. It's been walked by anyone who ever lost a parent or grandparent at an early age. In these situations, the solution is a paradox: You have to create the memory before you can let it go. That return to Colorado will be an important step, but truth be told, I've never stopped my research.

Suddenly, I'm back where I was at age fourteen, trying to assemble a whole life from bits and pieces. I have more to work with now—pictures, stories, sketches. It's a good start at best, but that's not so bad for now. I've always had a story in my head, and each petty revelation lets me correct it just a little bit.

This has always been a storytelling exercise, all the way back to age fourteen and that letter that gave me an opening line. After all of this, that could be how this ends as well. I may have to write my mother back to life just to give the story some closure.

ANDREW JOHNSTON is a teacher, writer and documentarian currently based out of the Republic of Korea. He has published short fiction in 30 markets and anthologies including Daily Science Fiction, Nature: Futures and the Laughing at Shadows Anthology. He is currently producing a free serialized epistolary novel, available at empathynovel.substack.com.