Lost and not found

The other day a friend of mine, Linda, posted some pictures of her daughter, who I have only seen in face book and her son, who looks nothing like the baby he was the last time I saw him and I was struck. I was struck because she has this relationship with her kids, and she has a relationship with the parents who adopted her, but she never had a relationship with her birth parents. Don't get me wrong, I don't think adopted people need to do this, nor do I think it is always wise, but I'm kind of invested in this relationship.

Many years ago, when I first started t find people she asked me if I thought I could find her parents, at east her mom. Part I think was for medical history, but I think the larger part was a discovery of her heritage. She loved the parents that raised her, but she wanted to know about the linage of her DNA. I'm much better at having these discussion now, but then I was just ready to go. It was a new puzzle for me to solve.

Linda sat across from me and gave me the details she knew. I took note with a failing ball point pen in a notebook which was used for a dozen other things. This would be my log, my guide, but I didn't yet have folders or a system. I gave her the hope I had.

This was a hard one. A closed adoption. Records at the hospital were lost. Could guess at the area she was born in, but didn't know what high school her mother went to. I think we knew her age, but that was about it.

In these days, there was no Facebook. I had found people on MySpace and in court records and in electronic yellow pages and even by good old fashion, pick up the phone, but none this hard. I worked to find people in the right location with the right birth year. I had narrowed it down to the school I thought was most likely and found people from the school. None could help me. I tried to find doctors who would have been practicing and church's where her family might have gone. Hours of the search became days.

When Shelly or I would talk to Linda, I would relay what Little I had found, but it was never much. I kept looking, but I was running out of new things to try. I never told her I couldn't do it, but at some point, I just stopped and her life got so crazy, she stopped asking. It didn't end in some screeching halt, it just kind of rolled to a stop.

This feels like a black mark on my record, and I don't like it. I could peruse it again, but I'd have to go back to square one and I now know how hard of a find this would be. I'm afraid of failing again. I could let it go, but that fells like saying I'm ok at failing at this. I'm ok saying I can't do this. I'm not ok with that. So, I think about my options, finish my lunch and get back to work.