By AMY SHANKLAND
Perfectly Imperfect
As my adoption and reunion story continues, I’ve changed some names, places, and dates.
It felt nearly impossible to get through the rest of my workday once I received those documents, and I couldn’t wait to go home that evening and hop on our computer to do some searching on the Internet. It helped a little to be able to share the big news with Mary during yet another closed-door session. We squealed so loudly that a coworker of ours stopped us in the hallway.
“Hey, I heard you guys,” she asked. “Is someone pregnant or something?” I hated to leave her in suspense, but we simply grinned, replied “no,” and went on our way.
Thankfully our family didn’t have any plans that evening, so the laptop was all mine after dinner. I first wanted to see if Linda or Jack, my biological parents, were one of the many faces I had seen in the college yearbooks. I discovered neither one of them was on my list, so unfortunately my trips to South Bend had been wasted. But none of that mattered now.
I looked up Linda’s name and potential graduation date at St. Mary’s, and sure enough she was listed. She had majored in psychology. I was so pleased to see that she had graduated. I then entered Linda’s full name along with Cleveland, Ohio, to see what results would come up. The first result was an obituary from the Waltham News Tribune in Waltham, Mass., of a man named Joseph Murphy.
Joseph Raymond Murphy Jr., 51, of Waltham, beloved husband of Linda (Fitzgerald) Murphy, entered eternal rest Friday, June 30, 2006 at Massachusetts General Hospital.
I wondered why Google had pulled up this obituary then got my answer as I continued reading. The list of survivors included his father-in-law, Tim F. Fitzgerald of Cleveland, Ohio. It also included a daughter, Sabrina Cathleen Murphy of Boston. My head began to spin and I wanted to jump up and down. But I had decided to hide what I was doing from my sons and stayed quiet. I didn’t want them to feel pressure to keep a secret from their grandmother.
A possible half-sister? Wow! Suddenly I wanted to see what these ladies looked like. I hopped on Facebook, typed in their names and cities, and hoped to see one or both of them. Unfortunately, I didn’t find them. I pressed on.
Now that I had names, dates, and cities, the Internet yielded a variety of information. I found data from Joseph and Linda’s marriage records and saw they had been married in September 1981. I found Linda’s age and current address, her father’s obituary from 2007, and even information from her voting records. It looked like her mother and father had divorced and her father had remarried and moved to Florida. I discovered the names of her paternal grandparents and their dates of birth, death, and marriage.
Finding all of this was thrilling, but it also felt a little scary, at least for my birth mother. What if I were some psycho trying to look her up? All the stuff on the Internet had made my search fairly easy, although if I hadn’t had the non-identifying information from years ago that would not have been the case.