Few sentences can completely knock your life off its axis. News of a cancer diagnosis. The loss of a job. Learning of the unexpected death of a friend or family member.
“You have an older brother nobody ever told you about” has to be near the top of that list.
My wife broke that news about eight years ago, upending everything I knew about myself and my family. In one sentence, I went from being the oldest son with two younger brothers to the second child of four.
Even more shocking, this mystery kin was not a half brother but a full sibling.
When my parents were still teenagers, they had a child and gave him up for adoption. As far as I can tell, they never mentioned anything about him to anyone else.
After the shock faded, I tried to piece together everything I could about my previously unknown sibling and why his existence was kept from me. That task was complicated because most of the people who could provide those details no longer were living. My grandparents are gone, and my mother died nearly 15 years ago. My father had little information to share.
The backstory
In 1965, my parents lived in a small town in northeastern Colorado and had dated during high school.
My mom had a bit of a reputation as a hell-raiser in her youth; I loved listening to her recount the time she and her friends stole a school bus to drag Main Street. The youngest of three daughters, my mother was still living at home, and her wild streak was a source of friction. My grandfather was a well-known businessman and my grandmother was a prominent Presbyterian church leader.
I imagine the news their teenage daughter was pregnant did not go over well.
My mother was shuffled out of town to avoid embarrassment and to live with her older sisters in Georgia and New Mexico. She eventually gave birth at a maternity home somewhere in Kansas.
The only other bit of information I had — and how I first found out about this family secret — were the details shared by a cousin who overheard a telephone conversation she wasn’t meant to hear.
Sometime in 1994, my grandmother moved into an assisted care facility. My mom and her sisters were packing her belongings when the phone rang. This was long before mobile phones and more than one person could be on the call, providing there was more than one phone in the house. My cousin picked up the phone right as my mom was answering. A woman on the other end asked for “Becky Brown,” my mom’s maiden name.
The caller, according to my cousin, then asked if she had given birth in 1966.
My mother audibly gasped, followed by a few seconds of silence. She then haltingly told the caller that she had the wrong number.
After some back and forth, my mom asked where the woman was calling from. A Navy base in the Pacific Northwest was the reply.
“I hope you’re OK” my mom said, fighting off tears.
“It’s too bad you’re not Becky Brown,” the caller said before hanging up. “You sound really nice.”
That eavesdropping cousin is the same person who finally brought this family secret into the light.
My search
I spent the next three years using those tiny threads of information to look for my brother. I hit so many dead ends that we were considering hiring a private investigator to help. But it was modern technology that ultimately connected me with my older brother.
In 2018, a DNA test connected me with Dave.
I learned he’d been adopted, grew up in Kansas, spent part of his life serving on a Navy submarine, and now lived in Northern California. Dave’s wife, who had spoken to my mother on the phone in 1994, was also trying to help him find the family that gave him up so many years ago.
When we connected, Dave was surprised that anyone was looking for him, especially after several decades. The reason why is heartbreaking.
There was one other time Dave tried to connect with his birth family, eventually reaching our grandmother on the telephone.
“You don’t exist. Don’t call again,” she told him before hanging up.
My mind reeled hearing his telling of that cruel conversation. Even now, it’s difficult for me to reconcile the loving and caring grandmother I knew with someone who could erase another human, let alone one who shared her flesh and blood.
Dave was shocked to learn that we were full siblings. It’s unfathomable for me to begin to understand what it felt like to discover our parents gave him up for adoption and then went on to start a family without their firstborn child.
He described it as having everything you knew about yourself knocked off a shelf. When you try to put those things back, they don’t fit the same way anymore.
“Thank you for looking for me,” Dave said when we met in person for the first time.
Connecting for the first time
There’s no handbook explaining how to have a relationship with a sibling you were never told about. Simple things, like how you refer to the birth parents in conversation, can get awkward fast. I hesitated to use “Mom” and “Dad” since he grew up with parents, so we settled on “birth parents,” which felt correct. Luckily for us, we quickly developed a friendly rapport.
We discovered several coincidences about our lives. We were both drama kids in high school. He started as a journalism student in college before he left to join the Navy. Incredibly, we realized we were in the audience for the same U2 concert in Denver during the 1980s.
Finding Dave, and getting to know him, has been a gift. He’s a good person, and I’m thankful for our friendship. I’m also quite sad we never got the chance to grow up together. I’m certain he would have made a great big brother.
Second chances don’t come around often, so you have to take advantage when they do.
This weekend, Dave and I are headed to Las Vegas to see U2 perform at the new Sphere arena. I’m excited to see one of my favorite bands perform in a setting that promises to be a technological marvel.
I’m even more excited to do something I was robbed of so many years ago: See a rock concert with my brother.
