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SHOULD I TELL OR BURY THE FAMILY SECRET?
By CarolynCHolland(9,534)
At the end of this post there is a question. I invite you to respond to it as instructed. Thanks!
(Original Post) My head shot up as I unsuccessfully tried to hide my shock at my aunt Julia’s statement. Had I heard her right? Noting my surprise, she repeated her statement.
“You know, Gary isn’t really John’s father,” she repeated.
I collected my thoughts by numbing my swirling emotions. I wanted to rehear the story my aunt just told me about my mother Melissa, my father Gary and my brother John.
“Your mother, Melissa, came barging into our house one day, chasing after Gary,” she began. “She yelled out at him “I’m pregnant and you’d better do something about it!”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you,” she added, apologetically.
“No, I came to you because I want to know about my family. I want to know the truth.”
My parents had divorced before John and I began school in our small mid-western town. The split and Dad’s military career allowed Mom to keep us separated from his family.
I don’t recall how I discovered dad’s address when I was a young teen, but when I discovered it I sent him a letter. His second wife, Mary, wrote back. She told me they had six children, two girls and four boys. I can’t recall what else was in the letter, which was in a purse that was stolen shortly thereafter.
I was reunited with Dad briefly two decades ago, just before his death in a car accident. During that reunion I also met all but one of his children. One of his two daughters from his second marriage claimed me as her long lost older sister. It was later that I’d met Aunt Julia, Dad’s only surviving sister. This was our sixth meeting, and each time she shared a little more about the family history.
She must have felt comfortable with me by now, because the information she told me about Dad was rather emotional.
She said she’d witnessed an irate Melissa barging into Dad’s house, when she was younger and still living at home. Melissa was angry with Dad because his friend, whose name remained hidden in the recesses of Aunt Julia’s elderly mind, had gotten her pregnant. Mom held Dad responsible for her untimely predicament because he’d introduced her to this man.
This was the pre-World War II era when women pregnant out of wedlock were an embarrassment to be herded off to far away relatives or homes for unwed mothers. They gave birth to babies they never saw, babies which were then placed for adoption and perhaps never told of their origin.
Although names escaped 90-year old Aunt Julia, she still recalled vivid details.
“You’re mother was hysterical,” she told me. “There was no arguing with her.”
It wasn’t long before Dad had another visitor. Lynette, my grandmother, was a very proper woman interested in social appearances. An unwed, pregnant daughter was more than she could handle. It was the ultimate embarrassment.
Lynette stormed into Gary’s house with elephantesmal wrath. Aunt Julia wondered whether Grandma was angrier that her daughter was pregnant, because the pregnancy would shame her, or at her belief that Dad had taken advantage of Melissa.
“You must marry her!” Grandma railed, cloaked in her own viewpoint. “How could you do this to my daughter? How can I ever hold my head up when I go to town?”
“I’m not the father of Melissa’s baby,” Dad yelled at Grandma, who heard nothing of what he said.
“You’re responsible for this predicament! You had better take responsibility for it!”
The scene raged for over an hour before Dad agreed to marry Mom. The wedding before the district judge occurred two weeks later, five weeks before John was born. It took place at a military base, and I suspect my grandmother wasn’t there.
Dad always acknowledged paternity, even including John in his will, despite the fact that blood tests proved he wasn’t his father.
Three years later I was born. Dad, a career Army man, wasn’t around much before or after my birth. It would be thirty years before I found him.
We talked on the phone and wrote letters, and met several times before his untimely death. During these reunions, John expressed no desire to have contact with Dad, although Dad wanted to meet John. Dad gave no indication from that he wasn’t John’s biological father.
A few years after Dad’s death, I met his sister, Aunt Julia. She unraveled this story to me. Now three years have passed, and I feel guilty I still haven’t shared the information with John.
Growing up, John worried almost to the point of obsession that we weren’t full siblings, that we had different fathers. Fueling these thoughts were our very different physical characteristics and personalities. His facial features hinted of Native American ancestry in contrast to my European look. His black, thick hair was so different from my dark brown baby-fine tresses. He had a quiet, unassuming personality while I was bold and outgoing.
Adding to the situation was the fact of John’s position as the family scapegoat. He was always in trouble, and often received the blame for trouble caused by others, including myself. Meanwhile, I had the role of the golden girl who never did anything wrong.
John was always asking why he was so hated. Perhaps he wasn’t wanted. Or perhaps our Dad wasn’t really his father. Adding insult to injury, Mom always put obstacles in the path of our relationship, so we couldn’t be close even if we wanted to.
As we entered our sixties, John worried about our parentage. He knew about my plan to visit Aunt Julia, and he asked me to find out if Dad truly was his father. But he worried about the answer, what it would do to our close relationship.
“If you find out he isn’t my father, will you still love me anyway?” John asked.
“Of course I will,” I said. “You’re my brother!”
“Would it change our relationship, how you think about me?” he continued.
“I want you to know you’re my brother, regardless,” I said. “Nothing will ever change that. Our relationship is stronger than blood. It’s built on our childhood experiences and adult efforts.”
It almost seemed he knew the truth and just wanted it verified. It made me wonder if he’d overheard something in an adult conversation or argument when we were children, something that clued him into the truth yet remained in his subconscious. So now I knew the sordid truth. What, if anything, should I tell John? Did he really want to know?
In a previous conversation, John and I discussed some information Mom’s brother, Uncle Tim, shared with me before his death. It seemed our mother placed a child for adoption many years ago, before we were born. Uncle Tim could add no further information other than the child existed.
“Uncle Tim’s information leaves me frustrated,” John revealed. “I wish I hadn’t been told. It is too troublesome to know and not be able to do something about it. I don’t want to know anything more like that.”
She’d asked me to search out the information on her paternity. Yet, wouldn’t it be like the information Uncle Tim revealed---something that would bug him, something he could do nothing about? Had John told me he really doesn’t want to know if I uncover a truth unless there is something to follow up on?
What should I do? Does John have the right to know, does he really want to know? Or should I allow him to continue believing nothing has changed, that we share the same dad?
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Posted to ProBlogs.com on Monday, January 01, 2007
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