SO, so much has happened in the past few days.

My letter to Keith finally bounced back to me, but I had found an email address for him.

At that point, I figured that it was possible that he wasn’t picking up my letter because maybe he suspected it was something bad.  Since he already saw my name on the return address of the notification slips, I figured I should probably NOT send the email from my usual email address, since that contains my full name.  But if not that, then what?  After thinking about it for a long time, I got inspired to look up some Gaelic (Irish) words.  Maybe I could find a word or two in Gaelic that felt particularly meaningful/lucky to me.  The luck of the Irish, am I right?  I figured he might know a few words in Gaelic here and there, given that he was raised to be proud of his Irish ancestry, but that the ones I chose would fall fairly safely outside of the “conversational-Gaelic” realm.

Ultimately, I chose to combine two that felt especially resonant:

Dúchas (Heritage)

Dóchas (Hope for the Future)

Putting them together, with our birthdate, just felt right.

Once I finished transferring the letter into email form (which took a heck of a long time because it was stormy and my internet kept going in and out), I had to figure out SOME kind of title that wouldn’t reveal too much, but also not seem like spam to just delete.  While it wasn’t especially creative, I decided to keep it simple and went with “To Keith”.  It took all the courage I could muster to finally hit “send”.  “Take two”, I thought, “trying again”.

Not 30 seconds later, I received this fun message:

Gosh darn it!  After pouring my heart and soul out, yet again, my plans had been foiled.  Will this ever get to him???!?

I tried again several times, thinking maybe I just typed it wrong, or maybe he updated his email address to another provider, but kept the original first half before the @ sign.  ANYTHING, I was willing to try anything.  It just didn’t feel fair.  But each time, I got the same message saying that my email had been kicked back to me.

Ugh.

I really wanted to still try for the email address, so, desperate, I reached out to my “new” cousins for help.  Maybe they could discretely ask other family members if they had an updated email address for him?  They said they would.

By the next morning, it seemed like we weren’t having all that much luck. However, I knew who we could ask who WOULD definitely know if he had an updated email address–one of his kids/my half-siblings.  I figured that Danielle could ask nonchalantly, maybe asking for the whole family’s email addresses rather than singling him out.  It was a big risk that our sibling would get suspicious and ask why, but by this point, our options were limited.  It also was starting to feel increasingly less “right” that so many of my half-siblings’ family members knew about me but they didn’t.  Maybe it WAS time for the truth.  Danielle had already volunteered to introduce us anyway, and Meredith had suggested recently that it might be time to go that route.

So, I asked Danielle to reach out about the email address.

It was an hour later before I heard back.

I felt like I had been punched in the gut.  Silence.  I didn’t know what to say or how to respond.  He knows about me?  How?  Is that why he wasn’t picking up the letter?  Is he upset?  If he knows and is upset, then she probably wouldn’t be offering his phone number to me…right?!

I really didn’t know if I wanted to know.  Part of me said no, no, no thank you I don’t.  This can’t be good.  If he knows about me but hasn’t picked up my letter, and hasn’t tried to be in touch, this can’t be good.

But, being that I’m more curious than any cat I know…

Deeeeeep breaths.  Deep breaths.

From there, she basically told me that my half-sister, “Courtney”, was asking if this was about the girl claiming to be Keith’s long-lost daughter.  (Whelp, sort of).  When Danielle confirmed, Courtney explained that Kristy had told Keith and Courtney’s Mom about me, and that they both assumed it was impossible and must be a scam.

Shit.  She must not have been able to explain all the DNA details, which makes sense.  And maybe she didn’t know how to explain the million details involved, and about how my parents’ fertility treatments at the same hospital fit in.  Of course they would think I was a psycho.

Uuuuuugh.  The last thing I ever wanted was to not only be cast out, but also not even believed.  If he didn’t want anything to do with me after hearing me out, that would be one thing, but I still just KNEW that if I could only get him/them to read my letter, they would finally understand.

Thankfully, Danielle explained to Courtney that she had also DNA tested, along with several other Reilly family members, and that I’m on the official DNA match list for all of them, in the right relationship range.  I’m not sure what else she said, but essentially she helped Courtney see that I’m a real person, just looking for the rest of my family.  She also must have explained my alternate theory for how Keith might be our “donor”, even if he never voluntarily donated himself.  If, like in the other cases I’ve heard of, the fertility doctors supplemented their stock of med student sperm samples with samples from their own patients, without their consent.

Danielle suggested that maybe Meredith should talk to Keith.  I agreed that this would be a great idea, and even offered to email my letter to Danielle, who could then pass it along to Courtney and her family.  Maybe it would have the information they need.  She agreed.

Then, Courtney asked Danielle which facility my parents went to for their fertility treatments.  I told her the hospital, and her doctor’s name.

Danielle said that Courtney was planning to call her parents, and that they had originally assumed it was some sort of scam at first but now Courtney feels differently, since that was the same place her parents had went for their own fertility treatments.

I replied “Phew, okay”.

I frantically searched for a link to the doctor’s biography online so she would see that she really did work at that hospital.  Then I explained that my Mom still goes to see that same doctor to this day since she’s also an endocrinologist.  She even got a script from her just last week!  (I passed along a picture of this, too, for verification purposes.  Sorry, Mom.)  As I anxiously twisted my hair, I noticed that it was starting to come out, shedding furiously.  It was peak stress, and I felt like I was going to throw up.

I needed them to know that I was telling the truth.

I mentioned that it could also have been a clinic sperm mix-up.  She agreed, and said that Courtney was asking for the letter.

THANK GOD.  I know they will see and hear me now.  I sent the letter, knowing it would finally be received.

Then I waited.  The ball was in their court.  I went to sit outside, to be in nature.  And to try to visualize a better future.  I thought of what it would be like to get to hug each of my new family members, finally knowing who we were to each other.

When I came back inside, I knew that I would have to find a way to distract myself, so I turned on some awful reality-TV to binge watch.  As strange as it sounds, I suddenly felt at peace.  They finally had what I needed to give them.

Eight hours later, after several recitations of “Hail Mary” and “Our Father”, followed by numbing-out on countless episodes of a mindless (yet appropriately named) show called “Second Chances” (hey, no judging, I couldn’t handle anything more serious at the time!) I received a message from Meredith.

It was everything.

She basically said that he now knows, understands, and accepts, and is looking forward to meeting the three of us.  He would just need some time to figure things out with the hospital (understandably–I’d want to know how this could have happened, too, if it were me).

My prayers had finally been answered, and it was a miracle.

Of course I could give them time to process, and I definitely understand that they’ll want to have some words with the hospital.  Instinctively I knew that this must mean that he never voluntarily donated, but I had to ask.

She confirmed that it was not voluntary on his part.

Of course he thought it was just a scam when he first heard about me from Kristy.  If he had never donated, there was no reason to believe that I could be real.

In finally verifying that he never intentionally donated, there were so many conflicting feelings in my heart.  I can’t say that I wasn’t slightly assuaged in a way, because it meant that I was never actually sold and signed away forever by my biological father.  He never had any intention of erasing me permanently from his life.   I wasn’t meaningless to him before I was even born.  I know that not every anonymous donor feels this way anyway, but certainly some of them do, and I was relieved to find that I wasn’t begotten from one of them.

When he created those samples, he meant to have us.

Yet, there was the flip side.  I knew that he was now faced with knowing that the children he tried to create with those samples, with that part of himself, were taken away from him without his knowledge or consent.  At best, the doctors had been irresponsible with labeling his samples.  At worst, they intentionally stole from him for their own profit.  Either way, they took away his ability to know his own biological children, and sold us to another couple. If it hadn’t been for the DNA test that I randomly took, the repercussions of those actions could have been for life.

And, of course, there is the devastation that this brings to my parents who raised me.  They played no part in that deception.  They only sought to create and raise their own family.  To find out that THEIR family was created in part through a deception that they never asked for…to have to face that what they thought was freely given was a gift that had been stolen, and to have to feel for even a second that their greatest happiness might not be fully their own…it is an absolute travesty.  How dare a doctor, who swore an oath to do no harm, cause any of us to question if our life was borrowed?   My parents didn’t deserve this.  None of us did.  And yet this horrible deception or mistake is also responsible for my life.  And, importantly, it also gave me the parent-child relationship of a lifetime with the most meaningful man in my life.  There is no world in which that could ever be viewed as a mistake.  We are not of him, but we are and always will be his as much as we are hers.

And still, we are also connected to another.

Back and forth, back and forth my mind races between the implications for all sides.

For Keith to have read my letter, and seen pictures and anecdotes of us growing up, the children he never knew were out there, and to watch our childhoods slip away between those photographs…it must have been devastating.  Beautiful, yet devastating.  31 years of separation that he had no knowledge of, although joyously spent with another family.  These images were of strangers, yet close family by blood.  Just 35 miles apart.  Our smiles were reflections of our parents, via both nature and nurture, but also of him.

Although it will never be a traditional parent-child relationship, since we have already been raised and are now adults, we inarguably have a third branch to our tree.  It stretches back in time, connecting me with the other half of ancestors of my birth-line.  Most have already passed, yet rest in peace as they live on in my veins.  The closest of this chain of forebearers is Keith, and his story, like those of the rest of this shared succession, is one I’d like to get to know.

And what must discovering this shared connection be like for my siblings?  I could understand if they had complex feelings as well.

Danielle texted me later that night to say that they had each read my letter and were processing.  Who knows how you’re even supposed to process something like this.  It’s been weeks now, and I still am.

While it was a horrible thing for my parents’ fertility doctor to have done…it’s why I’m here today.  It’s how I exist.  It’s a heavy thing to weigh.

And, again, it’s also the miracle that brought my Dad into my life.  Another innocent party, and one of the best things in my entire life.  How could the thing that has brought both me and my biological father/family so much anger and pain also be responsible for giving me my parents, my greatest loves, and my life?  How could something so awful be something so miraculously wonderful at the same time?

At the end of the day, though, we’re here.  It has been tremendously hard on my core family, and I can only imagine how hard it must be for Keith’s.  My parents never intended for our lives to merge, and everyone is understandably on edge.

I just hope that we can find a way to forgive each other for these wrongs that none of us even committed.  Keith, and his wife, and my parents are all innocent parties, as are we.  I hope that they can see each other in that light, and trust in the strength of our pre-existing family relationships while having compassion for the new ones. We are here now, and we ARE connected, even without substituting or canceling anyone out.

We are the addition, and we are greater than the sum of our parts.