Who Am I? Part 2

I was told I was adopted when I was 8 years old. I was told that information was a secret and not to tell others, leaving me feeling isolated and different from everyone else, including my own family. When I was finally out of school and working in my own office and getting my own mail no one else could see, I started my search for my roots. Nine years later after much research and many disappointments I finally was about to give up and made a deal with our maker. I said to him "I'm done, maybe I should have never started this, it's almost my birthday, one more week, if I hear nothing from all the calls and letters I've sent out there in the world by my birthday I will take that as a sign to just stop".

It was my birthday. It was a Monday. It was raining. I heard the mailman put mail in my mailbox and ran downstairs hoping for a miracle. I received a letter from a cemetery I had written to some time before. I had found out my birthmothers maiden name and where she lived years before and wrote to different cemeteries in that area for people with her last name. The letter had listed the name of an elderly woman who had passed and listed her next of kin who was her daughter who was MY BIRTHMOTHER. I had found her! It listed her last known address and phone number.

I proceeded to call the number ignoring every other call I was getting for my birthday. A woman answered the phone and I said to her "my name is Julie (the name she had originally gave me) and I was born on this date, do you know who I am?" She went silent, before that she sounded like an old woman which confused me. Finally she said "I know who you are, I can't talk". I hung up on my end, fell to the ground and started to cry. A few minutes later the phone rang. I picked it up and this is what I heard: "Is this Julie?" This is your mother, that was my Aunt you spoke to before". After so many years of my search and lost feelings, once again I fell to the floor, I think I even started to bang my head against the wall, it was so over powering to hear this voice that somehow I knew. We stayed on the phone for over an hour and we told each other we would send pictures and plan a meeting. She now lived in another state, but the amazing thing was, all my life she lived only 5 minutes away while I was growing up! I was adopted and brought to Long Island, she couldn't bare living in the city anymore and also moved to Long Island. She told me that I was born on a Monday and it was raining that day and that's exactly how it was that day, the day I found her.

This all happened many years ago. Since then both my mothers have passed. My mother who raised me and kept my adoption a secret was kept in the dark of my then secret, that I had found my birthmother - that is until the day she died as I sat beside her on her deathbed and told her my secret. Unfortunately she had already passed but I know in my heart she now knows everything, how I felt, what I did and I believe we are both forgiven.