LACHESIS

SEEKING MY DAUGHTER LACHESIS

Dear Lachesis,

You were born in West London in 1969, and though you were beautiful and I loved you, I gave you up for adoption.  I have wanted to find you for a very long time.

I am posting this letter on the slim chance you might come across it, surfing the Net, and realise it is addressed to you.

I don't suppose you are called Lachesis now, and I always imagined how, when you discovered the name on your birth certificate you'd wonder why I'd chosen something so unusual for you.

I wanted it to be pretty and special because you were, but I also wanted it to be SO different that your new parents would almost certainly decide to chose another name of their own for you.

It seemed important to me that they should feel you were completely their child, and I've always prayed that the home they offered you was filled with the unconditional love of any natural parent.

I've thought about you a lot, of course.  But the law meant I was not allowed to look for you.  Recently changes were introduced that allowed the council who arranged the adoption to give your new name, and the name and address of your adoptive parents, to an approved third party who had to agree not to disclose that information to me.

In this case it is an organisation called NORCAP, who try to reunite children and parents.

Sadly for me, they have found no trace of you at that original address . It was a long time ago, after all and they have been unable to track down any sign of you since.

I can't tell you how frustrating this is -  I'm convinced if I had those details I'd be able to find you, but my hands are tied.

Of course I've always wondered why you've never tried to track me down yourself.  I don't think I'm hard to find.  NORCAP have  my details, and although I married and changed my name, it's not difficult to find people through marriage certificates and so on.  But there could be many, many reasons why I have not heard from you. I just hope it's because the time never felt right, and not because you either didn't want to or were unable to for some reason.

I would so love to hear from you.

 I'm 54 now.  You have no brothers or sisters, because somehow having more children after you didn't seem right, but my parents - your grandparents - are still alive.  Dad's an incredible 98 and doing quite well for his age, although getting very frail in recent months, and mum is 85 and pretty chipper.  I have an older brother who has two children and two grandchildren.

As for your father, well I haven't seen him for many, many years, but I'm pretty sure I could track him down should you wish to contact him. I know he has at least one child, quite possibly more.  So you have a very large family, one way or another!

I do hope you find this letter and decide to get in touch.  You could either go through NORCAP (they provide counselling and advice and will be happy to act as an intermediary if you prefer to do it like that), or you could email me and we could start off like that.

If you still decide not to find me, then that of course is your choice and I will have to live with it.  And can only tell you that I hope that you are safe and well and as happy as you can be, and that my thoughts will always be with you.

With love,

Judy

Email: judy@lachesis.org.uk

NORCAP: www.norcap.org.uk

Postscript, written 21st November, 2007

My darling Lachesis, I know now that you have never read this letter, and will never read it. I know now that even as I composed it, full of fantasies of you getting in touch, it was a hopeless cause.

I read it again today and wonder, Did I already know, deep down, that you had left us?

Yesterday a very kind old lady came from NORCAP to see me. They had been trying to trace you for me, and here she was, with news. I’d been so excited. After all these years, was I finally going to know who you were, where you were? Even that you wanted to meet me?

She had, she told me regretfully, sad news. That you had died seventeen years ago, at the age of just 21, in a tragic accident. She gave me a piece of paper, with those hateful, cold words written on it. Just a sheet of paper, just a few small simple sentences. Such a shattering finality.

It’s so hard to look at that bald, horrible statement of fact. So young. Such a short life. So many years ago.

And now I can never again think, ‘I have a daughter’. I am never going to meet you, to know you, to say I’m sorry, please understand. You are always going to be a stranger. You are always going to be the child I gave away, never the daughter who found it in her heart to forgive me.

How do I grieve for you? My grief is surely no more than my own feelings of selfish loss at a future that will never include you. For you never belonged to me. And my grief can never compare to the grief your family must have felt, must still feel, at the shocking suddenness of your death.

But I do grieve. I can hardly bear it, this confirmation of what I feared most.

I named you Lachesis, after the second of the three Fates in Greek mythology. Hers was the task of measuring the span of a life, and of choosing the destiny it followed. Your fate, your destiny … how terrible that it should start in heartbreak and end in such tragedy. Dear God let me find that your life in between had meaning and happiness. I admit that it would help to ease the guilt I bear, but I also must know, for you, that it held more happiness than the hand your namesake dealt you seemed to predict.

There were many reasons I wanted you to find me. Above all I wanted to know that you were happy and safe and well, that your life had been good and fulfilling, and more than anything that you were loved. And of course, I wanted to meet you, to know you, to learn who you were, if you permitted that to happen.

Now I feel a horrible pointlessness to my life. My darling, I promise I wasn’t looking for you in order to fill the empty space at the centre of my existence. Because I didn’t know there was one, until I knew you were dead. Now I realise it’s always been there, and it feels like a huge void. And it’s too late.

I’m torn apart. And yet, did I already know? Learning about your death was an appalling shock, and yet somehow I wasn’t surprised.

The year you turned 21, the year you died, I talked about that being a possibility. A horrible thing to consider, my friends thought, and yet I considered it. And in later years I wondered if this was why you had never tried to find me.

I also told myself that perhaps you didn’t seek me out because you were happy, contented, loved enough not to feel anything more than a vague curiosity about the woman who gave birth to you. I pray with all my heart that’s true.

But I know so very little about you my darling. I hope that I’ve learned the worst. You had a brother, and perhaps I’ll be able to find him and perhaps he’ll tell me all about his sister. I long to see your picture.

I’m scared too of what I might find, but I owe you this, at least, to know whatever there is to know about the girl who was, then was not, and will now never be, my daughter.

This is my memorial to you, Lachesis.

Rest in peace, my darling, darling girl.