“This is your sister,” my wife said, pushing the computer screen close to my face. “There’s no doubt.”
My daughter had befriended a kind family physician four summers ago at a boy’s camp in the hills of North Alabama. He was the camp doctor, and she was a staff member, working as a college student during the break to keep the director’s children. They had grown close when she got quite sick. He had visited her in the infirmary, kneeling his tall frame down and gently holding her long hair back as she vomited.
For 29 years, I searched for my birth father and his family. Several weeks ago, I learned with happy surprise that the precious Lucy who watched us walk down the aisle is, in fact, my niece. Her father, the kind family doctor who befriended my daughter, is my half-brother—Dr. Tim Lindsey of St. Francisville, Louisiana. For two decades, our lives have run in parallel with familiar friends and interests, yet we had no idea.
The first time I logged into ancestry.com after the test results were in, the findings were interesting and useful but not life-changing. My roots traced to the U.K. and Ireland, confirming easy suspicions. A few distant cousins also emerged, but I wasn’t able to connect my dots to them. But here’s the thing about DNA sites like ancestry.
The name listed on ancestry.com did not have a photo or a hometown, yet my daughter-in-law immediately seemed to know who it was. For several hours, I dug deeper, connecting all the information I had collected during a 29-year search. Soon it was clear beyond any doubt that Ruthie Lindsey is my half-sister, meaning the kind Dr. Tim Lindsey, her brother, is my half-brother, and that their older brother Lile Lindsey is my half-brother. Precious young Lucy, from the wedding, is my niece, and I also have the gift of other wonderful nieces and nephews.
Our family has grown since with a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law, followed by a grandson, and each valuable expansion has eased the pain of such loss. And now, gaining so many new family members precisely six years after our son’s accidental death feels a bit like the dividing of fishes and loaves in abundance.My half brothers and sisters did not know about me. And even if they had known that a half-brother existed, Louisiana was long a closed adoption record state.
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