My dad died in 2020, just after the COVID 19 pandemic had shut down practically everything. It was not unexpected. He was 96 years old and had congestive heart failure. He had been developing dementia, and then had a big stroke. That is what ended his life. As I was writing his eulogy, and planning his ZOOM memorial service, I heard from my cousin that she had gotten her results from 23 and Me, but she could not find my name as one of her DNA relatives! I really didn’t know how that could be the case.
After the memorial service had taken place, I set aside my grief for a while, to try to solve this mystery. First, I looked at the numerous names that were listed as being my blood relatives. The only ones I recognized were my two sons. Then I checked to see if there were any who were listed as a 1st cousin. There was only one. My mind was reeling!
I knew that the two cousins I have on my mother’s side had not participated in this new DNA testing craze. But I also knew that they looked like their mother and father, and my mother and me. The cousin who had alerted me to this information is on my dad’s side. She had two sisters. One sister had died. The remaining sister had also decided to send saliva to 23 and Me. She and her sister were related to each other and to their children, but not to me.
This could only mean one thing. The man I adored and admired, who raised me and loved me, was not related to me. My “cousin” and I did more digging. We researched the names of the people on my match list. We looked on Facebook to find some. Then I recalled something my mother had told me many years ago. She had said that she and my dad had lots of trouble conceiving a child together. They had tried for 6 years.
They consulted a fertility clinic at the University of Minnesota, and it was determined that my dad’s sperm was not viable. They decided they would adopt a baby. Just after they had visited an adoption agency and put their names on a lost for a baby, their fertility doctor said they could use artificial insemination. My mom told me they “saved up enough of your dad’s sperm, and inseminated me and I got pregnant!” I never doubted her.
I mentioned this to my “cousin” and we had a sort of AH HAA moment! So I began doing research on artificial insemination. In 1953, there was no way to preserve live sperm as there is today. Live sperm only survives outside the body for at the most 15-20 minutes. In order to save a quantity, my dad would have had to be superhuman to ejaculate that many times is such a short period! It simply was an impossibility! Someone lied…
Meanwhile, I hired a forensic genealogist to see if I could find out who the people were that 23 and Me had found to be my relatives. She had no trouble at all tracing the DNA we had in common, and finding out who my actual cousin is. From there, she was able to trace the others and find out who my true father was. I found out I had at one time had 3 half brothers and one half sister. I also found out that because they could trace their family all the way back to the 1400s in this country, they were enrolled in the Cherokee Nation. Because I do not have a birth certificate with the man’s name on it, I cannot take my place on the enrollment documents. All of that is lost. I still kept this information only between my “cousin”, my husband and myself. It was beginning to make sense why I looked nothing like my dad or anyone on his side of our family.
Doing more research, I discovered that it was common practice in the 1950s. to find a man who would be what they thought would be a good match, ask him to donate sperm, and combine the sample with the intended daddy’s, so the couple would never know who the true father was. The recipient couple was sworn to secrecy. They never knew who the donor was because their doctor found him, and they never told ANYONE that they had gone through this procedure. They convinced themselves that the additional sperm had helped my dad’s to reach the egg. Nobody ever considered that one day, DNA and the Human Genome would be understood and tests could be done to find the truth.
My dad took this to his death. He never, ever even hinted that I might not be his biological child. My mother never hinted at that either. For my entire 66 years of life, I believed that my dad’s parents were my grandparents, that I had a history based upon their ancestors. I told all of my doctors what I believed to be my medical history on my father’s side.
When I was convinced that I knew my dad was not my father, I told my two sons. I don’t think it mad much difference to them. They loved their grandpa. He was a wonderful man! But it did not shake their understanding of who they were as it did mine. Why is that I wonder? I wonder about my only sibling, my sister. Did we have the same father? She was born 3 years after I was. Could the same man have donated sperm again so my parents could have her?
Eventually I told my sister, but she was adamant that she did not want to know if she had a different father. She refused to take any DNA tests, and was angry with me for telling her about this. Her own children found out, and neither of them is willing to take a test either. I may never know if we are half sisters, but I suspect that we are. I know my mother gave birth to her, but they also had to use artificial insemination again with her. My birth certificate only lists my dad as my father. There is not other paper record. The fertility clinic no longer exists at the University of Minnesota. There are no records. The doctors who were involved are all dead. I have no way of proving any of this except through DNA.
I have been able to find contact information for those older members of this alternate family. They have been kind enough to send me some family photographs. I have found obituaries and other photographs by searching websites. Some of these people certainly do look like me. Those who have passed on might have been people I would have liked, but I will never know. It all happened a long time ago. Today however, these discoveries are happening daily, and young adults are finding half siblings, and DNA relatives like grandparents, aunts, uncles and yes, mothers and fathers. We all long for connections with others, and when we find out we have blood relatives we did not know existed, it is an exciting prospect! We try to reach out in hopes of making a personal connection, but it does not always go real well. I think that we expect that a relative would want to know us as much as we want to know them.
When a child is born and the parents decide to put the child up for adoption, there is an original birth certificate listing the procreating parents’ names, and a second certificate is issued to the adopting parents. That is the legal document that the child will use to prove its identity in public records. The first certificate is kept though. It may be “sealed,” so the adopted child cannot locate the birth parents. But even that cannot easily stay concealed no that DNA testing is readily available.
We children of adoption or donor conception deserve to know our true medical histories. We deserve to be able to trace our actual ancestry and see our likenesses mirrored in the faces of those who came before us. We deserve to know our true origin stories. No one can ever really know whether their DNA relatives might have been a better family, or a worse family in which to be raised. There is no guarantee that one’s own DNA parents are going to be adequate, wonderful, neglectful or abusive. But genetic diseases do run in families, and it is shameful that someone could know they carry a genetic disease and still be able to donate DNA to a new life.
This is not unique to the United States. Many countries are dealing with this moral failing and the mental health issues that ensue when someone discovers they have been told a lie for their entire life by the people they trusted the most. So, what are we going to do about this? Genetics and DNA manipulation seems to have gotten ahead of our moral policies, and if we are not careful, we are going to be creating inbred children, because babies who are half siblings are being born by the hundreds. There are really good reasons for the taboos of marrying family members! How are we to know if we have fallen in love with a half sibling?
Something’s gotta change.
ellyloumail 