Lifelong Sorrow

It is clear in my mom’s adoption file that my maternal grandmother, shown above holding my mom for the very last time, never intended to surrender her. She was pressured and exploited by circumstances and the expert manipulation of that baby thief, Georgia Tann, in Memphis.

I read a statistic that said that more than 30% of women who have relinquished children never have another – either because they chose not to, or could not. There is an increased incidence of secondary infertility among natural mothers.

I know that my grandmother never had another child. I know that while her birth name was Elizabeth, my mom’s birth certificate had her name as Lizzie. I saw her sign Elizabeth to a note and a postcard she sent to Georgia Tann after losing my mom. Yet, when she died in her 60s after marrying a second husband, Lizzie is what is on her gravestone. I can’t help but believe she hoped my mom would find it someday. My mom died without fulfilling her desire to know about her original mother. I was the one to find the gravestone and sit beside it and talk with her soul.

There is no way to know why my maternal grandfather left my maternal grandmother in Memphis four months pregnant. It seems her widowed father sent her away to Virginia to have my mom and I doubt she was supposed to bring my mom back to Tennessee. It is clear my great-grandfather was unwilling to take the two of them into his home.

It appears that the only time my maternal grandmother had any communication directly with my maternal grandfather (after he left her alone and pregnant) was when he decided to go ahead and divorce her 3 years after they married and two years after my mom was born. The divorce papers also show her name formally as Elizabeth. I believe that having lost their child, my grandmother was so filled with shame, she could not face him. The divorce freed her up to remarry and not long after that he remarried. My heart is glad they didn’t die alone.

My mom’s adoption file is a constant reminder to me of what they had not done, of the courage they somehow lacked to fight back and of the child in the middle (my mom) they both lost. I come close to tears every time I revisit this story in my heart’s mind.

What’s A Flood Got To Do With It?

My mom’s father left long before she was born. Why he left and what his intentions were I cannot know at this point.

What I do know is that when my mom was born, a super flood began that heavily impacted both Memphis and the state of Arkansas. My mom and her mother returned to Memphis from Virginia where she was born as the worst of the crisis began to recede.

My grandfather was in Arkansas doing flood recovery work for the WPA. I will always suspect that the flood of 1937 in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys played a role in my mom ending up adopted. The Great Depression was just one more obstacle in the way of everyone.

So I can only believe that the flood kept my grandfather from answering the inquiry of the Juvenile Court and sent my grandmother into desperation. She fell into a trap because of that and was not able to prevent the tragedy of losing her first born and only child.

I Miss My Mom

Mom as a young girl . . .

Today would have been her birthday but she died in September 2015. She died knowing only that her parents were Mr and Mrs J C Moore and that she was born in Virginia. Not very much to go on. She died believing she had been stolen to profit Georgia Tann of the Memphis branch of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society. She died heartbroken that her own mother had died before my mother could have the live reunion she yearned for.

The true story is sad, romantic and tragic. I have now uncovered as much truth as I will ever be able to know because the state of Tennessee gave me what they denied my mother. My mom wasn’t stolen but she might as well have been. Her parents were married and separated by a catastrophic flood on the Mississippi River in 1937. There is much I do know about their stories, including that my maternal grandmother was pressured and exploited into losing her only and firstborn child.

On the anniversary of my mother’s birth – I am both sad and joyful. I am grateful to know the truth she died not knowing and sad she was not given the answers she needed to be at peace before she died. Mostly, I just miss being able to pick up the telephone and have a marvelously long chat with her.