This is a brief story, but to me an important one. It is also a story that I hope will one day become more than just a story, but a novel and testament to a brave and wonderful woman. My sister, whom I did not meet until I was 43 years old.
When my father was in the Navy he contracted
tuberculosis during his overseas training stint of several months duration. When he returned, initially he was not unwell but became so within a short couple of months. Before he became ill however, and upon his return, he made his way up from the
Devonport Naval Base to his small flat in Kerr St, hoping to see the girlfriend he had left behind several months prior. My father was just 17 years old. His girlfriend was a 29 year old Irish Catholic woman, who had emigrated to New Zealand a few years previously after the 2
nd World War. My father reached the flat in Kerr St and walked inside, to be greeted by the site of his girlfriend naked in bed with another man. She did not see him arrive, or leave. My father never made contact with her again.
4 weeks prior to my father's return, the woman (whom I shall call V) had given birth to a baby girl and, not knowing of my father's whereabouts or when he would return, she had placed the child in an orphanage though had vowed to track him down and let him know he was a father before making any further decisions regarding the baby.
It was not until a couple of months later, when my father was extremely ill and expected to die from TB, that V heard he had returned. She had been told he was gravely ill and would not survive. My father did survive, minus a kidney and half of his bladder. He was told he would lead a short merry life, or a long quiet life. He has so far led a very physically active, and merry, relatively long life and is now 71 years old.
When V heard of my father's illness she advised the Catholic orphanage that the child was in that she would not be coming for the child, but would attempt to track down the father's family and inform them of the child's existence.
A little over 2 years later, she arrived at my father's eldest sister's residence in the
Wairarapa, having obtained the address from his younger brother, who was still in the Navy at that time. She had also discovered he had survived and had been medically discharged. She still had not signed papers to allow the child to be fully adopted at that point. My father's sister informed V that any contact from her would be unwelcome as my father was about to marry my mother, who was 7
months pregnant at that time with me. My father remained ignorant of the child's existence, and V finally admitted defeat, and signed papers for the child to be adopted to a suitable couple.
During my childhood I did not enjoy being an only child, and was an only child until age 9 and a half when my younger sister arrived. I am not sure when I became certain that I had an older sibling, but I think I was about 14 yrs old and I had a strong sense of a sister, close to my own age. Where this knowledge came from I do not know, I had always thought my mother had told me, but she is adamant that she had no idea of this other child's existence, and nor did my father. However, I was fairly sure by the time I was in my late teens that I had a sister called Patricia and felt that one day I would find her, or she me.
So when, at age 43, my father called me and told me to prepare for a shock, I was completely unsurprised. Which added I am sure to his own shock at the news he had called to tell me. Louise, my sister, had found us through never-to-be-destroyed Catholic orphanage records, and by contacting her birth mother and hiring a private detective, had managed to find out her father's name, although V, her birth mother had rejected her contact initially. When she arrived on my doorstep - where, strangely, I was now living in
Devonport where it all began - there was no mistaking she was my father's daughter. She was a blue eyed,
blonde haired version of him through and through. We held
eachother, and cried with the relief of at last finding
eachother. When I told her that I was surprised her name was Louise (although her initials were the same as mine and my younger sisters with that particular name), and told her I had thought she would be called atricia, she reached into her jacket pocket and handed me a piece of paper. It was her birth certificate and on it was her birth name - Patricia Ann. Her adoptive parents had called her Louise and she had not known her birth name until six months previously, when she had requested the records from the orphanage. Somehow I had known her in my heart and soul, all this time.
Louise's life is a whole other story which I hope to be able to share one day- one of survival, adventure, incredible courage and integrity, an incomparable work ethic which kept her alive, world travel by accident, and amazing skill, determination and intelligence. It is also one of a woman full of unconditional love and warmth and belief - in herself and in her
unshakeable humour and optimism.
I am so very grateful that I have my big sister in my life. She has been my rock for so long and did not even know it, and I have finally been able to describe my gratitude to her for this, and to let her know how much she was loved while we waited.....
