Letter of Contact

I had a few possible address's for the person who could be my mum. I also had pages and pages of people with same surnames that I had decided could be possible family members. I was considering writing to all the addresses that could be my mums when out the blue my friend emailed me to say she had found birth records of three possible siblings, oh fuck it, that's not a word I say! two sisters and a brother.

I couldn't write direct to my mum knowing that she had kids. I hadn't even thought of sisters and brothers but I assumed that she would of never told them about me. She had ran off when I was just 10 days old and never had contact since (so I had been told) So why would she tell her kids.

I needed to start connecting all the people I had collected. I started to do a sort of family tree. When I had a rough tree I started going through all the local obituary columns. I thought when a family member dies its pretty normal to put an announcement in the local paper with funeral details saying loving bro/sis of whoever and loving son of. You know the thing. Anyway in the middle of the second night searching I found it! An obituary from 2002 saying loving brother to and devoted son to and loved uncle of... Everyone on my tree was mentioned, including my mum and sisters and brother. I finally knew I had the right family, a big family at that!

I narrowed it down to her brother and his wife (they had lived in same house for 15 yrs according to the electoral register) So that's who I wrote to. I lost count of how many pages I scribbled out. I didn't have a clue how to start it, but this is how it went. I told them my name and when I was born and said I thought their sister was my mum. I said I didn't want to contact her direct because of her family. That I didn't want to intrude into her life, but could I have a photo of her and maybe a letter. If I'm 100% honest I expected a reply saying she had moved on with her life and she didn't want contact. I was ready for that, I had only ever been told the story of her running off. I desperately wanted a photo though.
Within a week of sending the letter my whole family had travelled 120 miles and landed on my doorstep.