Bob CollinsThis is the sort of picture you can look at for a long time and try to imagine how it feels. It’s Marion Coombs of Newfoundland in eastern Canada, who gave up her son right after he was born.
“I used to think, ‘if only I could have held him. If only I could have had a picture of him,’ she tells the CBC.
Instead, she was told he died. He hadn’t, the picture proves.
The story from the CBC is today’s cure for what ails us.
Her grief lingered for almost five decades — until Alberta opened up its adoption records, and she received a letter from Andrew Allan, who had gone searching for his mother.
Allan had a happy childhood, but had always felt something was missing.
“[I had been] wondering who I was, and not understanding and feeling like I was lost. I dreamt that someone was going to come and find me, that it was a mistake,” he said in an interview.
Now 46 and engaged, Allan, who lives in St. Albert, had been eager to know his roots. His fiancée, Heidi-Ann Wild, encouraged him to do something about it.
“Heidi-Ann put me on to the adoption agency. We filled out some paper work and at that point decided we’ll take it as it comes,” he said.
“I thought, ‘Oh my God, somebody is playing such a cruel joke on me.’ It was just mind-boggling. This can’t be,” she said.
But it was no prank. It was her son.
And so, she finally was able to hold her son on her knee.
“It was like a burden was lifted off me, and I could not let him go.”
