Doubt this has happened to a TDer before.

This is a bit long, but bear with me. I met my wife 20 years ago. Not long after we met, she told me she had a son she'd given up for adoption twelve years before. She told me that she hoped someday he would reach out and find her, but she wasn't going to interfere with his childhood. Over the years, she would let me know that she hoped someday to meet him, but she would never do anything about it. We have two great kids of our own, and that helps.

Fast forward to my in-laws from out-of-state visiting for Christmas earlier this week. My MIL knows that I know about the adoption and she tells me that she knew who the adoptive parents were, and that she had approached them five years ago, when the boy would have been 27 years old, to find out if the boy (now a grown man) had any interest in meeting his birth mother, letting them know that my wife would be open to it. According to my MIL, they refused and said they wold not pass the info to him. I asked my MIL if she'd ever shared that info with my wife. She had.

So tonight, my wife and I were at dinner at a restaurant and I asked her about it. She said she had written a personal, heartfelt letter to the adoption mother, asking her to share with her son another letter from my wife that she had included. Both letters were returned unopened, and included a note to stay out of their lives. They never even notified him that his birth mother wanted to meet. She doesn't even know if they ever even told him that he was adopted.

So I told her that if she still wanted to meet him, I would help her and he would be 100% welcome in our life if he was open to it. She smiled and said great. So I asked her what she knew, and she told me she knew his first name, his parents name and the business they run. I asked if she'd ever looked to see if he was on Facebook or any other social media. She had but he wasn't there.

Here's where things fell apart. We were both sitting there, trying to be sleuths, to see if we could find him on our own, and she was going to reach out to him. We were using our phones and couldn't find anything, then I suggested his first name was short for his real name, so we tried different names, then suddenly we both found him within 30 seconds of each other, with me finding him first. I asked my wife for his birthday and where he was born. She told me and my heart sank. Then she looked up at me and burst out in tears crying.

We had both found his online obituary. He had died four weeks ago in a freak accident, leaving a wife and three kids. frick, that was a kick in the teeth. I got up out of my seat to try and comfort her. People around us got up to come ask if we were alright, and I thanked them and told the waiter to hold my check and that I'd come back and pay it tomorrow. I got my wife in the car and took her home. She took a sedative and is calm now.

Now she's feeling a lot of anger towards the adoptive parents, who didn't notify her. I know they didn't have to, but I can see my wife's point. They knew she wanted to meet him, and they they also deprived her of knowing about his death. I don't understand why someone would do that. Anyway, now my wife wants to reach out to her son's wife, and let her know, so that her children can know where they came from, and let the wife know that if she needs help, we can help.

I think she needs to let sleeping dogs lie still. Sure, it hurts to know a child you gave birth to has died, but maybe she needs to think on it a while before reacting.