WHY?

Carole and I fell into one another's arms, as Albert was taking a sip from his drink. He cleared his throat and said: 

“I spent hours and hours chatting with my daughter. We had lost so many things in the way. We had so much to catch up.

Looking at her was like looking at me in a mirror. Her Spanish was perfect, no accent at all. She looked so Mediterranean with her black hair and her black eyes, with her tanned skin… She was awesome!

I apologized to her for all the time I had been missing in her life. I told her that I really didn’t know anything at all about her birth and her existence.

I was unable to give her any explanation at all for my silence and my absence.

There was no anger, no bitterness in her; she was just so happy to have found me…

Carole and I went to Germany to meet R’s family: her husband and their two sons – my grandsons -.

I cannot find the words to express how wonderful and how painful that meeting was. I still don’t know how to express my emotional feelings and sensations.

I was just wondering WHY?

WHY? That was the key word to another part of the story. I had to ask my mother – an old lady in her eighties – and my eldest brother.

So Carole and I travelled to Barcelona.

I will never forget my brother’s reaction when I told her I had finally met my daughter. He just sank into his armchair, opened his mouth to answer but was unable to pronounce a single sound, as tears were running down his cheeks.

“Forgive me Albert. Please forgive me. Mother and I just thought it was the best for you.

-The best for me? During 39 years? Wow! I deserve a little more explanations, don’t you think so?

-You know that Mother was extremely upset about your relation with R. and that she had forbidden you to see her. You were a child, Albert! You had to finish your studies and she was ten years your eldest! But you were so much in love with her! This is why Mother and Uncle S. gave her money to leave our country: they were really generous with her, you have to trust me.

I have to say that my mother became a widow when I was twelve years old and it was my father’s brother who was our testamentary executor.

And my brother went on saying: “A few months later, Mother intercepted a letter addressed to you, where R. was telling you about her pregnancy…"

At that point of our conversation I was livid and voiceless… My mother and my brother, my flesh and blood, had kept that secret during all those years! I was crying silently and so was my brother.

-Go on please.

-So Mother and Uncle S. send her more money asking her to be patient and to be generous. They promised you were going to know the truth at the end of your studies…

-You know it was not the case! What happened?

-We were told it was a baby girl, and Mother appealed once more to R. generosity begging her to understand her now that she was a mother too…

-And? Go on for Christ’s sake!

-Their correspondence last five years… more or less, and then Mother told her that you had a new life and that you didn’t want to know about your daughter… Could you ever forgive me?”

The real question was: would I be able to forgive my own mother!