AUDIO: Mum tells of being reunited with adopted son through Tubridy show competition
As part of the An Post competition that is running on The Ryan Tubridy Show on 2fm, a woman from Tralee. Co Kerry, entered with a 1997 letter from her son.
The woman, Marian, was 16 when she gave birth to John, but held him for just an hour before he was taken away for adoption.
Twenty-six years later, the letter arrived after she had got a postcard sent to her birthplace address in Tralee from a “Mary Murphy”. It contained a phone number for Marian to contact.
“Mary Murphy” was an alias for a nun writing to her to try and connect her with her son.
Marian said: “I just saw the number. It’s weird but I knew straight away what it was — my son looking for me. My son who was adopted when I was 16.”
Marian said she had “no choice” but to have her son adopted.
She described as “unbelievable” the feeling when she knew John was reaching out to make contact. “It was unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable. I waited so long for that day, 26 years I waited for that day to come,” Marian said.
"It was my son looking for me" - Listen back to Marian's story about the letter she waited 26 years for: https://t.co/RIKjPOWS1N @RTERadio1
— Oliver Callan (@OliverCallanRTE) December 1, 2015
“Every day, I knew it would happen. Waiting to see him, to talk to him, to have him back in my life. To know how he was, where he was, what happened to him. I only saw him for an hour, that was it.”
Nobody in her family knew she was pregnant. Marian ran away to Dublin to conceal the birth. She got a job in Baggot St Hospital and lived in staff quarters.
She described the day she had to hand over her child after christening him herself: “There was another girl in the ward that was giving her baby up for adoption so we kind of spent that hour together. I couldn’t even tell you her name now. The sister of the ward came in and took him away. She didn’t even say: ‘Say goodbye’. She just said: ‘We will take John now’. That was it. I had christened him myself.”
Some 26 years later, in 1997, she received a letter from her son. It read: “Hello, What a great surprise to hear from you so quickly. I am looking forward to meeting you also. There is plenty of questions I would like to ask you but this note is not the place.
This lovely lady talking about giving up her baby for adoption on @RyanTubridyShow is heartbreaking. Courageous of her to share her story.
— Maïa Dunphy (@MaiaDunphy) December 1, 2015
“I have asked Sr Gabriel to arrange our meeting during the week if that is suitable.
“Looking forward to meeting you, John.”
They met shortly afterwards. “Meeting him was just amazing,” said Marian. “I heard him speak as he came down the stairs with Sr Gabriel in the adoption society in Haddington Rd. I heard him speaking and I said: ‘Oh he has a Dublin accent’. Then he walked in the door and swept me off my feet into his arms. He is 6ft 2, a big man. It was amazing. I can’t describe it. I would have picked him out of a crowd.”
Although she had lost him for over two decades, Marian said the letter allowed her to spend 16 wonderful years with her son. They talked every day, took holidays together, and got caught up for the decades they had lost.
John died two years ago.
However, his legacy to Marian was becoming a grandmother when she was 38. She described John’s daughter as “fabulous”.
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