1369 Family Matters

Although I was going on a long drive I decided against setting the alarm and hoped for a natural and reasonable waking. My second rising of the night took place after the dawn but the level of light was such that I knew that the sea fog had come inland and wondered if this meant that the week of summer weather had come to an end. I felt like more sleep and my memory is that I did so, quickly, untroubled by the two issues which had come to dominate the past two weeks, the discovery that there was no information in the medical records of my birth mother until the early 1950's, over a decade after she came to England pregnant, banished from her homeland. There are therefore only two records of my existence identified so far. The corrected birth certificate and the baptismal record held at the Catholic Church where I served as an alter boy as the age of eleven throughout my last year, once a week during the school terms. No one had wanted me to exist until the aunt who became my care mother arrived in England and discovered my being and even then she participated in the conspiracy that kept my existence secret from the rest of family and friends in Gibraltar and in the U.S.A, and then from those who came to stay in England for the War period and then subsequently to visit.

It is my fault that there are no answers to some questions, although responsibility rather than blame is more appropriate. I could have undertaken the research before and questioned those who were still alive but chose not to do so because those who I care about did not want me to do so, and because I preferred the status quo to what I might find to be the truth. I suspect many if not most children have moments when they wish their parents were not their parents and that they had parents who were more wealthy or famous, just as the children of the famous wish they had been brought up in families where their parents were anonymous to everyone except their children, and even then children usually want their parents to have lives which revolve around them.

It is now over five years since the premature and preventable death of the woman who provided some mothering as a child, although she remained a child throughout her life, really wanting a life size female doll to put into dresses and to play with, and saying that, says a lot about the person I became. I could, and with hindsight, should have approached differently, the task of getting those directly responsible to acknowledge what happened and the part which they played. I should also have tried to insist that anything other that one independent investigation covering all the interests and issues was necessary, even though I was told this was out of the question in the beginning although too late for my care mother it has become increasingly possible for this to be the situation with the Health Commission being able to undertake enquiries covering all aspects of the health services and for the involvement of the personal social services to be covered by the inspectorate for those services.

And yet having said this when I consider the circumstances which governed the various phases of decision taking, I believe the right choices were made taken into account the welfare and interests of everyone, including myself. On Friday just before going away for the weekend the response of the Ombudsman service arrived to my request for the reports to the Health Minster to be withdrawn or for the conclusions to be substantially revised. The document requires careful study, and I decided to try forget it until after the weekend. I knew this would not happen, but viewing the matter in a different environment was helpful and on my journey back home I believe I have worked out the best approach in all the circumstances. The mist was back and with increasing intensity and dampness as homeland was approach. It was also cold, but I arrived before the binmen called and I was soon lost in other activities.