Rudy Owens took this photograph of his birth mother in 2009; what do you see and why are you looking at it now?
The entire time I have communicated about my history as an adoptee and the widespread denial of basic human and legal rights to all adoptees, I held a line.
That demarcation point, for me, represented a conscious act of power and an act of defiance.
Until today, April 27, 2024, I have never publicly published a photograph of my closest biological family relative that showed their face.
Here it is. Are you amused? Do you care?
On a few occasions I published very old pictures of my biological grandparents, on my maternal and paternal family sides. These are so buried in my archive, they are likely impossible to find. These photos are also old, and they are more like museum artifacts than documentation of blood lineage.
But now I have arrived at a new destination, because the Angel of Death arrived late this week.
In fact, I started writing this essay when my birth mother* was among the living, a day before her passing. Now she is among the dead, having died in a Michigan hospital this week after a long declining trajectory to death’s final clutches.