Jerry was 14 years old when his older sister, Mary, had a baby. Mary was just 19 years old, and the father of her child wanted nothing to do with her or the baby she carried alone for 9 months. Jerry had two older brothers, but they were both through college and out of the house; he felt very alone as he watched his sister struggle with the knowledge that she would have to give this baby to strangers once her child was born. No one in the family could help Mary keep this baby.

Jerry's mom had died when he was 9 years old; he and Mary had gone to school that day and come home to find that their mother had simply dropped dead of a brain aneurysm. So Mary was more than a sister to him; she was part mother too. Now she was going to be a mother, and she wasn't ready. She wasn't happy. She wanted her baby, but knew she wouldn't be able to provide the kind of life she wanted her child to have. The family tried to find a way for Mary to keep her baby, but it seemed that there was nothing anyone could do.

Jerry was the one who watched Mary's belly swell, the one who shared her excitement at the first kicks inside, the one who knew how much she loved the tiny life inside. He went through the pregnancy with his sister, and so perhaps it was that Jerry suffered too when Mary came home from the hospital with empty arms. She held her baby for three days before the forms were signed and she had to walk out of that hospital knowing that, as she left, she would probably never see her daughter again.

No one took Jerry to the hospital.

Many years later, Jerry was married and began a family of his own. His wife was interested in genealogy, and introduced to their home a beautiful pictorial family tree. She knew about her own family, of course, and thought she knew all about Jerry's, too. His name was there, with his two brothers and his sister, Mary; their parents, their grandparents. By that time Mary had married and had a son and a daughter, and their names were there, too.

But Jerry knew it wasn't right.

He told his wife that she needed to add another small branch to her picture, but he didn't have a name to put on it. Nevertheless, a blank line was inserted under Mary's name for her first child, a daughter, born on April 23, 1967 and never seen by Uncle Jerry.

The empty line stayed empty for almost 20 years. Empty, but waiting. Waiting with hope that one day a name would fill it.

The first time I met my Uncle Jerry I was 29 years old. Mary was finally able to introduce Jerry to her daughter, his niece, on September 12, 1996. A great hole inside was healed as he laid eyes and hands on the tangible life that he watched grow inside of his sister all those years ago.

Together with his wife and three children, he led us to the room with the family tree on the wall, and we all stood together as the empty branch finally blossomed with a name:

Beth Leigh Deacon

Found.