*My mother got pregnant at sixteen years old. This was in the mid-1960s in a extremely conservative state, and her family was working-class Irish-Catholic. My grandparents did not believe in abortion, and probably couldn’t have afforded to send my mom to some place where it was safe or legal, anyway.

So my mom went away for the last four or five months of her pregnancy to a “school” run by the church and attended by other teenage girls in her unfortunate situation. The child was born healthy and was quickly adopted. It was a closed adoption, so no contact between the adoptive parents and the birth family.

The experience irreparably damaged my mother’s relationships with her parents and (to a lesser extent) her younger sister. When she returned after giving the baby up, my grandparents were not subtle in their opinion that she was “tarnished goods,” and “loose,” and “ungodly,” and etc etc bullshit religious misogyny. They are coldly formal to her even now fifty years later. Her sister, four years younger and quite impressionable, followed her parents’ example until she was in college, grew up a little, and finally reached out to my mom, who had since moved fifteen hundred miles away and only called home once a month or so.

I did not find out about any of this until I was fourteen and my half-brother showed up at our house.

That day is all kinda messed up in my mind. I was doing something in the kitchen with my dad and the doorbell rang. I went to answer it and there was this big man standing there just staring at me. I remember he looked like he was gonna cry.

He asked, “Are you [Mom’s married name]’s daughter?”

I said yeah, and was really freaked out because the man was shaking and stuttering.

“I’m your brother,” he said, and sorta reached his hand up, and I didn’t know if he was gonna touch me or grab me or what, and then my dad jerked me backwards and behind him.

That’s probably what I remember most, how my dad put me behind him immediately, making himself a wall. Like all of a sudden realizing my dad thought I was in danger, that scared me more than the weird crazy-talking man at the door.

Anyway, my dad sent me upstairs and I didn’t hear any more of what was said. I was really confused. When my mom came home, my dad ordered pizza for me and my brother and told us to eat in the basement, which was fine with us because that’s where the Super Nintendo was. We could hear our parents talking/explaining/arguing/imploring for hours. We could hear both of them crying at various intervals.

As it turned out, my mom had never told my dad about the child she gave up as a teenager. I truly believe the experience was absolutely traumatizing to her, and once she’d moved out of her parents’ house and established her own life, she never thought she’d have to think about it again.

My dad went to stay with my uncle that night. He didn’t come home for about two months.

My mom picked me up from school the next day and told me the story behind the man at the door, who was most likely her son and my half-brother. My mom is smart and capable and tougher than anyone else I know, and I was so shaken to see her tears leaking as we sat in the car in the high school parking lot.

I got some more details from my mom’s sister, some back then and some years later. As far as we can tell, my half-brother probably hired a private investigator to find his birth mother, or else traced his history back to the Catholic girls’ school and spoke to someone without proper respect for the privacy of a closed adoption. Because he asked after my mother’s married name, not maiden, we’re pretty sure he had a professional on his side.

Dad was heartbroken that this secret had been kept from him. He came back home eventually, because he still loved my mom, but their relationship was also severely impacted. He would come sleep in my room sometimes because I had a futon in there. They would sit together at the dinner table and only talk to my brother and me, never a word directly to each other. My bro and I began preparing for the inevitable divorce, seeking advice in the matter from the more than half our friends who were already living it. I remember my brother trying to figure out how to swaddle the Super Nintendo in clothes so he could take it back and forth between our parents’ houses. It took years for my parents to get back to stasis, honestly not until Bro and I were both out of the house and they could genuinely focus on each other.

I feel like I understand everybody’s perspectives. My mom never should have been shamed and shunned and left alone to give birth at sixteen among strangers. My dad should have been told, as it was a formative event in my mother’s life and the life of the family he was marrying into. My half-bro of course would want to know where he came from.

But we do not talk about this anymore. My aunt told me years later, when I was grown-up, that my mom had met with my half-bro only once after he tracked her down, basically just telling him they couldn’t have a relationship, and she didn’t want him to contact her again. Remember, at that moment my mom wasn’t sure if the reappearance of Half-Bro was going to cost her her marriage, and also that closed adoptions exist for a reason. As far as I know, Half-Bro hasn’t spoken to anyone in my family since.

Okay.

Now, twenty years after Half-Bro found us, fifty years after my mom gave him up, my little brother has been diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer (I’m gonna keep the medical stuff vague because already too much identifiable info in this novel, but the donation would not be like a kidney or a lung, but something the donor’s body would be able to replace), is in desperate need of a transplant, and has not been able to match a donor within our family. He’s on the list, in treatment, and not currently getting worse, but I am so goddamn scared. Seeing him in a hospital bed makes me feel like I got the wind knocked out of me, like I can’t breathe. He’s only twenty-nine years old, I still need him here. We all do.

Can I do this? Can I really ask my mom and dad to contact Half-Bro (I know Mom has his info) and see if he/his family can be tested for donor matches? Is it completely unconscionable to ask a man who has been refused even minimal contact with his birth family, to put his health on the line for a younger brother he’s never been permitted to meet?

I am terrified of this blowing up my parents’ marriage, and I am terrified that even asking will hurt and distress Half-Bro immensely (for the record, Bro and I would be happy to have a relationship with Half-Bro, but have never felt it’s our place to pursue such), but I am more terrified of losing my brother. I know how long a shot it is, that Half-Bro would say yes, that he would actually be a match, that the transplant would take, but it’s a chance, it’s better than we have now.

I would do much worse things than this to save my brother. I would have given him whatever he needs, marrow, kidney, lung, heart.

But I haven’t been thinking straight since the diagnosis, admittedly. So here we are.

TL;DR: Mom gave up a child as a teenager, losing the support and love of her parents, and never told my dad when she later met and married him. Half-brother found us when I was in high school, and the revelation nearly broke up my parents’ marriage. My mom refused Half-Bro’s request for a relationship. Years later, my full-brother needs a life-saving transplant. Do I ask my mom to contact Half-Bro and see if he would be willing to be tested?*

The mature responses include:

"It disgusts me that she would even think this was an option"

A totally sane, normal person fantasizes about telling a man dying painfully on a hospital bed to eat his dick because of the actions of his mother.

Its not a guarantee, so please leave the man alone and do nothing to stave off the ever present specter of Death

Let me just take this opportunity to flag my moral superiority over you as you deal with the upcoming death of your brother.

tl;dr: Whether she should or should not doesn't matter. The important thing is that we can judge a desperate woman watching her brother die