Stood by my birth mother’s grave, all I could think to say was ‘I bet you didn’t expect to see me here, Mum’.
In 1956, when I was three weeks old, she’d left me in a cinema toilet cubicle and it took me until 2017 to find her.
As a young boy, there were times when I had been deeply upset at her. I raged against the injustices of being abandoned and I was a troubled child.
After she left me I was placed in a children’s home until I was adopted at seven and a half by a wonderful couple, Irene and George.
While I only stayed with them for seven years, before joining the Royal Navy, it was through their love and support that I learnt to forgive my birth mum.
I developed so much respect for Irene, who taught me what unconditional love is for the first time.
It made me realise my birth mother definitely loved me too, even if she left me. After all, she put me in a place where she knew I would be found by women, and according to reports I was wearing expensive clothing. She definitely cared.
As a teenager, I felt a nagging connection and desire to meet her. I wanted to tell her I didn’t need to forgive her as there was nothing to forgive, and I was keen to share with her a few things about myself.
I felt a bond with her, something I later discovered probably came from the two weeks we spent together in hospital after she had me, where she nursed me. I genuinely felt love and affection for this woman I had no recollection of.
Not long after I left home, I started my search. My adoptive parents knew I was looking, and supported me in my endeavour, but I had too much respect for them to invest all my energy into it while they were still alive.
At first I started by putting adverts and telling my story in local papers in Birmingham, where I was found, asking if anyone knew any information.
My story started to garner interest, and in 2005 I took part in a BBC documentary, hoping that it would result in more information. It did just that, and not long after I was put in touch with a lady called Mavis Smith.
She was the one who found me down the side of the toilet. She was 17 at the time and on a date.
We met in person in 2006 and she is such a great woman. She’s in her 80s now and we still speak regularly. She calls me her eldest son.
For a long time after that, I thought Mavis would be the only person I would find on my search for my mum.
Being without answers is a hard place to be, but I never gave up hope that I would find her.
By this point I was a father myself and I felt I didn’t have anything to hand my children in terms of a family history. More than that, I felt like I didn’t really know who I was. It was an uncomfortable feeling.
I didn’t even know my real name. For all intents and purposes, I was Robert Bruce Weston. Robert was the name of the policeman who Mavis handed me to, Bruce was the doctor who looked after me, and Weston was Irene and George’s surname.
To try and give myself some sense of history, I’d created scenarios in my head about my parents’ story. I thought I was really prepared to accept anything – including rejection – and I felt in a good space to face what lay ahead.
It’s only now that I can see that I wasn’t. The truth was completely unexpected.
I finally got some answers when my daughter shared my story on Facebook in 2015. An amazing DNA researcher called Julia offered to help and before long she had found a third cousin, who asked one of their relatives to do a test.
He did and it turned out I had a half-brother called Tommy on my father’s side.
I hadn’t really thought about my father – who was called Charlie – much, I was far more obsessed with meeting my mum, but he was the first of my parents we found through DNA tracing.
I assumed that he would have had no idea who I was, but it turns out that he was well aware I existed. Tommy, and my other half siblings, hadn’t grown up knowing about me though.
My five half-brothers and one half-sister didn’t quite understand how I could exist as Charlie was a married man from Scotland and there wasn’t much of an age gap between myself and Tommy – only a couple of years.
They had, however, become suspicious after Charlie died in 1996 when they found a letter in his wallet from a woman saying the two children were well.
Unfortunately, the letter was lost before I ever had a chance to see it, as it could have provided a clue about my mother.
But at the time, I was just very excited about meeting the new family members I had acquired overnight. It felt like I had found the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
I spoke to Tommy on the phone for hours, as we got on so well, and I made my way over to Scotland in 2017 where we had a nervous but very exciting first meeting. Lots of family came and it was fantastic.