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After 20-year longing, finding dad fills void

Published:Tuesday | February 16, 2021 | 12:16 AMJudana Murphy/Gleaner Writer
Kimberley Conolly and her dad, Dalton Bird, whom she met for the first time when she was 34 years old.
Kimberley Conolly and her dad, Dalton Bird, whom she met for the first time when she was 34 years old.
Kimberley Conolly as an infant. The 34-year-old saw this photo of herself for the first time when she met her father in 2020.
Kimberley Conolly as an infant. The 34-year-old saw this photo of herself for the first time when she met her father in 2020.
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While leafing through her mother’s album, Kimberley Conolly stumbled on a photo of her dad with a note addressed to her. She kept that photo at her bedside, longing for the day she would meet him face to face. Conolly, a Cayman Islands native,...

While leafing through her mother’s album, Kimberley Conolly stumbled on a photo of her dad with a note addressed to her.

She kept that photo at her bedside, longing for the day she would meet him face to face.

Conolly, a Cayman Islands native, was 14 years old when she first asked her mom about her Jamaican father, Dalton Bird, who hails from Westmoreland.

His name was printed on her birth certificate but her mother deflected appeals for information because of their frayed relationship.

Conolly said that put a strain on the mother-daughter bond.

“I bore a last name that I had no affiliation or connection to,” the 34-year-old told The Gleaner on Monday.

“I was torn because I felt like I only knew half of who I was, because I only knew half of where I came from. There was always this missing piece of the puzzle.”

After pressing her mother in vain, Conolly made several trips to Jamaica, visiting the Registrar General’s Department in the search for answers.

That fact-finding mission came up empty and so she turned to a local show that helps people to locate missing loved ones but received no response.

It was not until 2020, during the punishing lockdowns triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, that she reached out to her mother again who finally gave in to the desire to know her father.

Her mother scoured Facebook and reached out to Bird’s sister, who eventually passed on Conolly’s contact to her father.

“I was relieved that he was still alive, because he suffers from epilepsy,” she said of the 58-year-old.

Once they connected, she set a ground rule that they would not dwell on the past but seek to develop a relationship focused on the future.

The two communicated via phone daily, and as soon as Jamaica’s travel restrictions were lifted for non-nationals, she took a trip to Kingston, where she spent a week, before heading to Westmoreland on July 18.

When Conolly finally met her father face to face, they were both speechless – an embrace the only language initially.

Conolly spent two months in Westmoreland bonding with her dad and two new-found siblings as the Cayman Islands closed its borders to inbound passengers until September.

She lost her brother in a bike crash two months after they met but she observes endearing qualities in her sister.

“My father thinks that he is a great domino player, but I have since dethroned him,” she said with a chuckle.

The young property manager describes the experience as cathartic – one that finally filled the 20-year void.

Conolly shared that she had often felt like giving up on finding her father, and it hit even harder when she saw success stories on the local television programme, The Susan Show.

“I have rediscovered myself by discovering that part of who I am,” said Conolly, who visited her father again last month.

judana.murphy@gleanerjm.com