Monday Moments – Grief
by J.
- There is some serious grieving going on in my children’s lives.
- This is nothing new for any of my kids, they have a lot to grieve, older child adoption means that they remember their losses in a way that effects their lives on a day to day basis.
- Ramona has been doing some serious grieving for her foster family, she held out hope for a long time that she would go back to them and with her adoption she has realized that this home is really where she is going to stay.
- Her realization of this fact is both fabulous and devastating, she is really challenging to live with but I am so proud of her because she is processing some really challenging emotions and she is only just 7, 2 whole days of being 7 now.
- The boys, both of them are dealing with the permanency of the shift in their family, I think one of them was holding out hope that she might not stay although he never said that in so many words.
- The completing of her adoption process brought up a lot of feelings for both of them though and they too are mourning people that have moved through their lives.
- To add to their grief and pain, we had to tell them this week that one of their foster parents had died.
- He was not an old man, he lost a long fault battle with cancer and although he was not someone they were close to any longer, his death was yet another loss for them.
- Fudge took in particularly hard, his cognitive delays make his questions that much harder to answer and deal with.
- He for the life of him could not understand why the world did not stop rotating when B died and how exactly it took 3 days for us to find out and then tell him.
- There is a lot of being gentle going on, a lot of hugs and a lot of trying to work things out without anyone losing a limb in the process.
- Last week was really long, I think this week may be longer.
- I need to make time to be here more often because I also have my own grief and lately it seems to be looming larger than life, writing helps, I need to make time to write.
4 comments
I don’t think any number of books I can or will read as we prepare for our adoption will get me ready for the amount and kind of grieving we will have going on in our home (eventually). It breaks my heart already.
I continually find myself stopping and remembering in our excitement to be parents that someone–somewhere– has felt the largest sense of loss imaginable, losing their child. And the beautiful child(ren) we are so excited to eventually welcome into our home will be sad and thinking about what was or should have been or could have been with another family or set of parents.
We start our training this Saturday. It can’t come soon enough! We are very muchlooking forward to learning all we can.
Thanks again for being so informative and so incredibly honest. It scares me sometimes, but it also reinforces that we’re building our family the way we feel the most strongly about.
Make time to write, & to call your sister when it’s not pick up time (2-230)
We’re working through some similar things with our birth kids in the recent loss of 2 foster siblings (both babies) when they were returned to their birth families. Grief is a complicated thing. Keep up the good work with those kids
I wish I knew what to say – I wish it were easier for them. Big hugs