Note: A poem I wrote about this experience, Michaela's Song, is pending publication at www.literarymama.com - they've accepted it for their August issue.
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I'd managed to forget the exact dates, but last week I was looking for e-mail someone sent just after my Dad died, and found e-mail that placed the memory in time.
We adopted three children - A and B are the ones we were privileged to be able to raise. In March of 1999, we had a tiny newborn girl in our house for just over 14 hours before her mother called, heartbroken, to tell us she just couldn't go through with it.
The thing about losing an adopted baby - it's a grief you're not supposed to feel. If a child dies, or you have a miscarriage or a still-birth, you're allowed to grieve that. Other women who have lost a child commiserate with you. I've read this poem about Michaela in public a few times, at Open Mikes, and other places, and I always get the same response. Someone who has had a miscarriage or a stillbirth or lost a young child will come to me, oozing compassion, and when I tell them my story, they shut down. "Oh", they say, shaking their heads, "so it's not like ..." and they trail off, not knowing where to end it, but the words hang in the air between us. It's not like she was really yours. It's not like you lost your own child. It's not like you were really her mother. And no, it's not like that, completely, but it's still a loss. For one long night, and one too-short morning, I was her mother. I fed her and changed her and rocked her and sang to her and begged her to sleep for more than half an hour at a time :) And when she did sleep, I sat in the rocking chair holding her, enthralled by her beauty. I unwrapped her to kiss her toes, and I slipped my forefinger into her fist and I inhaled the scent of her head. I know I didn't give birth to her, but surely some of that counts for something?
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12 comments:
it counts for everything. I remember that day. I remember A saying that you were the best mommy ever, and that she would have been a good sister, REALLY. I remember that often, actually. And I don't doubt the pain of it for a second. Love you
it's a grief you're not supposed to feel
Supposed to, schmupposed to! I grieved with you then and I still do now.
It's not all that different, I don't think. They're both about lost dreams and hopes and things that should have been.
It's exactly the same thing...and I should know.
it does count...
don't let anyone take that
away from you...
it certainly does count...
my heart breaks
when i read that poem.
ccap told me that I would cry when I read this, and I did. I just shouldn't have read it at work.
Absolutely it is a grief you are supposed to feel. You were M's mother, and you lost your child. The details of that loss are irrelevant.
Love you.
Sometimes we don't know how to face someone else's grief so we try to diminish it by pretending it's not there. I'm often at a loss at times like that myself. I want to be what that grieving person needs me to be, but it's hard to know how...
I remember how happy we were with you when you called with the surprising news. (It seemed so right after your dad died) And we remember the phone call that followed...
The thing is-you fell in love with her-just as I fell in love with my children the moment I held them. You had 14 hours of falling in love. That is real.
It's still a loss ... no matter the biological implications ... perhaps more so because you had wanted and waited for it for so much longer than the rest of us "lucky" ones ?
You would never have known B though, if Michaela had stayed. And can you imagine your life without him ?
Hugs.
Any love carried in the heart leaves a hole when it is ripped away.
A profound poem.
Angie
It is likely the very best moments of complete and total unabashed acceptance and love that M knew in the first hours of her life. Perhaps in an obscure and inarticulatable way she still has shadowing echoes of grief for the loss of YOUR arms, scent and whisper.
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