8.21.2009

3 little birds

How many children do you have, is a question I answer quite frequently. And is a question that at different periods of my life I sometimes have had difficulty answering. Obviously. Now a days I have come to deal with losing William in my own way and I pick and choose the right moment and person to reveal him to.

A friend just told me a story about her sister in law. Many years a go this woman and her husband adopted a baby boy at birth. He was with them for over a year and a half when the birth father decided to contest the adoption (he had previously signed away his claim to the child and then with pressure from the grandparents decided to change his mind.)

My friend and I talked about loss in that sort of context. The adoptive mother lost her child... not to death... but out of her arms nonetheless ....

Regardless of whether the court's decision was correct in giving the baby (now toddler) back, I was interested in the story from a mother's loss perspective. How in the world does that mother answer the 'how many children' question? How powerless and hopeless that mother must have felt when her only son was taken away from her. How do you recognize and honor that loss? I can't even imagine

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