If adoption is a part of your life in any way: birth parent, adoptive parent, hopeful adoptive parent, adoption advocate or professional and would like your blog or website added to my list of links please email me your name and URL. adoptionfyi at gmail dot com

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Grief

In my upstairs hallway there is a duffel bag. It’s a smallish duffel bag, well made, plum color with deep green accents. My parents gave it to me when I was a sophomore in high school. I’ve used it continually since then, it even went to the Philippines with me on my mission. You wouldn’t know it by looking at it that it’s nearly 15 years old, it is in very good condition. I guess that you might say I’m emotionally attached to this bag, as much as a person can be attached to a bag.

It comes into my view as I walk up my stairs to where our bedrooms are. Sometimes I avoid looking at it. Sometimes I stop and stare at it. Sometimes it grabs ahold my heart and squeezes it so terribly terribly hard. You see, that bag is packed for trip that it never took. It is filled with tiny pajamas, swaddling blankets, burp cloths and special glass bottles. I can’t see those little things, but I know they are there.

I can’t bring myself to unpack that bag or even move it. I haven’t opened it. I don’t want to touch it. My duffle bag has become a small, discrete coffin for the dreams of a child that will never come home. It is the only evidence of the heart break that we have suffered.

When will my very rational self take over, realize that a duffle bag does not belong in a hallway, that we will need to use that bag the next time we take a family trip? I don’t know. It feels like it never will. I wonder, will I just go buy another bag or will necessity force me toward the shaking and sobs and despair that my little coffin will unleash?

Really though, I’m not afraid of the tears. There have all ready been so many. I’m afraid of loosing the only thing I have left of him. A child that I lost, but who is not dead. A son who grew in my heart and then was ripped from it. A baby whom I will never raise, not here, not in the eternities.

And so, a smallish duffel bag remains sitting in my upstairs hallway.


(Please take this only as an expression of my personal loss, and do not derive from it any anger toward K.’s mother. K. is not my son, he is A.’s son, and he is not the child I grieve over. He is a miracle that we celebrate with her. He is the possibility and the child that she would have grieved had she been able complete the placement. We grieve the possibility and the child he could have been as part of our family, but isn’t.)

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this. I am so sorry for your loss.

    ReplyDelete
  2. A beautiful expression of your grief. Thank you so much for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Beautifully written. And don't open that bag! We hope only the next best thing for you!! And everything will be put to use as it should.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Oh Megan...Shawn and I both cried. I wish I had something to say or could do something so you wouldn't have to go through this. The loss of expectations is so raw, rough and ragged as well as a lonely camp to be in. You are in our prayers. You'll get there when you're ready too. We still have some unpacked things in our house 3 years later. Call if you need anything. Peace...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Beautiful, Sad description. I can only, and not even begin to understand your loss. You do with that Plum bag whatever you feel neccesary. You did lose a child that you will always grieve. Like you say although he is hope and a future for his mother, you and your family had given yourselves to him also. Maybe you could keep the bag just as it is for him. We love you and hope that as time goes on the pain may ease and your hearts may beable to open again. MAny prayers are with you ALL!!

    ReplyDelete