GRIEVING SOMEONE I HAVE NEVER MET
This week I let myself think about my birth mom, my first mom. It’s not always a place I let myself go to because it’s so sad and it puts me in a funk. I don’t like living in that space. But it’s a reality for this adoptee sometimes.
I think about her pregnancy. She said she thought she got pregnant on her 19th birthday, which was October 10th. I think about how that must have been for her. The anxiety, the nausea, the panic, I feel all of this sometimes too for her, with her. She didn’t tell anyone in her family she was pregnant. She dealt with everything, me, on her own.
We wrote letters for about two years and then she died. She was a year older than I am now.
There were a total of 5 letters. I am thankful for these letters. I would receive her letter and immediately return one to her. I would wait weeks sometimes months for another to come back. I wonder if she knew I was checking the mailbox daily for a letter from her. I was craving information, attention from her. I had been looking my whole life for her.
She was sick and I knew it from the first letter. Health problems plagued her body, enough to shorten her life. She had emphysema, osteoporosis, on oxygen and still smoked. I begged her to meet me. She wanted to wait until she was well. My gut told me she would never get better; I just thought there was more time, don’t we always think there is more time? She was a mere 5-hour drive from me. I could just show up, I thought about it, but instead I respected her wishes. I regret I didn’t push harder. Insist on it, get what I wanted and needed.
I never saw her face in person or the sound of her voice outside of the womb. This is the part that is sad to me. The first connection severed and lost.
Sometimes I try not to think of her. It’s hard for my heart to handle a deep remembering of her. I need to think about her, its part of the mending for me.
I wish she had loved herself more to be able to stay here longer.
Grief is all I have left of her.
Thank you for reading
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