An Epiphany

Wednesday evening I got to see Sarah and Jeff. I was so glad to be able to hang out with them and to see them laugh. They are very frank about their pain. Naomi IS their daughter, and they feel just as any parent would after losing a child. They are no longer hoping to become parents, they ARE parents. They are grieving parents who have lost their only child, but they are parents. It’s all gut-wrenching and leaves me not really sure what to say to them. I want to say I’m sorry, but when people said that to me when my dad died, it just made me mad. I want to act normal, but I know it’s hard for Sarah when people seem to be continuing their lives. I want to give hugs and try to make them feel better, but Sarah has blogged about how that just makes her more sad when people want to hug and comfort her. I only held that little girl for a few hours in Target, but she is so clearly a special girl, and I so very much wanted to see her grow up and become a special woman. Just holding her while she slept gave me a new perspective on my life and my drama and I was crushed when I learned what happened. I literally had my laptop on and Sarah’s blog up for the entire time, from when I learned this might happen until she was gone, grieving for my friends, for that little girl who may not get to know the two FANTASTIC parents she was supposed to have, praying and asking my Christian friends to pray. I hope there’s someone in the birth parents life, who is reminding them right now, of all the reasons why they gave Naomi up originally.
Last night I went to the wake for my SIL’s grandmother. There was some minor drama about whether I should go or not, because Mandy’s sister and I have some unresolved drama of our own. Years ago, she and I were best friends. I won’t go into everything that went down that resulting in our eventual separation, but suffice it to say I hadn’t even seen her in two plus years, and hadn’t really talked to her in at least five. Once, we were so close we joked that we would each be like aunt’s to the other’s kids. Now I saw her seven month old son for the first time last night, and I hadn’t seen her two year old daughter since she was just a few months old. You know, there was a time when my vision of my future was very clear. I would finish college, become a high school teacher, and at some appropriate point (preferably around my 25th birthday) I would marry a delightful man who loved history, then we would have a boatload of kids and settle down to living life. My future is no longer as “clear” as I once thought it was, but I’m glad. Back when I knew where I wanted to go, life was about the destination, getting from point A to point B with no concern for how I got there. Now, life is about the journey. I stop along the way to point B to pick wildflowers, I meander down unexplored paths to see if I really want to go to point B. And somewhere along the way, point B changed from “marriage and kids” to something else. I don’t know where I’m headed, I don’t know what I want. I’m not living the traditional life, but I’m living the life that makes me happy. Standing in the funeral home last night the distinction between who I was then, and who I am now was made remarkably clear to me. The person I was then wouldn’t have known Naomi, because that person let other people decide who should be her friends. Someone in my life got mad at Sarah for something stupid, and I didn’t talk to Sarah for years because of it. In the past I’ve talked to Sarah about how high school was rough for me, because some of the people we knew made fun of me, and that I don’t really want to reconnect with those girls. And I think that Sarah has taken some blame for that, which I never meant for her to do. I made the same mistakes, I just didn’t recognize them until this convergence of events. I’ve let Sarah take the blame for not standing up for me when her friends made fun of me, or whatever, but I didn’t stand up for her either. I don’t want to make that same mistake again. I can’t stand up for Sarah and Jeff to the people who hurt them, but I can stand by them and I can hope that Sarah can forgive me for being as much a punk as she ever was, maybe more.