I wrote a guest blog at Overwhelmed! with Joy this morning as she is on vacation. Having written it over there, I also feel the need to copy/paste it over here as it is an important issue in our family life: the constant absence of my firstborn.
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We’re getting family pictures taken this morning. Actually in almost exactly one hour. Neither J nor I are showered. And BigBrother is back in bed after waking up far too early for his liking this morning. Can we pull it off? Most likely. I’m not all that worried about it.
Instead, my mind is eight hours East, wondering what the Munchkin is doing this morning. Will she by some strange connection be dressed in red and blue today? Will she feel the same empty spot in her heart this morning?
Family things get to me. There should be another child in this family picture. She should be wild and crazy and have the most beautiful hair known to mankind. She should love and hate her brother all in the same breath. And if we want to get technical, my belly should all ready be swelled with fourteen weeks of Rose, but she’s gone, too. These losses in my life still sting.
Often we hear that firstmothers “complete” anothers’ family. Thankfully this is usually said by those less attached to adoption on a personal level. But even well-respected adoptive parents have said to me in casual conversation, “I’m so thankful that our son’s firstmom completed our family.”
At the price of her own.
My family will never be complete. There will always be a missing Munchkin in family pictures. On Christmas morning, there will be missing presents. On Thanksgiving day, we won’t have enough place settings on the table. Easter? One less basket. Halloween? One less costume to make. December 13th will never be spent, in Ohio, blowing out candles, unwrapping presents and snuggling my precious daughter to sleep.
I know, I know. I should buck up and be grateful for my Son. I am! November 17th is our celebratory day. This Christmas should be full of wrapping paper and squeals. And on Thanksgiving, I’ll even give him some table mashed potatoes.
But my family will never be complete. She will always be missing even though I know exactly where to find her.
4 Responses to “Guest Blogging & Nostalgia”
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[...] I know better. I know better than to go to an Olan Mills in a K-mart. But they had such a good deal that I couldn’t pass it up. And so we dressed, all in matching and complimentary clothes and went to our local studio this morning. Our appointment was at 10:30 and I phoned ahead to let her know that we would be a few minutes late. Why? Well, with an hour to go before we had to leave the house, I was writing a guest blog for a friend about this very topic (also seen here), Husband was still asleep, neither of us were showered and BigBrother had fallen back asleep after waking too early. The fact that we even got out the door before our scheduled time is somewhat amazing. We’re awesome. [...]
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I know the feeling. My family will never be complete either. All family functions I have that same wondering of how she’s doing, and does she somehow know we’re missing her and wishing she were here at that precise moment.
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Jenna- first of all, thanks so much for being one of my guest bloggers while I was gone. As always, your post was beautifully honest.
You say that you “should buck up and be grateful for my Son,” but I don’t think it’s a simple matter of “bucking up” and I know that you’re grateful for your son. I’m sorry that you’ll always feel that your family is not complete, even if you know exactly where your daughter is.
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[...] You may remember this post which was originally featured as a guestblog on Overwhelmed!’s blog. Family pictures. And the fact that ours will never be complete. Well, the pictures came in today. I scanned them. I showed them off. I smiled at how pretty my family looks. [...]
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