Heart-Breaking

My birth-mother was nearly 20 years old when I was born. Having surrendered me for adoption, she eventually got on with her life. She was professionally successful, but I was (and am) the only child of her womb. She didn’t marry until her late 40s. In fact, I have been married longer than she has, and I like to tease her husband that, without knowing it, when they were married, she was already a grandmother.

On an ‘existential’ level, though, she dearly wanted to be a mother, and they set about trying to adopt a child of their own. Sarah came into their lives when my birth-mother was 50 years old, and was immediately a tremendous joy for them.

When I first met Sarah, on my first visit to my birth-mother’s house after our reunion, she was three years old. By an odd coincidence, in the weeks/months before reunion, Sarah started telling her parents that she wanted a brother. Which left them in a bit of a quandary as to how to tell a three-year-old that, much as they’d like to give her a brother, it wasn’t going to happen. Then, suddenly, I burst onto the scene, and - voila! - Sarah had a brother. Just not a baby brother; in fact, she had a brother who had children of his own, who were older than she was. I vividly recall, from that first visit, while the three of us were in the car one day, Sarah singing a little song to herself – “I don’t like it / when Mommy likes Desmond / so much.”

As the years passed, Sarah became as much a part of our family as my birth-mother. Which isn’t terribly surprising; she came along virtually every time my mother came to visit us. She and 2F became especially close, being closest in age of any of our kids, but the two of them also shared a strong-willed temperament, and seemed to understand each other on some intrinsic level. Because of the large difference in our ages, and her closeness in age to our kids, Sarah never really ‘functioned’ in my life as a sister; more like a niece.

As our kids got older, and we became immersed in our troubles with 3M, and then 1F, my conversations with my birth-mother took on a darker tone, as Sarah started having troubles of her own. She went through a succession of schools, as her parents spared no effort (or expense) trying to find one that could get through to her, mostly without success. Her friends were of a nastier sort than her parents were comfortable with. And there were hints that she was doing more than dabbling in recreational pharmaceuticals.

Sarah was a talented musician (she played the violin) and actress, and through her teens, she landed several good roles, for which she had to compete with other talented kids drawn from a large metropolitan area. And she just loved to perform.

She did finally graduate from high school, and before long she had moved out of her parents’ house. Her behavior became increasingly wild and erratic (although she talked to her mother on the phone every day, without fail). Her boyfriend eventually broke up with her, because he simply wasn’t willing to go with her any further into the Wild Side that she seemed determined to explore.

Finally, a little over a year ago, a month shy of her 21st birthday, Sarah didn’t call home. She died of a fatal drug overdose.

My heart just breaks. It always seems like a tragic waste when anyone dies so young. I was looking forward to a mature, adult Sarah, who might someday come to seem more like a sister to me.

But even more, my heart breaks for her parents – my birth-mother and her husband. Parents should never have to bury their children, much less their not-yet-21-year-old children. I can’t help thinking, too, of the sacrifice they made in adopting Sarah in the first place. Her parents were both over 50 when they adopted Sarah; they signed on for raising a child during years when most of their peers were coping with their empty nests. When most of their peers were traveling, or volunteering, or otherwise enjoying their freedom-at-last from the rigors of parenthood, they were just getting started, signing on for a term to last into their 70s. All parents, I’m sure, see their children, at least in part, as their legacy – a part of them to live on after they’re gone. But there will be no legacy here. Without meaning to say it crassly, they’ve got nothing (except their own memories) left to show for 20+ years they invested in raising their daughter; an investment no one forced them to make – they did it freely, even generously. It just breaks my heart; I can’t think of another way to say it.

All Saints' Day

On the traditional Christian calendar, today is All Saints' Day. For Catholics in the United States, it is a 'Holy Day of Obligation', and mass attendance is mandatory. It is one of my favorite Holy Days, evoking memories of all the godly, holy, heroic men and women who have gone before me in the faith. It is a day for all the un-named 'saints', the 'every-Christians' who lived the Christian life faithfully and sometimes heroically - grandparents, neighbors, friends, whoever - who never captured popular attention so as to be canonized, but who yet were faithful and godly Christians. So, I have always loved All Saints' Day.

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In recent years, though, the day has taken on a darker significance in Molly's family. Today is also the second anniversary of Molly's sister's suicide.

G and Molly were barely a year apart in age, but temperamentally as different as two sisters could be. Molly is bright, cheerful and sanguine; G was brooding, angry and rebellious. Being as close in age as they were, the two girls developed an intense sibling rivalry. Molly tended to be more favored by her parents; G was more popular at school. She ran away from home when she was 16 (to California; where else?).

In the course of time, she married her English professor and bore four children by him. She seemed to settle down into wifedom and motherhood, and her relationships with the rest of the family improved, either due to her forming her own separate identity, or to her living far away and only seeing us seldom, or both.

A few years ago, though, she called to tell us that she had left her husband. She seemed very eager to get Molly's approval for it. But Molly could only, in good conscience, tell her, "You're my sister and I love you," stopping short of fully accepting what G had done. And that caused some friction between the two of them. G's children grew up and left home, and she lived an increasingly carefree (or maybe aimless?) life as she passed through her middle-, and into her late-40s. It came as a shock when we heard she had ended her life.

In retrospect, I suppose we can see the seeds of it - her children were grown, she had left her husband; she was getting old enough that the young and exciting men were looking elsewhere than at her, and I'm sure that, on the most visceral level, she was lonely.

And yet, there was always something stubborn in G, to the effect that, 'if the world isn't going to be the way I want it to be, then too bad for the world'. It is entirely possible to see her suicide as the grand, final 'Screw You' to the Universe.

And, there seems to be something significant to the fact that she chose All Saints' Day for the end of her life. She and her husband had often traveled in Mexico, and she was very fond of Mexican culture; in Mexico, tomorrow, All Souls' Day, is called 'Dia del Muerte' - the Day of the Dead.

I don't really know why I'm so reflective on G's death this year; life goes on, and I never really knew her all that well. But I liked her, hard as she tried to make herself unlikable; she was sort of like Molly's 'dark twin' - alike, and so very different. I wish she could have been happier; I wish she were still here today. She should still be here today. And that's the tragedy.

I still love All Saints' Day, and all that it means in the Christian context. But it will never be quite the same. . .

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