Waiting for Shlomo: The hardest part of all

By Erin, grieving daughter and Isaac’s mama

I am sitting at my kitchen table, one of my favorite places in the world, drinking coffee, listening to Thomas in the background as Isaac watches too much TV, and sitting across from Michael as he makes a deposit for our new business (more about that later).  This is a good place – but I am sad.  So freaking sad.  I miss my Mom so much.  I want to call her constantly.  Her death and the surrounding circumstances are just so traumatic – more traumatic than I can write about here.

My sister and her husband and their baby are in town this week, which is wonderful, but it is also hard.  It means we have to remember that Mom is gone.  We have a lot of tough family circumstances – it’s all too sticky to write about here – I wish I could, but I can’t risk it . . . Needless to say, it’s hard, so very, very hard.

On top of it all, we’ve been waiting for 11 months for Baby Shlomo.  I would never have guessed in a million years that we would wait this long.  In the middle of May, it will be a year.  In some ways, I know it is a good thing that we don’t have a baby right now.  If Shlomo had been with us when Mom died, I don’t think I could have made it through the way I did –I was in charge of almost everything, and could hardly give any attention to Isaac, let alone a tiny baby.  I also know that if we had received a call about a baby any time in the last seven weeks, it would have been too soon – I have been anxiety ridden, depressed, stressed out, and heart broken – still am.

I do not think I could have moved forward with an adoption in the past few weeks.  I don’t know if I can NOW.  I never really believed that God worked in such minute ways, but maybe God and the Universe “knew” that a baby will bring healing . . .

The hardest part of all – beyond the fact that I am exhausted, stressed, full of anxiety, depressed, and completely sure that another disaster is waiting right around the corner – is that my Mom will never know this baby.  This baby will never know my Mom.  How can that be?  The most wonderful Grandma in the world, and she only got to be one for three and a half years – Isaac is going to have to strain to remember her.  She will not be coming to San Antonio to help us with the baby, she will not be able to keep the baby for the first few weeks that I go back to work, she will not be able to teach this new baby to LOVE books the way she taught Isaac, to lavish them with attention, to help me through the hard parts of parenting, and to KNOW my kids.   I am so sad.  So very sad about that part – that’s the hardest part of all.

For back story, read Erin’s adoption blog posts by clicking HERE.