A recent post by Coley mentions an email from a birthmother struggling with how to process the diagnosis of her daughter’s adoptive mother with cancer. Coley offers some great tips on dealing with this shock and also how to support the family as they go through such a difficult time. Of course prayer is a positive and reminds those who are experiencing this that there is always HOPE for recovery.

Adoptive families in open relationships can be affected in much the same ways when it is a sick member of the birthfamily involved. This news can come as a shock and the adoptive family often struggles with finding ways to help themselves and their child cope. Unfortunately in some situations the ill person does not always make a full recovery, others sadly lose their battle.

Our own family experienced such a situation last summer when my middle child C’s birth grandfather “B” was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. We got a call just days after the family found out. We immediately brought our family to the hospital to see birth grandpa and offer our support and prayers. Telling our daughter, who was just four years old at the time, was a difficult task. The whole concept of such a grave illness was nearly impossible for such a young child to understand and then things became even more difficult when only thirty days after his diagnosis birth grandpa “B” lost his battle and passed away.

Our family tried to be supportive both at the time he was diagnosed as well as to the remaining family after he passed. During his illness (which was so, so very brief) we visited, emailed, and sent pictures and a book of healing prayers and inspirational scripture passages. We later learned that because grandpa B was in such pain and declining so rapidly, even these small gestures could not offer him any tiny moments of peace, but at least he knew that we had tried.

After B’s passing it remained for us to participate in the grieving process which is an interesting one we have found if your connection to each other is through adoption. We called and later attended the visitation, meeting other very extended members of our daughter’s birthfamily and their friends, most who did not quite know what to make of our presence. The next day was the funeral itself, and one of the most difficult times for me regarding my daughter and my feelings about her place in this process. I remember coming in and seeing the family all in the front, and we were directed to sit in the last back row. I found it very frustrating to see my daughter’s birthmother with her infant son, her birth grandmother, birth great grandmother, aunt, uncle, cousin, great aunts, uncles and cousins all in the front and feeling that my daughter should be there with them. It felt wrong for her to be sitting in the back when her baby brother was a comfort to his grandmother up front by sitting on her knee. We have always tried to incorporate ourselves into our daughter’s birthfamily as if they had adopted us and not that we had adopted C, but at this moment in time I certainly felt the separation.

The main thing is that our family was present for them, however it was that they needed us to be. Of course I was not so clouded by grief that I couldn’t see how my daughter wasn’t included with them in the same way, but perhaps this was not intentional. I know it takes time in an open adoption to get to a place where you all feel as one family, sometimes only in the difficult moments do you find the work that is yet to accomplish. I was warmed by the fact that my daughter was listed among grandpa B’s grandchildren in his memorial and I saved the paper for her. I also know we have many memories and photos of our short time with B as part of our family. He had a great sense of humor and remains the only person who could ever get C to clean her plate at the summer barbecue. I hope with time that C’s birthfamily will appreciate the sincerity of our support for them during that difficult, difficult time.

Resources

Depression related to grief and loss.

Mayo clinic information on grief.