Jack Brennan Perspectives

This world of grief that I am living in gives me, I suppose, a taste of what it must be like for Alzheimer patients. I am forgetting regular normal things that I never forget. Yesterday, I was supposed to mail some papers to the government in the morning. Not only did I not remember to do it, but it didn’t even enter my brain for the entire day. Not once.  Only late last night did I suddenly remember and immediately I wrote it down – which is the only reason I remembered it enough to write about it here this morning. That is my now typical experience. Not only do I forget the thing, but nothing later on triggers the memory. It sits forgotten while I go about my merry way. Grrr…..

On the other hand, I am remembering things that did not happen. I suspect that has nothing to do with the grief though. It is probably just regular old-man stuff.  And so, in the last posting I sent a picture of Danny making a glass of chocolate milk, which I had referred to in the earlier post that day. And in the earlier post, I referred to the explanation in my original first or second post back in March when I began the blog. Well, lo and behold, there is no explanation there.  There is no explanation anywhere, as my direct supervisor, Kathe, has pointed out to me. My apologies to Kathe and to all of you.  The explanation:

When I met with the seventeen year old whom I wrote about in the first post back in March, I was looking for an analogy about the impossibility of a true adoption ever ending.  I asked the young guy if it were possible for him to get me a glass of milk.  He said it was. I asked then if it were further possible for him to make that a glass of chocolate milk. Again, he said it was. Then I asked him how he would change the milk from white to chocolate and he told me that he would mix the chocolate in with the milk and stir it up.

So then I asked him if I were to change my mind still again, would he be able to change the chocolate milk back to white.  He, of course , said no.  Thus, I told him, was the reality of an adoption.  An adopter is the milk; an adoptee is the chocolate. Once mixed together for real, it is impossible to ever separate them again.  There is no faking it, nor is there any “backsies.”  Once chocolate milk, always chocolate milk.  A broken down adoption (called a disruption prior to court and a dissolution post-court finalization) was never an adoption.  A hoped for adoption; a planned adoption; an intended adoption; a make-believe adoption; the illusion of an adoption; a conditional adoption. But not a real one.  Because a real one is like chocolate milk: it is impossible to ever go back. Ever.

Once one claims one’s child, one can never unclaim them.  A person – most of us – can have more than one parent after all – but none of us can have an ex-parent.  Some – even many – birthparents who surrender their children, but never their heart’s claim, know that.  I know that from both ends: Aunt Rita was my mother, albeit my second mother, but my mother, dead though she was, remained my mother.

Danny and I refer to his legally adopted parents as his fake parents or his foster parents. Never as his mother and father.  Those words don’t fit; they don’t describe the truth of the relationship. If they did, what he and I did on Saturday would not have occurred.

Adoption, like all parenthood, is unconditional, irrevocable, and forever final.

Like chocolate milk.

Jack

Though it seems impossible to believe now, it was only five weeks before Abraham’s beatdown that I made the decision to adopt “Ted” as his grandfather. I would not have had the strength to make that decision after Abe’s death, so I take it as sign from above about the rightness and the importance of the decision.  But let’s be clear: Despite my grief about the loss of Abe, I do not regret the decision to adopt “Ted” and I am very happy with him as my grandson.  His real name, by the way, is Danny.

Many years ago, Family Focus Adoption Services (commercial as always) recognized that the time of the moment of adoption – which is not the court moment-of-finalization of that same adoption – was unclear.  We knew when a newborn was adopted: it was the moment the agency handed the baby over to the family. But foster kids remain foster kids until the finalization. So when does their adoption actually occur?  There is no answer.

So we created an adoption ceremony – with a specific moment in time for when that adoption occurs. Our ceremony has no legal standing, at least in New York. But it has incredible psychological and spiritual standing.  At the ceremony, the adopting parent(s) sign Covenants. Then the adoptee signs a responding Covenant. On occasion, we have other family members sign what we call “Affirmations.”  These would indicate their acceptance of the adoption they would have just witnessed.

On Saturday, for the first time, I experienced the Covenant Ceremony from the other end.  As you will see from the attached Covenants, I adopted Danny – not yet court finalized, mind you.  It was among the best days of my long life.

I have debated whether or not I should post them in this blog, but finally decided that they are a gift to all who read the blog. I was going to change names and so forth, but what’s the point? Everyone reading this knows my name and can easily find out the names of those in my family.  However, those witnesses outside the family – that is, on Danny’s Covenant – I have not copied.

These Covenants were the very first where we used the word “betrayal.”  In Danny’s case there is no lesser word – see blogs from months ago.  But it is an appropriate word for almost every foster kid, I believe.

With Danny signing as he did (see below), we declared him adopted at the moment the last witness signed the last document. Believe me, we all felt the truth of that, no matter what the legal facts.

My colleague and friend, Joanne, ran the Ceremony and she added for the very first time an opportunity for Danny to mix real chocolate with real milk (see first or second post) as she – and Danny – explained to the crowd the meaning behind it.  It was a very powerful day. I hope the Covenants mean something to you.

A proud and happy grandfather,

Jack

Abrahams’s death – and no, I still am not ready to accept it – has impacted for the worst my memory, my concentration, and my ability to focus on what I need to do.  Last week, I was an hour away from having my house fire insurance cancelled; Verizon did cancel my FIOS service.  The tax man sent me a threatening letter the other day for not paying my water bill. Just some of the many bills I still haven’t even looked at.

I have been here before – as I’ve said in earlier posts – and I have come out on the other side, but it took a year each time. At one point, after Irving and Ricky’s deaths (fifteen months apart), Luis came to me when I was sitting on the back porch and said to me, “Who are you – and what have you done with my father?” Yep.  I’m not as bad now as I was then, probably because I simply continue to block believing that Abe is dead. Even writing those words just now – Abe is dead – broke through what I don’t want broken through and my tears escaped from where I have them locked up.  No, I am not back to normal by a long shot.

And I am missing opportunities to write posts that I don’t want to miss. Including the about-time-they-start-to-get-it article* on plea bargaining from the front page – top story online – of this morning’s NY Times. Plea bargaining and its consequences, as detailed in the article, impacted Abraham’s life terribly.

I once believed that plea bargaining was a great idea: offer the guy a somewhat lesser sentence for a guilty plea to a lesser charge so that we avoid the hassles, expenses, and oftentimes pain for witnesses that a trial brings.  I figured that a guilty guy would jump at this chance and an innocent guy would simply turn it down, trusting that his innocence would trump at trial.  It was Abraham who taught me what the Times is teaching the rest of us this morning.

In words other than these, but essentially what he told me, when I told him that you do not plead to a crime that you didn’t do: “Pop, I have no money. And I am not white. Whether I did it or not isn’t the issue – although I didn’t. I am going to get a court appointed lawyer who will do a lousy job of defending me and I am going to lose. The gap between what the plea is offering me vs. what a trial conviction will offer me is too scary. I must plead to protect myself as best I can.”

And the Times affirmed this: two years with a plea could become fifty years with a trial conviction.

What???

In America???

What???

From the first page of the article:  “In some jurisdictions, this gap has widened so much it has become coercive and is used to punish defendants for exercising their right to trial, some legal experts say.” And later: “In Florida….felony defendants who opt for trial now routinely face the prospect of higher charges that mean prison terms 2, 5, or even 20 times as long as if they had pleaded guilty” [emphasis mine].

Among the worst things we can do to other people is to force them to use themselves against themselves.  If I am innocent, for me to plead guilty is a violation of my integrity. But to risk fifty years at trial, over the two offered in that plea, is a violation of my need to protect myself – in itself a violation of my integrity. Guilt or innocence are irrelevant: it is a cynical bargain to offer someone.

Damned if you do and damned if you don’t.  That’s how Abe experienced it.

There are values higher than punishing the guilty: which is why folks traditionally can’t testify against their spouses. And more importantly, why we have the Fifth Amendment.

Sophie’s Choice, as an analogy, has become long separated from the 1982 movie, and the (William Styron) book before it.  But for each of us, we immediately grasp the double horror of forcing a parent to choose between the lives of her two children. Either way, and apart from the children, how does one ever live with oneself? Either way, how does one ever avoid blaming oneself for whichever choice? Either way, how does one ever maintain one’s integrity? Or – the same thing – ever live whole again?

This no-win integrity-destroying-nonsense is what we want for our society? This helps us?  Protects us?

In what world?

For Abraham the consequences went far beyond the prison time he accepted as part of the simple plea he took.  I will post on that another day.

Jack

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*http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/26/us/tough-sentences-help-prosecutors-push-for-plea-bargains.html?_r=1&hp

I read a letter written to our family the other day from the 24 year old girl who got one of Abraham’s kidneys. I wrote back to her yesterday. It’s all anonymous and it’s all through the donor network.  She’d had kidney disease since she was a newborn and she ended up chained to dialysis  for the past eight years.  That’s no life for someone her age. She was very happy, very grateful to be free of all that now that the kidney “took.” The operation of course was the same day – August 19 – that they took the organs from Abe.  A memorable day for both of us: a wonderful day for her and her family; far less so for me and mine.  I was very glad to hear from her though: her letter made me feel personally the wonderful power of this gift of organ donation.

As I wrote to her, I thought about the way in which her entire daily life has been determined by this terrible kidney disease she was born with.  Not so different, I thought – and told her so – than the many ways that Abraham’s daily life was determined by the circumstances of his birth to a drug addicted mother and his subsequent entry into the world – it’s more like an alternative universe – that we’ve named foster care.  What changed daily life for this lucky recipient was one operation three weeks ago today to get that new kidney.  What changed it for Abe was…..nothing.

Everywhere I look I see the same thing: blame, blame, blame.  It is as though we learn to blame ourselves as early as we learn to speak.  Apportioning the blame becomes our way of living.  I heard the line the other day from “Ted” about how whatever he had done that I was on him about, he had not done “on purpose.”  Where the heck did that nonsense attempted umbrella from blame come from in our culture?  Does it make a difference, really, whether we do it on purpose or we do it because we weren’t paying attention or we do it because we weren’t thinking or we do it because we don’t care enough to do it otherwise?  What matters is that we accept the responsibility for what we do, or don’t do. That is, what matters is that we recognize that we did something that we could have done differently had we chosen to. Or recognize that we didn’t do something that we could have done had we chosen to.  Aunt Rita taught me – and many others – that truth.

Responsibility means that we have to respond to the circumstances that we find ourselves in.  How those circumstances arose is an entirely different question – but it would still be a question of responding to the original circumstances, given our ability to do so as we were then.

Abraham was no more responsible for the circumstances of his early years than President Obama was for Abe’s life. But Abe was stuck with the consequences of those circumstances.  And the number one consequence, I believe, is that he believed that whatever happened to him was his fault.  That is how kids think: parents divorce? “It’s my fault.” Mother died? “My fault.”  Father a drug addict who left us abandoned? “I did something wrong.”

And “my fault” brings us right straight to blaming ourselves.  Blaming oneself must have some payoff for us, since it is so incredibly common.  Maybe it gives us a sense of control which allows us to block the deep pain of  our parents’ divorce, death, or abandonment. Hell, I am in the midst of blocking (much of) the pain from Abraham’s death.  I am well aware of it; I have written about it in this blog.  I am doing it right now as I write. But yesterday I realized that soon all the work related to Abe’s death will be done: the thank yous finished; the organ donations history etc. etc.  On that final day, when I put the cards away and so forth, Abraham will become part of my history; no longer present to me – and I dread that day mightily. My ability to keep blocking will end at some point, because the blocking is a temporary measure giving me control over my pain.  The key is the word temporary.

Whatever Abraham was dealing with from his history was obviously not history for him. Something was keeping the self-blame active and present and not temporary.  That something even led to him putting himself in the circumstances that led to his death.

That “something” is not unique to Abe. Almost everyone of us who loves our kids who have foster care histories, have experienced that non-self-protection of our kids.  But who the heck is working on it to figure it out; to help our kids – victims of the society we have created, or at the least allowed to remain the way it is – get past it?  Societies can change. I have lived long enough to watch cigarette smoking, e.g., move from acceptable and “cool” almost anywhere and everywhere to forbidden and “disgusting” almost anywhere and everywhere.  We have the power to change society.  Where is our motivation, our funding, and our belief in the possibilities?

Where, in other words, is the equivalent of a kidney transplant for our kids? On August 19th, at day’s start, while Abraham was in the operating room, this girl was suffering from her kidney failure.  On August 19th, at day’s end, she was not.  She didn’t solve her problem – we, as a whole society, did.  We invented this incredible transplant cure.  Where are the inventors for those who suffer like Abe?

Where, indeed?

Jack

We have, of course, received dozens of sympathy cards since Abraham’s death. I had them sitting on my desk for a few days because I didn’t know what to do with them.  I decided last week though to hang them up so that my children and older grandchildren would see them.  Each day brings a few more, so each day I add more to the interior glass paneled doors that they are hanging on.

On Monday, I was hanging the ones that had come in over the weekend. Most of them are either Mass cards (we are Catholic) or straight sympathy cards expressing sorrow over “your loss” and so forth. But then I came to one that said straight out on the front of the card, “In Memory of Your Son…” I was taken aback by it and my immediate thought was that the person who sent it was confused.  Then I realized that they were talking about Abe. But not really about ABE, but rather about the RUMOR about Abe being dead.  The whole time, note, I was well aware – but not fully? – that Abraham was dead.

I caught myself, of course, and the whole thing happened in seconds, if not faster than that. But it revealed to me again this powerful defense that I am clearly immersed in.

The entire week this week, every time I have referred to Abraham – or rather, intended to – I have said Irving (see earlier posts). I catch it a lot, but I don’t know if I catch it all the time. Again, an automatic defense I assume.

But yesterday was the best.  I was talking to a friend about what I am going through and how I am getting through it (that is, by not going through anything most of the time except the intense loss of short term memory.) I was trying to explain how odd it is. Finally, I used one of my imaginary scenarios (earlier post). I said that if we were to get to my house, and Gilbert were sitting there, I would be as astounded as anyone. Gilbert was the first of my kids to die and that was nearly twenty six years ago.  It simply would not make sense for him to be sitting in the house. But, if we were to get back to the house and (I was about to type “Irving” but caught it)….Abraham were sitting there, I would not only have no surprise, but I would turn to her and say, “See….”  Meaning “See, I knew he wasn’t dead. I knew I was right about this. I knew it was all a rumor.”

That’s what I would do. Even though I know he’s dead.  It’s not what I would do with Gilbert though. Or Irving. Or Ricky. (earlier posts) If they were sitting there. Them, I’d be taken aback. I’d be surprised. I’d be happy, let me tell you, but I’d be knowing there was something off here.  But Abe? No, I would not be surprised at all. I’d be……vindicated. That’s the word: vindicated. I was right and you all were wrong. Especially that poor person who sent me the card saying “In Memory of Your Son.” I knew he was alive is what I’d say……

Now I am sixty one years old tomorrow. I know Abraham is dead. I can’t get him out of my head. His death is there morning and night. It’s there when I wake up and as I go to sleep. But I also can’t believe it. I simply can’t.  There’s too much between us; there are too many ties; ties that are too deep for them to be severed. All at once. Just like that. We go back too far. It makes no sense.  I know what I am going through; I know that it’s a grief reaction; I have been through it before. Still I was right last (written) post: it’s stronger than real.

I have experience; I have support; I know that I am not crazy despite believing these crazy things. No one is putting me on drugs; no one is forcing me to see a therapist.  I am furious but only at those who minimize what’s happened to me and my family.  The funeral director – and I’ve seen many in my life to measure him against – was beyond irresponsible: he was incompetent. The so-called-counselors from the organ donation agency would be fired in a second were I running that program. So too their supervisors. By no means am I done with those folks.

Yet, I know that my feelings are raw. I also know that my internal vision, part of my emotional senses, is laser sharp. I could smell disrespect now in doses too small to be seen. I know all this.  And I know that I will come out the other side, because I have come out before.  Because I am well aware of the boundaries between who I am and what I am experiencing.

But what if I didn’t know better?  What if I took from this experience of brokenness the belief that I was broken? What if I took from this experience of craziness the belief that I was crazy?  What if I took from this recognition of others minimizing that my perceptions were way off?  What if I took from all this that I was less than they?  That I was damaged goods – and the evidence is in what’s happened to me?

And what if you then you came and you took from me my house. And my job. And my car. And this computer. And my school. And my friends. And my bike. And my favorite foods. And my church.  And then did it to me again next month. Or next year.

And what if you told me that all this was my fault because of my behavior? What if I believed you then and concluded that not only my pain, but that Abe’s death was my fault?

And the only person I had to turn to was my social worker who is off – and took off early – for the Labor Day weekend?

What would I have to do to myself to keep myself sane if that were my lot in this life?

I know that Abraham is dead. I know I can’t bear to feel that loss every day all day. I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t even talk the pain is so bad.  So something inside me simply doesn’t allow me to believe it – without me even realizing it’s at work in me. Except I catch that absurd refusal at odd moments – see above – and I am determined to document it to help me – to help us – figure out how to help all the other hurting, and originally innocent, Abrahams out there.  He deserved better. He did.

Jack

I am trying to work.  I found out about Abe’s beating later in the day on August 9th, and, obviously, my work has been impacted since that day. Monday and Tuesday I mostly did nothing. although I wrote the last posting. Yesterday, I traveled. But today, I need to catch up.  It’s hard because my concentration is weak.

I realized the other day that I could use this blog – for a while anyway – not only to make us look deeper at the totality of what the kids have experienced, but, in doing so, to help keep me together, and focused. And – after I wrote the last posting the other day I felt it – relieved somehow. Of course that means that I straddle, if I don’t cross over, the line I didn’t want to between diarist and blogger.  But so what. What does it matter in the end?

I go through periods where I am pretty much okay.  I look good – I look like I have it together – at least to myself. But other times – short periods, thank God – I can’t deal with the pain, the finality, the lack of hope I think.  When Irving died, one of my friends pointed out that I use everything I can to figure things out: what people say or don’t say; what people do or don’t do. His point was to tell everyone – joking? – to watch what they say around me because I’d use it. But joking or not, he was right. I do that. I don’t know if he realized though that I also use myself.

In the new training we are spending a significant amount of time on the relationship between feelings and beliefs, and how our feelings are, in very deep ways, determined by our beliefs. Change the beliefs and voila – the feelings change.

I am watching that now in me. I know Abraham is dead. I know he is gone. I know that I won’t see him again in this life. I know all that. I am not delusional.  Yet I hold myself together more than I don’t.  I realized yesterday why.  It’s because even though I know it – and I do know it – I don’t think I believe it.  I can assent to it; I am not trying to convince anyone that there’s been a mistake, that Abe is really alive.  Abraham is dead.

But I guess not to me.

Maybe that means that I am not letting him go. Maybe. But why I write this morning is because it makes me think of what Abe himself experienced so many years ago:

“Pop wasn’t here when I was hurt so badly by all those adults in my life. I know he hadn’t even met me.  But it’s Pop’s fault, nonetheless.”  Adoption transference we named it. It all looked so simple after we figured it out: I am his father, he wasn’t protected by me.  He knew I didn’t know him then; like I know he’s dead. But he believed – I now think – that he can’t have a father, and yet be so unprotected. It doesn’t compute. Even though both things were true, how could he accept that?  Like I know Abe is dead; but how could Abe be dead? It doesn’t compute.

I don’t want it to compute.

What is this power of belief that is so much stronger than our logic?  It is so strong that it is even the power that undergirds – even determines – our feelings.  Anyone who has experienced this grief that is swamping me (at times) has an intuitive sense that what I am saying is true.  Yet, what beliefs do we reinforce with our foster kids?  What does our behavior say to the kids?  Oh, your leaving your friends? Don’t worry, you’ll make new ones. Oh, your bike is missing? Don’t worry, I’ll look for it. Oh, your mom didn’t show for her visit? I’m sorry.  Over and over and over we minimize them and their lives. Then we wonder why they grow up with such strong ability to minimize?

I often say that a good parent is one who could raise their kids without ever saying a word.  I believe that deeply. Our words are only one part of our behaviors, but it is our behaviors as a whole, now that I think of it, that reinforce the beliefs of our kids.

When the belief, the certainty, that Abraham is dead gets inside me, I can’t control my crying.  So, most of the day, I simply do not believe what I know to be true.  I think that’s why the missing morphine got to me last week.  Abe looked more or less the same when he was brain dead as when he was in the coma.  So I was okay – which means I could hold onto my hope. And then I saw the morphine was missing. And it hit me.  What hit me? The certain knowledge – which I guess is belief – that he was really dead.  Even though I knew he was dead. Now my hope for him to recover was gone.

This power of beliefs in us must be the key for what is causing our kids their trouble.  It must be what we are missing.  What did Abe come to believe when those mice were in the room with him – assuming what I couldn’t say the other day: that they weren’t rats? What did he come to believe about himself when he couldn’t even move his hands to protect himself?  What beliefs got into his six year old head when his mother – his mother – was doing this to him?  And what’s the connection between those beliefs and the circumstances of his next thirty three years? And the beatdown that led to his death?

After the operation on his brain ten days ago, the doctor told someone who told me that it was up to Abe now and his will to live.  And some very conscious part of me got scared. Because I immediately knew that that was where Abraham and I would differ.  Some part of me knew then that if that were true, then it was over for him.

And so it was.

Our kids are entitled to better than we’ve given them and we continue to give to them. They are entitled to believe – to be certain – that they don’t deserve what’s happened to them. Our blah-blah-blah doesn’t cut it; if anything it actually reinforces our minimization.  Our loving them doesn’t cut it either.  We must teach them to love themselves. Not tell them: teach them.

And that means we need to change our ways.

Jack

Abraham was finally disconnected from the machines early Friday morning (see note). and they took the organs they could use.  His liver went to a fifty one year old man; one kidney went to a twenty four year old woman; and his other kidney and pancreas went to a woman, thirty eight, almost Abe’s age.    There is a wonderfulness to those final gifts of Abraham’s that I am very happy about.  Sunday was the services, which were to be followed by his cremation at some point.

So, he’s gone.

This morning I went to Stop & Shop. I came out and I could not find my car.  I simply could not find it.  It’s become an old bomb of a car so I knew it wasn’t stolen.  It’s a perfect weather day here, so I didn’t mind walking around the parking lot – but it wasn’t there.  I stopped walking and I pushed my brain.  I finally remembered that I’d parked it in the lot of the shopping center next door.  And then I cried.

He’s gone.

Yesterday, I was trying to clarify something and I pulled out a big file with all my twenty seven years of Abraham stuff.  In the file were notes from some of the years that Abe was in foster care. I don’t remember ever seeing them before or ever reading them before.  So I read through them and they confirmed Abe’s bad behavior, his very bad behavior, before I got him….I learned that he weighed only three pounds and one ounce when he was born either two or three months (conflicting stories) premature….and then I re-learned the details of his history, most of which I had known.  I read about his months in the incubator, and his first heart operation at four months and how he was put into foster care as a boarder baby (drugs in his system at birth) from there until he was returned to his birth mother at two and a half.  Then nothing till the next reports when he went back into foster care at six. The mother reported that he was uncontrollable.

And then – and I know I’d never seen this before – I read this: “She admitted that she and the putative father attempted to force Abraham to remain in his bed throughout the night by tying him to his bed, then locking him in his bedroom.  This did not work.”

I was horrified for Abe.  But nothing got to me like what I read in the very next sentence. I was torn apart for my six year old son, whom I met six years later – another lifetime for him: “Abraham kept food for himself and also fed and befriended the mice.”

While he was tied up? While he was so completely powerless? Were the mice crawling on him? Were they even mice?  Did he “befriend” them for real or just in his head in order to save his sanity?  Were they on his face? Across his eyes? How do you stay sane when you cannot even use your hands to try to protect yourself? Who reported all this?  How did it get in the notes?

I said a few posts back that even in death privacy has to be protected. It does. I said that it was a matter of respect.  And it is.  But the needs of the living always must trump the honor and the protection due to the dead.

Abraham – my much loved and now always to be missed Abraham – is dead.

I am writing about this – as deeply personal as it is for him – because we have to start getting it.  There is no way to protect the kids from situations with parents like his unless we really go big brother and start licensing parents. There is nothing else we can do to stop it.  If even that would stop it.

But it cannot be that there is nothing else to be done. It cannot be that such experiences doom people. I don’t accept it.  I don’t believe it. It is not my experience of me: the experience of me that Aunt Rita and Msgr. Huntington gave me.  When I was seventeen. Healing is a function of wholeness. And Abraham was whole.

I know something had to have happened to Abe’s thinking and beliefs about himself while locked in that room.  How could it not? In the years after, our responses did not free him from what he took away after those nights.  My son Irving (also dead) reporting to me on his own history of torture told me of a particular night and what happened to him. And he said to me, “Pop, I died that night.”  He didn’t, but something in him, that we need to figure out, did.

Our responses – frankly, middle class – have not been sufficient.

Abraham is gone.  But there are others still here. Still suffering. Still not knowing how to heal.  Still not sure that they can heal.

That healing begins with our witness.  Not our knowledge, not our information, not our theories.

It begins with our certainty: you are whole.  But if we have not come to believe it of ourselves, then we don’t stand a shot of convincing anyone else.

Our healing – all healing – begins with our wholeness.  For each and every one of us.

Abe is gone, but I’m not. And until I am, my stance is clear: we have failed our kids unless they leave us for their adulthood certain – absolutely certain – of their own wholeness.

Losing Abe is terribly painful, but despite knowing that I will never see him on this earth again, I remain the luckiest person I have ever met. I am, after all, his father.

Jack

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Note: (I am exploring the reason for the three days delay from when the papers were signed.)