The Disenfranchised Grief of a Foster Mother
24 months ago, a week after Valentine’s Day, we brought our foster daughter, Jessy (not her real name), home from the hospital. She was a tiny baby who wore preemie clothes and needed to be fed in a specific position that involved a pillow and a great deal of time. I remember her eating the EKG wires while we waited for the discharge paperwork. Hospital-issued Similac samples welcomed us in bright cursive to the sisterhood of motherhood.
I was newly 29, beginning the last year of my 20s. I remember how I rushed to Kohl’s in the midst of everything that was going on and bought her a “going home” outfit, because that seemed important. The hospital had put her in donated clothing. I wanted her to wear new, fresh clothing. I wanted to give this baby the best in the world.
24 months later, I walk past her bedroom, and she is not in it. There are no ocean sounds playing from the room, like there always was every night that she slept in that crib. I don’t need to go in and fix her blanket. I don’t need to check on her. She won’t greet me in the morning with loud chatter and big smiles. It is just an empty room now, with the select toys that weren’t sent with her — a designer ball pit too big for travel, her little Hello Kitty doll that I couldn’t bear to see leave, a shelf of outgrown Lovevery toys from the toy subscription I ordered to entertain her during quarantine — and a hanger of hair bows. There is her convertible crib with her Fancy Nancy sheet and flowery blanket. There are a few outfits that I stored in the drawers next to her crib, again unable to let them go. Not long before she left, I bought her a “rise up” shirt in reference to the Hamilton soundtrack that we all loved to listen to together. I have a video of her dancing enthusiastically to the opening track.
Her absence means that foster care was a success. She is safe in the arms of the mother who made her.
We sent an entire truck of her things with her, but she still left pieces of herself everywhere. Pacifiers. Art work from the two months she got to go to toddler school. Size 5 diapers. Photographs with her giant, vivacious grin. She was a perfect daughter. I could not have conjured up a more perfect daughter if I cast the world’s most powerful spell. She was magic. She is magic.
We’re lucky to still get to see her, four months after she left. I know that. I replay that knowledge over and over again in my mind. Words like grateful and lucky that make me feel guilty for missing her. Who am I to complain? After all, so many foster parents never see their foster children again. Her mother has been so gracious, so understanding.
I try not to let anyone see how devastated we still are in her absence. I paste on a smile and say, “We’re getting there! We’re doing okay!” People tell me I have a good perspective. People tell me they could never raise a baby and then watch her leave. People tell me that they’d get too attached.
People have no idea. They don’t feel the ache in my chest. They don’t see me crying during lunch breaks at work, where I spend the day substitute teaching and thinking about how I’ll never get to take Jessy to her first day of Kindergarten.
I know that everyone wants me to move on. I know that I probably should move on. I know that so many people would tell me that I was never a real mother anyway, that we were never parents. We were just foster parents, just state-issued caretakers. But, those people…they didn’t watch her learn to walk. They didn’t take her to the park and watch her carefully pick out the perfect stick with her sweet, toddler hands. I can still hear her saying the word. “Stick. STICK.” I can’t even look at sticks when I take walks now without crying. Leaves make me cry. The trees make me cry. Everything reminds me of her.
They didn’t share music and stories with her. They didn’t take her to mommy and me French class. (Yes, really.) They didn’t throw her first birthday party, an elaborate bash with Mary Poppins cut-outs crafted by my aunt and a make-your-own-tambourine station. They didn’t spoon-feed her formula when she was sick. They didn’t do middle-of-the-night feedings or run the shower just to calm her during colic. They didn’t switch jobs to accommodate a new baby and then, all at once, find themselves without that baby.
They’ve never heard the adorable way that she says, “Elmo.”
I miss her with a depth and pain that I will never be able to describe. Four months later, I’m beginning to wonder if it will ever go away.
I’m happy for her family. I truly, sincerely, am. Still, my happiness for her family can’t seem to quell the pain in my chest. My brain keeps reminding my heart that I am not her mother. My heart doesn’t seem to comprehend. My heart just sees her singing Remember Me in her car seat.
Remember me, though I have to say goodbye. Remember me. Don’t let it make you cry. Know that I’m with you the only way that I can be…
Does she think that we abandoned her? Does she miss us and her room and our old routine? I ask myself these questions and, once again, cry. I have a video of her last night with us. She is wearing raccoon pajamas and pointing to Ash’s facial features. “Eyes?” she asks. “Mouth?”
She had no idea. I had tried to explain it to her at 20-months-old. Really, I did. I read Maybe Days. I talked about how mommies and daddies need time to get better sometimes, and when they do, they are ready for kids to come home. I talked about how her mommy grew her in her tummy, and how we just needed to take care of her until her mommy was ready for her. “Mommy’s ready for you to live with her! You’re going to live with Mommy!”
I went downstairs after putting her to bed that night, stared at the containers of her things that I had spent hours packing, dropped to the ground next to them, and sobbed. The next day, I filmed the drive to her house, those last few moments of us as a family, and started hyperventilating when we reached her street. Embarrassingly, I openly cried in front of her family, unable to stop the tears as I explained what was in each container. “Here’s a box of mementos from her first Christmas…”
I wish I could put into words what it feels like to hand over the child you brought home from the hospital, but I will never be able to properly articulate those emotions.
Earlier this week, on the anniversary of the day we brought her home, her mother was gracious enough to let her spend the night with us. We played in the snow and watched a movie. We read books and played in the toy kitchen my mom had bought her just before she left. She got to play with my mom, who still asks me to please just see if she can babysit her again. We looked at old videos of her together. The next day, we went to the coffee shop like old times and got her an organic chocolate milk. We played in the park, the snow having melted and the sun warm. She sung Twinkle Twinkle Little Star in the backseat. It was this beautiful Sara Bareilles version that I’ll always associate with her little, angelic voice. And then, we took her home again.
I am deeply grateful to her mother for these moments. Why, then, does it still hurt?
After we dropped her off this week, I took a long walk. A song popped into my head as I exercised. Music has always been my salvation. I’m usually an 80s rock or indie music kind of girl, but I heard a country song in my head instead. Even if I knew my heart would break, the voice sang. I’d have loved you, anyway.
It’s a Trisha Yearwood song. I listened to it on repeat for my entire walk.
I would’ve loved you, anyway. I’d do it all the same. Not a second I would change…Had I known my heart would break, I’d have loved you anyway…
I thought back to when I first said yes to her. That phone call asking, could we take a 10-day-old baby girl waiting in the NICU?
Yes. I’d have loved her, anyway. I would have wanted to be a safe space for her, anyway. I hope that can carry me. I hope that can lead me to peace.
