![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1){kind=small}
Just heard from my ex that she is looking at a kidney transplant within the next few years.
While this doesn't necessarily effect me in the same way it would if we were still married, it does pack quite a wallop nonetheless. I have never wished anything worse for her than guilt, knowing that as a co-parent, I would be doing my own petard hoisting. We have about as good a relationship as exes could, and have been very supportive of each other, particularly when it comes to parenting. This obviously has the potential to have a big effect on my parenting.
I know several people who have had transplants, and generally they have done well, with fewer complications than dialysis. But it's hard not to flash on my ex's mortality, and how this would effect Alex. Like her, I was adopted, and while this is a very special status (somebody chose me to love), there are still issues of loss around it. My dad died when I was young, and this effected my brother (also adopted) and I significantly. My brother never got over his anger at the loss of his bio parents, and my dad's death ultimately sent him spinning out of control. He still is dealing with anger and loss issues to this day. I, of course, fell on my sword, gave up my childhood, and more or less became my mother's partner at seven. This was at least as dysfunctional as my brother's anger.
I have no doubts that Alex would deal with this infinitely better than my brother or I. She survived a year in a hellish orphanage (which was the best in the country), and came out a totally sweet petite. She is stronger than I could ever hope to be, and is truly one of my heroes.
And yet, how much loss can a little one be expected to bear?
July 20 2005, 18:26:24 UTC 6 years ago
you can nurture and love and explain it until the cows come home, but the personality of the individual really does determine how well they cope with these things.
i first saw my mother in the hospital, hooked up to machines and tubes, when i was 5 years old. they had to sneak me in. it was horrid and scary. the next time they tried to sneak me in, i deliberately got caught. i wanted to see my mother, of course, but not like that. she recovered at that time, but it did leave me with fear.
it is hard to find the balance of being honest and yet not being scary, when it comes to these things, but i'm sure you will do your best with grace and love.
July 21 2005, 03:24:45 UTC 6 years ago
I met you at twelve, four to five years after your dad died. I became pretty intimately familiar with your childhood home and family life from that point on. I loved your mom and didn't get your brother at all (he seemed so unreachable, so closed.)
I never knew until well into our college years how your life had changed on the fateful day. I think that's because it wasn't until early adulthood that you really started to understand how the family dynamics had turned on a dime, what role you were forced into (you didn't choose it), and most especially how terribly unfair and dysfunctional that was.
With all love and respect to your mother, who did her level best and was always there for you to the best of her ability, I strongly believe that she abandoned you that day in one of the most damaging ways a parent can. I know you think of the post-dad family dynamic as one in which you lost your childhood, which is of course in many ways true. But in a very significant way you also lost BOTH your parents that day, not just one.
Even so, you came out ok if scarred. Like you said, kids are amazingly resilient, though that resilience often comes at a price.
Should Alex, all universal energy forbid, lose her mom, I have every confidence that she will have both personal and parental resources that you would not have even been able to comprehend in your day, so outside your experience would they have been. Give yourself some credit, and keep giving that kid all the love you can.
Dan