GriefStorm Part 2

This was Emmy, crying and crying and crying herself to sleep last night.

She wants to believe her African mother is still alive and we can go back to find her and bring her to America. If I didn't think it would create even more issues later on, I would be fine letting Emmy believe her mother is still alive. We finally talked her back down to the point where she acknowledged her African mother is not alive.

At that point, she suddenly turned on us, sobbing bitterly, and angrily accusing us of not doing enough to save her mother. Why didn't we bring medicine to the mother? Why didn't we pay for her doctor? Why didn't we bring her to America to get healthy?

Aye aye aye.

Still puzzling over why this is happening now, and with such frequency, and with such raw emotion, we called our friends the O'Connors. They suggested two theories..........

1. February is the third anniversary of the adoption. Jeff said all their kids got depressed or homesick around their anniversaries. I asked "How do they know? We don't celebrate the anniversary. We don't even acknowledge it in front of the kids." Jeff said they just know. Maybe they recognize the season or something, but they just know.

2. Eyob. At our house we talk a lot about the O'Connors pending adoption of Eyob and one the reasons for that adoption is to get a lot of medical attention for Eyob. Emmy, listening to that story as often as she has, probably wonders why the same effort was not made for her Mother, and the fact that it wasn't strikes Emmy as frustrating and profoundly unfair.