The leaves are falling in our yard these days. When we first saw her picture the spring flowers were blooming. The wait has gone from "this is OK" to..."this is hard"...to "this is excruciating". I know how many days it has been. I have counted them again and again. This many days from referral to LOI..this many days to PA...to LID. I do my daily projections...if we find out today, it will take this long for the next step, this long for the arrangements, this long to fly. I have a matrix in my mind of how long it has taken for others -- I compare and contrast...figure in the variables and make my forecast.
And then it dawned on me...we have waited and waited for what seems to be a long time. A time of silence, a time of not knowing, a time of what ifs and uncertainty.
We are so close but it seems like so much farther away than that.
And what dawned on me is that our daughter has waited. Not just a few days...not just a few months or seasons. She has waited a lifetime. A lifetime of wondering or maybe not even wondering anymore. I counted the days for her. # of years x 365 days = more days than any child should ever wait. Hundreds and thousands of days. Our wait is excruciating. Hers has been...I don't even want to say...I know we cannot understand what that kind of waiting and that kind of longing and that kind of hoping has been like.
There is a certain aspect of waiting that is like grief. You cry, you agonize, you hope only to have those hopes squelched by another day that passes. You long and that longing goes unfulfilled. Life goes on and you find ways to move forward.
This is all to say that I think this waiting is good. Not that I would have chosen it but maybe it has been necessary. In some small way we can say to our daughter that we know what waiting is like too. We longed and hoped and waited and hopefully this present sorrow will help us to connect with her on some deeper level. To know that we have waited for each other...with an ocean between us.
