Of fathers and biological fathers, part 2
A collision of innocence and grief in the death of my son's biological father.
The last time I spoke with my son's biological father, he told me he was tired of fighting. He told me he wanted to go home.
Two weeks later, in the cold, dark middle of January, he was dead. He died in a hospice care facility. Our visit with him back in October turned out to be the last time that James – his son, my son – saw him. I am thankful for that visit and thankful that James's last memory of his biological father was positive. In the week or so before he died, Lindsey and I learned some troubling things about the state of his life in the last few months leading up to his death. I will not go into the details. Suffice it to say, sometimes the only thing that frees us from our demons and trauma is death itself.
Here's what I will say about Ron. He loved James. And he knew that God had provided a safe, happy home for him. This was something he told us many times.
His end began a week before Christmas. He told Lindsey and I over the phone how afraid he was. How angry. How all his hopes and dreams had been stripped away. He spoke of other things, but he knew that he was nearing the end and had come to the end of himself.
At that point, his doctors had stopped chemo treatments. The cancer was spreading, his liver was failing. I didn't know if he'd make it til Christmas, which was all he wanted – one last Christmas at home with his girls.
We told him to call hospice. We told him that he deserved to die with dignity and without pain. We shared the gospel with him. We wept with him. We prayed with him.
Ron did make it through one last Christmas. I spoke with him one or two more times after that. Every conversation could have been the last. Eventually, one was.
I have two voicemails from Ron that I can't bring myself to delete. I see his name whenever I get a new voicemail. Maybe I keep those messages as a memento mori. Maybe I keep them because one day I'll play them for James. We knew so little about Ron and he left so little behind, that these bites of sound should be preserved as long as possible.
But I think I keep those messages to remind myself that James likely thinks about his biological father every day. And maybe I should, too.
It was a Sunday in January when we told James that Ron had checked into a hospice care unit. I think James was holding onto the idea that Ron could maybe, just maybe, get better. But he knew what hospice meant, because my grandma had died the week prior, having been in a hospice facility since Christmas.
So his tears came. Some of the details are a bit blurry, but we told him that we couldn't go visit him again. That it would be best to remember him the way he was when we visited in October.
That same afternoon, Lindsey and I helped him write a goodbye letter to Ron. James cried on-and-off as we worked through it. He had help from a gray stuffed-animal husky that came with adoption paperwork. James would snuggle with it one minute and then cry in Lindsey's arms the next and then sound out the words he was trying to write the minute after that.
James's handwriting is good and clear while still possessing those classic, childhood qualities like randomly capitalized words and "creative" spellings of words. All of this was on display in his letter to Ron, and it stood in stark contrast with the content of the letter. He sounded out the bigger, harder words out loud. He crafted age-appropriate sentences that required a maturity beyond his age. He really wanted to write something meaningful. He wrote about God's love and the hope of seeing Ron in heaven. At one point, we asked James how he was feeling. He said, "Sad." And we told him that it was okay to say that in the letter. So he wrote it.
When he had finished, he helped us address and stamp the envelope. Together, we walked it to the mailbox. That night in my journal, as I processed the day's griefs, I wrote this:
My son's father is all but dead
and in his collision of innocence and grief
he takes up pencil and paper
and strikes at the enemy's stronghold
with sentences of heaven
and postage paid in tears.
Two days before Christmas, James was talking about Ron as I tucked him into bed. He said he was sad. But somehow he got around to declaring that he would copy a Psalm and send it to Ron. I told him Psalm 23 would be a good one, then proceeded to recite and sing the Jon Foreman version.
After our goodnights were said, I went out to the living room and read the King James Version of Psalm 23 and wept.
That night, I poured out a long and unstructured verse about all these things. Here's part of it:
My son tends to his biological father with tears and worry
from a distance that transcends miles,
that fragments into a hundred questions when we try to close it.
The father of my son lays dying, clutching fear and regret like a rosary,
like some vision of Cain at the world's end wondering where,
if anywhere, respite can be found from all this life.How long, O Lord?
My son lies in bed sorrow-sick for someone he barely knows,
the wound running deep and red to the beating heart
of all there is and all there was and all there will be.
My words stick on the roof of my mouth, dry as the winter air,
thirsty as the prairie creek beds that dream in silence
of springs fed by mountain snow and cry,"How long, O Lord?"
Being a foster parent means that you will almost surely have a relationship with the parents of the children you’re fostering. The parents, if they are hitting the milestones and sticking to their treatment plan, are entitled to regular visits with their children. Sometimes this is once a week, sometimes it's more. This is an awkward, uncomfortable dance. You're working hard to honor and respect the bio parents and their bond with kids. You're also carrying all the legal uncertainty. These children are yours and not yours. Everything feels tenuous.
It's hardest on the kids. They feel torn and confused. Lindsey and I experienced this with James. Sometimes the "re-entry" into our home after a visit with his bio parents was rough. He'd act a bit detached. He usually came back with some cheap trinket and processed snack foods. He talked about his dad and mom.
We didn't experience these dynamics with our girls. Not only were they legally free when they were placed with us, but they were removed from their bio parents' care at very young ages. They have never talked about them. I sincerely doubt that our girls have any working memories of their parents. In the thick of it, when we were regularly talking about Ron and whether we'd him see again, Rain would ask about her biological parents and express a desire to see them. It was hard to tell if it was genuine or if she felt she was missing out on a relationship that her brother was privileged to have but she didn't. This reality has its own kind of sorrow, and we were thankful to be having these conversations with our girls. To be opening up the past.
But Lindsey and I have never had contact with the girls’ bio parents. Which meant we never had weekly visits, like we did with James and his parents. Which meant that we never had to face their parents after their parental rights were terminated, like we did in James's case.
I remember walking out of the courtroom on the day the ruling was made. Elated. Relieved. Grateful beyond words. Probably very cry-y. Our son would, at last, be fully ours.
Then I saw Ron.
When Ron died, James handled it fairly well. Lindsey and I were thankful that he got to write the letter and ease into the closure and grieving process.
"Ease." There has been nothing easy about this. I was a little surprised by how emotional I was the night we broke the news to James. It had been weighing on me more than I realized. Phone calls with a dying man and shepherding James's heart and dreading the future of Ron's girls is a lot. So I needed to grieve. To get it out. To let the end come. To think about what I didn't want to think about and feel what I'd rather not feel.
But James was okay. We cried with him for a while. We sat with him in his room. His sisters brought him stuffies. One of our cats jumped in his pajama drawer and made everyone laugh.
Then we moved to the living room and had some tea and played a board game. At Compline, we read a Psalm and prayed for a little bit. We sang "Oh God" and the first New City Catechism song and "'Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus."
The next morning when James woke up, he came out to the living room and sat beside me on the couch. He said he still felt sad. I told him that we'll feel sad for several days, and that our sadness might come and go. I told him that grief is something that we carry, but Jesus will carry it with us.
I probably said that as much for myself as I did for him. Helping James grieve death and loss has revealed a whole lot of my inadequacies and insecurities. I don't want to linger over this. I want to hurry up to "normal" and not talk about Ron so much. And I wonder if that's because I'm afraid that my place as James's father is in jeopardy. Sharing the father pedestal is vulnerable. But it's not mine to share in the first place.
James lamented recently that he didn't have more memories of his father. So this process is also a grieving of what will never be, what can never be. I am thankful we visited Ron in October, but it seems too small compared to the vastness of death and the emptiness of future memories that will remain impossibly blank.
We've been told that there will be a memorial service or reception for Ron. But as of this writing, we still don't know when or if it will happen. Every week or so James will ask about it. He says that it needs to happen soon. So, for now, he's in this weird season of waiting for that fuller bit of closure and goodbye. But he is doing well. He is happy and enjoying life. He loves drawing and reading and playing football and watching Steph Curry highlights.
In the foster-adoption liturgical calendar, there are a few big milestones that help foster / adoptive families to tell time and to remember the story they've been given. These are feast days, holy days.
Happy Home Day: this is the day the adopted or foster child arrives at your home
Gotcha Day: this is the day when the parents learn that the legal roadblocks to adoption have been cleared, and adoption goes from if to when
Forever Day: this is the day the foster child gets adopted
James's Gotcha Day is in late January. His Happy Home Day falls on the first week of February. It's been six years since he came home, five since the judge cleared the way for his adoption.
It was a kindness from the Lord that in this season of grief and goodbye, we got to feast. To number our days and ask God to show us his mighty works. To remember the bigness of redemption and the hope of the future.
Still. I don't pretend to know how James will process and cope with the death of his biological father in five years or 10 years or 15 years. Lord, have mercy. Fill up the holes in this tender little heart. Help him to know you more deeply as an everlasting and loving Father. Spare him trauma and hardship, if that is your will. Help us to accept it if it is not. Give Lindsey and I the calm strength and patient wisdom to guide all of our kids through these losses and questions and to be honest with ourselves.