Since Tuesday one week ago, Heather’s family has been coping with an unimaginable tragedy. A tragedy no family should have to face, one no parent should ever have to endure. A tragedy I don’t think we can really ever understand.
Six weeks after Heather’s cousin, Karen Stasko, died of cancer, Karen’s 34 year old brother, Eric Bonde, ended his own life.
Heather’s aunt and uncle, now have only memories of their children. And Heather, her parents and sister, have only photos and stories.
There are some who will condemn Eric’s action, some who will blame his parents or friends, some who will claim that he was selfish or weak and some who will damn him forever. Anyone who does this, does so out of ignorance or malice, and in the Johnson family, there is no room for either.
Despite family issues that everyone has, the Bonde family and the Johnson family are the tightest, most loving I have ever known. They are generous in the ways that matter, they are generous in love. They have deep faith and all of us know that Karen and Eric are together, in a better place, watching over the entire family, with warmth and love.
There is nothing that can replace your children, and as a father of 4 year olds and a 4 month old, I can not even allow myself to imagine that loss. Even conjuring it as a possibility is too much to bear. I am unable to imagine how Karen and Eric’s mother and father will go forward, although I know they will.
I choose to look to the future with hope for my babies. And if there is anything that tells me that hope is reasonable, it’s in seeing K&O playing with the other kids at the Bonde’s house, in the beautiful fall New England sunlight. And watching Eric’s mother adore Meera’s squeal of delight and hearing the stories of friends and family as they remember Eric in the most important ways. With love.
We will never really know what brought Eric to that place, but we know his suffering is over and he is now at peace
Thank you to everyone who checked in on us during our blogging break, we appreciate it very very much.
Oh my goodness. Braydon and I have known for a long time that we have several hundred readers (last check we have about 1,500-2,000 unique visitors per week). That’s not too many people when you consider the millions who are surfing in blogland. But still, seeing as we started this blog thinking that we’d have a handful of readers (our parents mainly!), we do get quite a kick out of this– how strange it is that so many people find some interest in our little life. And we know that our blog is meaningful for lots of people because we pretty regularly receive comments and/or email from people all over telling us how much our blog means to them. But I had absolutely no idea that posting something like the “Ugh.” post below would spark such a reaction (especially since it was posted on a Saturday afternoon– our blog’s slowest traffic day). Within 24 hours we had almost 50 loving supportive heart-felt comments from readers all over the place. With very few exceptions these comments are from people we’ve never met in real life and probably never will. When I posted it I had actually thought that the nasty-anons would start pelting me with their defense. It had never occurred to me that the post would get the reaction it got. Wow. Reading through those comments is humbling and embarrassing and inspiring and rejuvenating all at once. Wow, thank you all. We feel the love. We feel the love. Thanks y’all. And thanks for reading.
~Heather
P.S. I took the photo above this afternoon. I don’t want to get too cheesey on you all… or sound like a bad poet or something… but… I was just struck by this huge gorgeous majestic tree growing up with such strong beautiful branches, and sitting there, right in the middle, is a dead stub of a branch. The symbolism is transparent, don’t you think?
Dear Readers,
Well, I’m getting another round of hate mail (or, I guess I should say “hate comments”) on my “Adoption Stuff” post below. Often when I’m writing posts that aren’t just ‘this-is-what-we-did-today’-posts I fret in my heart as I click “publish” on Blogger… because I just know those anonymous hateful hurtful comments will probably come pouring in. Folks, I’ve gotta say: I do sometimes wonder why we make this blog public. I think about just stopping it all together. But then I think about the hundreds of people out there who have found some kind of solace/inspiration/interest in our stories –and I think about people and families who have inspired us along our own journey– and I keep plugging away. I don’t know how long we’ll keep doing it though, it is hard to stay strong to put ourselves out there like this. As for the post below…. I’m rejecting the anonymous hate mail and not publishing the anonymous hurtful comments. They are just too nasty to validate them by clicking “publish.” I just need to say, though, for the record: we know a lot about the details of our sons’ births. We do not share these details. Until K & O are old enough to handle all the information, Braydon and I will remain the only people outside of Haiti who know the whole story of our boys. Trust me when I say: our boys were not breastfed. On another note: we’re trying hard to teach our four-year-olds that age-old golden rule: do unto others as you would have done unto you. To all of you Hate Mail Writers out there– please try to remember this golden rule yourselves as you’re reading our blog.
Thanks, Heather
Recently Kyle and Owen have been talking a lot about things related to adoption. We seem to go through phases with this, as I’m sure all adoptive families do. For stretches of time it rarely, if ever, even comes up. And then we have periods of time when it is bubbling up to the surface a lot. Right now we’re in one of those. Our motto with kids’ information has always been to give them age-appropriate information if/when they ask for it, but to carefully only answer the questions they are asking and restrain ourselves as much as possible from pushing it further. The idea being that they’ll ask what they want to know; they’ll ask what they are ready to know. This approach of ours is common, I think. Anyway, we try to stick to this ‘information approach’ and it has worked for us so far (in many realms, not just adoption). Lately, though, K & O have begun to not just ask questions, but to make statements that we feel compelled to respond to with information. We’re comfortable with this, but it is new. And it is not always easy to know how much information to give them. Perhaps it is their age (4 years + 4 months old), perhaps it is the start of school (new questions arising in their now more complex social worlds), perhaps it is all just coincidental… it doesn’t matter– but they are, for sure, thinking about adoption stuff now that they definitely were not thinking about even a month or two ago.
I know with no uncertainty that Braydon and I are well-educated and knowledgeable adoptive parents. We are very confident in that. This is true for me especially because I tend to be the one who actually does all the research — and I do a lot of research. But Braydon and I communicate intensively on this stuff and I always give him the ‘cliff notes’ version of all I’ve learned/read/heard/figured out (i.e., over glasses of wine I tell him everything I know). I think we’re relatively well-prepared for much of what is ahead as far as our boys’ adoption questions and confusions go. But I have to say, no matter how prepared you are, some of this stuff is just absolutely astonishing. It is one thing to hear the stories from other adoptive parents or to study the research literature or to read adoptees’ biographies, etc., etc., etc. It is quite another thing to sit there, face to face with your own child, and experience this stuff. Right now the form this is taking is this: I’m looking at my precious sweet boys, they’re looking back at me, and they’re saying things that —yes, should be to be expected— but stun and astonish me nonetheless. It is common (if not the norm) for adoptees to question the permanence of their families. It is common (if not the norm) for adoptees to fantasize about their birthparents. It is common (if not the norm) for adoptees to wonder about their history. But still, despite my intellectual understanding of all this, I continually find myself dumbfounded and wondering, ‘How do these thoughts even enter their minds?’ Just three examples (of many) from recent days~~~
A few nights ago I was getting Owen ready for bed. He was being his silly self and he was saying, “I want to be a girl! Then I would pee on the potty sitting down!” Then he’d giggle and pretend to pee on the potty sitting down, etc. Typical Owen. But then his tone suddenly took a dramatic turn. Sitting face-to-face with me in the bathroom he looked me right in the eyes and said, “When you send me back to Haiti I will tell my birthmother that I want to be borned again but as a girl next time. That’s what I’m going to say to my birthmother when you send me back to Haiti.” Huge gulp. What? “Send me back to Haiti?” How on earth did he even come up with this phrase, let alone this thought?? It is stunning. And you just can’t be prepared for that. No matter how prepared you are, it just hits you like a ton of bricks. A ton of bricks.
A couple of days ago we were outside playing in the backyard on a beautiful sunny day. Out of the blue Kyle says, “When I was borned that was my birthday.” I said, “Yes!” Then he said, “When I was borned I was not here. I don’t know who caught me. I wanted to be borned from my mommy but I wasn’t. It was my birthmother. And it was so, so scary. It was dark and me and Owen were in there. And you didn’t come for me mommy. You didn’t. You took too long.” O.k., Oh. My. God. Again, a ton of bricks. I don’t care how much you know about this stuff, when it is your kid, and they’re saying it right to you, it is astonishing. Just astonishing. Awhile later, as he was running off to the trampoline, he looked back at me over his shoulder and shouted out: “Am I in this family forever? Or no?” Of course I shouted back, “Yes! Forever! Forever and ever and ever!” He stopped, turned back to face me, looked at me, and said, “So, are you my mommy forever and ever? Or will I have to have another mommy?” It doesn’t matter how many millions of times we’ve assured them of these things. Their questions still remain. Their uncertainty seems to be forever in tact. You try to convince yourself that the good thing is (the proof that you’re doing a good job is) that he’s verbalizing this stuff to you. You try to tell yourself that its all good because it reveals that he’s able to put this stuff out there to you. He trusts you to say it to you. You say this to yourself, but you can’t help but feel totally flabbergasted. How could he even question the permanence of my mothering? How?
The day before yesterday, on the drive home from school, the boys were talking excitedly about how we were going to feed Meera her first taste of “baby rice” that evening. Owen says, “When we were babies we didn’t drink breastmilk. We drank formula. Formula from bottles. We liked bottles. But when we were first borned we drank breastmilk from our birthmother’s breasts. Yup! We did! We drank breastmilk from our birthmother’s breasts! When we were first borned babies in Haiti.” I couldn’t leave it there. I felt it would be wrong to let him get that belief cemented into his mind, because then I’d have to burst his bubble down the road which would probably be even more painful than bursting it now. “Sweetie,” I said, “baby, you never drank breastmilk. Your birthmother gave birth to you and then you went straight to the orphanage. In the orphanage they gave you formula in bottles. And then Mommy and Papi came to get you. And we fed you bottles too. You never drank breastmilk from your birthmother’s breasts.” Looking at me through the rear view mirror he responded with, “Yup! We drank breastmilk from our birthmother’s breasts! When we were first borned in Haiti! When we were with our birthmother!” “O.k.,” I said, “we can pretend that is real.” That was the best I could do. Because no matter how much I know it is all about him, I would be lying if I were to say that I didn’t have a lump in my throat, secretly wishing that I could have “borned” him, secretly wishing that I could have given him what he sees me giving his sister. Knowing that his questions and confusions and fantasies are healthy and normal and right, but secretly wishing that I could whisk them all away so that his tiny heart and tiny mind wouldn’t have to be encumbered by all of this history. And secretly astonished, yet again, by the complexities of adoption.
7:40 a.m. During breakfast the phone rings. It is MorFar and he asks right away to speak with Kyle. He’s calling to tell Kyle that the Red Sox won 4-1 against the Angels in Game 1 of the American League Division Series last night. What Kyle semi-‘gets’ is that the Red Sox won a big game. What Kyle fully-‘gets’ is that MorFar has called just for him. Thus, the absolutely precious (and priceless) lit-up look on his face and in his eyes.
Kyle & Owen’s “nanny” Alex has been babysitting for us regularly for over two years. She’s amazing in a million different ways. October 17 – 19 Alex will be walking 60 miles over 3 days to help raise money for the Susan G. Komen For the Cure Breast Cancer 3-Day! She’s still got to raise some money to walk. If you haven’t yet given money toward the fight against cancer this year, will you please consider supporting Alex?
CLICK HERE!
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