A Can Of Worms…

I have struggled to write this post, I am worried about writing a blog post stemming from somebody else’s unfortunate circumstances but it does have quite an impact on our lives and is part of Girl’s ongoing story so cannot be ignored. When we adopted Girl we did so with the understanding that she would have direct contact with her adopted sisters and one of her grandparents. The contact with her sisters was not an issue as they had no relationship with the birth family but we would all share the direct contact with the grandparent.

I was understandably more apprehensive about the latter contact, I was mistrustful of the situation, I felt as though my daughter’s security would be in the grandparent’s hands every time we met. However, our social worker assured us that the grandad had the best of intentions and would do nothing to sacrifice the little time he had to spend with his grandchildren, he knew that any failure on his part would result in contact being halted permanently and over the few years that Girl has been living with us contact has gone very well, in fact so well we are comfortable enough for him to know where we live.

When we first started contact we knew that a time would come when things would be a little more difficult, that granddad had a debilitating disease although it was in remission at the time. Last weekend was contact day and sadly the news was broken to us that grandad has been diagnosed with cancer and from the little information available so far the prognosis does not sound good. I can’t tell begin to tell you how sad I am, I have a massive amount of respect for this man and have grown quite fond of him over the few years we have known him.

I have not told Girl yet that her grandad is poorly. The announcement has opened up a whole can of worms before we even start to think about the sad situation of life and death and not for the first time this year.

We know that the contact guidelines are going to have to go out of the window but frustratingly it is at a time when Girl is not coping with contact very well. I am certain in the future she will appreciate any increased contact that we might have now but what about the immediate future? Can she actually cope with it? What about her getting used to seeing granddad a little more and then suddenly not at all?

Then of course we would like to support granddad any way we can but just don’t know how because of Girl’s security. We probably won’t be able to visit granddad in hospital or attend the funeral, which just seems wrong somehow. What happens if and when granddad passes? Will the birth parent become aware of the contact between us?

A million more questions seem to have risen to the surface and I am mixed between sadness for granddad, guilt that we can’t be of more help and also guilt that I am having all these thoughts about how its going to impact Girl, it’s quite a strange and awful situation to be in for all parties involved.