Direct Contact & Bereavement

One of the things we never really gave much thought to when contemplating adoption contact arrangements was bereavement. It was one of those ‘oh that’s a long way off’ sort of thoughts and then life came and gave us a swift kick in the ass. It has left us in the strangest position.

Direct contact with a birth relative is a strange situation anyway. You meet, you may become ‘friends’ but there is always an elephant in the room, the relative feels a certain amount of shame of the situation and you feel yourself treading carefully so as not to offend or cause distress or look like you are poking your nose in where it does not belong.

I have to say I grew to like Girl’s grandad a lot. He had a very dry sense of humour, he was honest, trustworthy, kind and friendly and he absolutely adored his granddaughters.  Parting was always sad for him because you could see it pained him to leave his grandaughters, knowing it could be another half a year before he would see them again although we were getting to the stage in our relationship where we were comfortable enough to share more of our life with him, he had proved himself trustworthy so many times and we were happy to share more time with him as long as Girl coped with it.

To learn of Grandad’s cancer last year was a shock and his death this weekend has saddened us. We are now in the position where we would like to say our goodbyes at the service but for Girl’s security reasons cannot. We would like to support his lady friend in her time of sorrow but again we cannot. We wanted to support in the final days but we could not. In time we will be able to say goodbye in our own way but it is the strangest feeling and something we just never gave thought to.

Goodbye Grandad, you will be missed.