Placement Adoption Anniversary Month Letter to my Birth Daughter's Adoptive Parents by Terri Rimmer


August 17, 2018

Dear Larry and Vicki:

I felt compelled to write this letter to you since McKenna just turned 18 and her Adoption Placement anniversary day is the 24th.

I happened to be in the ER on Larry’s birthday yesterday and witnessed yet another event that made me all the more grateful for the fact that you raised my daughter.

As I was laying there waiting to be seen in triage for my knee there was a 13-year-old little girl who was in severe pain on a bed in front of me in the hall who had come in ahead of me with her mom. Except from the time she and her mom came until the point of the transfer to Cooks next door, her mom had no interaction with her whatsoever in the way of comforting her, touching her, telling her it’s going to be okay.

I could picture Vicki doing all of these things and I’m about to cry as I write this because I just felt so bad for that child. The nurses were so great and I thought about what great nurses you two are. I could picture Vicki stroking McKenna’s hair and talking to her if it were McKenna laying there. The girl was extremely dehydrated and they hooked her up to an IV and had a hard time with her veins so they had to try three times – the third time in her back which, even though I have bad veins and have been dehydrated, have never had to experience that.

It turns out the girl was going to have to have her appendix out and though the mom, to her credit, did ask a few questions, she only told her daughter a couple of negative things, but the whole time stayed at the foot of the bed, not offering any comfort and the girl was clearly afraid.

I prayed for her and her mom and it struck me that the mother must not have been mothered either or she wouldn’t be acting that way.

Still, it broke my heart.

After they transferred the little girl to Cook’s I said something to the nurse about the mom and she said, “Yeah, some people handle sickness different ways.”

I just want to tell you that there have been so many times through all the things I’ve been through in these 18 years that I have been so grateful that you have been there for McKenna. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t been there. She’s had such a great life and has experienced so much. Not to mention having the medical care she needed.

I don’t know if we’ll ever have a relationship but it’s okay because you have given her the biggest gift and the greatest non-tangible gifts I could never give her.

I am forever grateful to you for what you have done.

I could never repay you.

I pray for you all every day and have for 18 years.

Thank you for saving my baby so that she will never know what it’s like to have to suffer the way I have and to not feel a mother’s love.

I can’t thank you enough for that.

Love, Terri

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