Making Sense of Grief

It’s easier to understand grief when the loss is right in front of you. Or rather, it’s easier for others to understand why you’re grieving when they can clearly see what you’re grieving.

But how do you explain the profound grief of shattered perception?  

When I was nearly four and my brother was nearly two, we were put up for adoption by the courts. After nearly four years of neglect and trauma, a judge finally stepped in and took away our mother’s parental rights. 

For nearly two of those years I shared a room with my baby brother. His name was Stephen back then. He had a crib on one wall, and I had a small mattress on the floor on the other side of the tiny room. I clearly remember there being a garbage bag on the mattress, which I realized years later was because I wasn’t potty trained. There was nothing else in the room.

I only have a few distinct memories from that time, and one of them is how, on more than one occasion, our mother would leave us in there and then disappear for several days. During that time I remember Stephen crying so much in his crib. I couldn’t get in there with him – I was too small to climb up. 

So I would reach my little arms through the railing to hold on to him. Not quite four years old, I tried my best to soothe and comfort him. 

Another memory is of the day our mother forgot to lock the bedroom door. Mere seconds after she had closed it I was already running down the hallway, up the stairs and out onto the street. She was nowhere to be seen. I remember how confused I was that she simply vanished. (Now I’m quite sure she had jumped into a waiting car.)

I ventured down the street, completely naked, frantically scanning for any sign of her. A nearby neighbor saw me through her window and came running out with a blanket in hand. She wrapped me up and brought me inside her house, where she then called my mom’s sister (who was to become my new mom) to come get me. 

I had bounced back and forth between my mother’s house and formal/informal foster homes during those early years, but I can’t recall where my brother was when I was in those other homes. I only remember him in that little (mostly locked) bedroom with me, crying and crying and crying. 

We were both put up for adoption, and while my new mom (our aunt – hereafter referred to as “mom”) tried to adopt both of us, she was only able to adopt me. It was devastating for everyone. Stephen ended up being adopted to an outside family, where we lost all contact with him. 

For the next several decades I carried Stephen with me. I would imagine him at every stage of his life: learning to ride a bike, playing soccer, chasing girls, driving a car, trying pot, studying for tests. The only physical picture I had of him/us (pictured above) was a teeny tiny wallet sized photo that my mom had enlarged and framed for my 16th birthday. 

There was rarely a day throughout my life where he didn’t cross my mind. This beautiful image of his life that I had so thoroughly created over the years was my reality. I had imagined every detail, right down to our future reunion. 

Oh that reunion was amazing! Here’s what it looked like: 

After finding him by way of writing his parents a letter, we decided to meet in person. He was traveling to meet me, so I was anxiously waiting at the arrivals gate at the airport. The second he descended the escalator I started rushing forward, smiling through my tears. 

He dropped his bags and ran to me, arms outstretched. When we finally fell into the tightest hug, I was able to take in all of him, the feel of him, the smell of his cologne, his own tears dripping down onto my head.

We were both crying and not letting go, and everyone around us was crying, even strangers. Some people were clapping, a few were taking video. It was absolutely magical. 

I was eager to tell him how I used to hold his hands through the railing of his crib, and how I vowed I would find him one day and we’d be together and everything we went through as children would be healed. 

And that is how I imagined it going down. 

Early January 2016, it occurred to me that I could do a Facebook search for him. How had I not thought of that before?! So I opened up my profile to “public” and posted my one photo of us together and included details of his birth date, town, mother’s name, etc. I asked everyone to share it. 

The response was amazing! Hundreds and hundreds of people, even complete strangers, shared it. And within 24 hours I’d found him. 

My little sister (she came along less than a year after my adoption) had shared my post on a Newfoundland adoption website, and someone replied to her saying she believed her cousin, Mark, was the same person we were looking for. 

And Mark had died less than two months before. 

I didn’t believe it. I couldn't. It was so far outside of my "fantasy" that the information was literally not computing. 

I’m sorry for your loss, but your cousin can’t be my brother. My brother is living his best life. He’s charming and witty and probably has a wife and kids. 

My brain didn’t believe it, but my body kind of did, or at least understood it was a possibility. I was shaking all over and my heart was racing so fast. 

It just wasn’t real. And while it was still just a conversation, my brain continued to believe it was a mistake. Someone else who was adopted from the same small town with the same exact birthday. 

I found Mark’s Facebook page and went through his photos. I saw no resemblance, or not enough to be convinced. Until one photo. One photo that broke through my denial bubble. One photo that looked just like our uncle. And then another photo where he looked just like a cousin of ours.   

No no no no no no no. 

I had been through various traumas throughout my life, and I’d somehow persevered through it all. But this, this devastated me. And how could I explain to people how deeply I was grieving when from the outside it looked like I was grieving someone I hadn’t seen since early childhood?

I couldn’t go to work for a week. I was a mess. When I did return to work, my boss commented, with raised eyebrows, “Oh, but you weren’t raised with him, right?” It came across as surprise, tinged with skepticism. But I don’t fault him for that reaction. People don’t know what they don’t know.

I reached out to the adoption agency and requested the birth records of my brother, now with renewed hope that there had been a mistake. In spite of the photos, there was still a possibility that someone got it wrong. Funny what our minds can do in moments of shock.

I asked them to confirm (prove) that my brother Stephen became this Mark person. And while I waited for the mail to come, I had loosely convinced myself that the documents were going to tell me that Stephen was alive and well and living in Alberta. 

The documents did no such thing. Stephen was Mark. And Mark had died on November 16th, 2015, four days before my 35th birthday, 46 days before I found him online. 

For the first time in my life, I couldn’t “just get over it”. From January all the way to November I was still grieving hard. Songs on the radio would make me break down in my car. I was grieving my baby brother, I was grieving the man who died, and I was grieving a lifetime of fantasy that I came to find out was nothing close to reality. 

Mark didn’t have an easy life, or even a very good one. I think his parents tried, but his dad died when he was 13 and his mom went downhill after that. At one point he ended up back in foster care. With each new piece of information my heart broke even more. 

I was so consumed by my creation of Stephen, that the reality of Mark was simply too much for me. And so my painful, beautiful, and life-changing journey into therapy began nearly a year to the date of his passing. 

We all grieve differently, for different reasons, and without set time limits. Others don’t need to understand our grief, but they don’t get to question it, either. 

I printed out every single photo of him from his Facebook page and created a photo album. Every year on November 16th I take it out and I feel my way through every picture. Where he’s smiling, I imagine being there and smiling back. Where he’s hugging someone, I can feel his arms around me. 

And I cry. It’s gut wrenching and sad, but also cathartic. With each passing year the memories I had created from fantasy seem to blur a little more, leaving in its place the image of the man his friends told me he was. A man they said talked about me and of finding me one day. I never knew if he remembered me, so this breaks my heart just a little bit more. 

When it comes to grief, and speaking from my own personal experience, whether it makes sense or not you just have to go through it. Not around it, not over it, but through it. Your timeline might be shorter or longer, but it’s yours. 

Whatever you’re grieving, I wish you healing and love.