Some months back a dear person I reached out to told me something that hadn't occured to me in my long years of blindness and solitude.
I suppose I had sensed it on some numb, distant level but not consciously.
Lately however I have come to grips with a sorrowful truth. That I was not the only one living in my basement; my eldest daughter was in there with me. :-(
The two of us - she and I - were surviving in the powerful silence that existed between the breaths we took; between the moments we experienced before a little metal clock began to free us both.
How many years did I spend trying to put to rest the grief and hard times my eldest child and I had witnessed? We would sit across the table at dinner, speaking of the fear of the street; the power of starvation; her biodad's abandonment of her; the long winter of her stepdad's alcoholism. Such talks we had, holding each other, crying.
Yet not one word about her biggest loss; the loss of her siblings. That pain went unmentioned.
It must've been in my eyes though; the terrible sorrow. She must've seen it there; must've known that I was locked in a vault of shame and regret. And in her compassion for me her mother, my eldest daughter locked herself in with me. The silence claimed her for its own just as it had claimed me.
But in the past few weeks, we've had small talks....little tiny sentences about what happened on the forum...who said what...what I've learned. No big issue talks, just ideas mentioned in passing.
Then yesterday, my daughter looked at me and said, "Ya know mom. I've always wanted to meet 'A' and 'R'. I've always wanted to do that."
I told her that I was truly sorry that the choices I'd made in my life had caused her to have to endure such hardship in hers. That I hoped one day she could forgived me. She told me she already had.
My eldest "S" is finally returning....finally. And while I wait for the blessed "one day" when my children might want to say hello....while I wait for that..... "S" and I begin to heal from the hardest thing we ever faced.