It’s so very hard to say goodbye, or at least ‘au revoir’ to your own offspring. My children have broken my heart and continue to do so despite everything. I’ve not heard from either of them since ‘The Reunion’ despite leaving a loving but undemanding message on my daughter’s ansafone. I don’t have a number for my son so can’t contact him! This has been going on for years and years and I don’t know how much more heartache I can take.
I’m considering an option my therapist put to me….to mentally say au revoir to them both for the time being until/if they ever come round to caring about me. Or maybe I have to wait till my grandchildren are old enough to want to come and find me. In the meantime, I have to concentrate on building a life for myself which unfortunately doesn’t include them. But it’s so hard to let go, to give up the hope, cut the umbilical cord and say goodbye (at least for the foreseeable future). There’s nothing left to try anymore. They have me beaten. I don’t want to wave them goodbye knowing they won’t even be waving back.
I’ve even had to take their photographs down and put them carefully away because it just hurt’s too much to see them. I have started keeping three ‘memory books’, one each for my grandchildren and I write nice things, also what I’ve been doing, that I’m thinking of them, that I never stopped loving them. I find pictures that I think they’ll like, considering them one by one carefully. I wish I knew what they were interested in, what they’re ‘into’ etc, especially my eight and five-year old. Sadly I don’t know my little S, who’s one and a half, at all so have no idea what she likes so just have to choose age-appropriate ideas. I hope and pray that one day, they will want to come and find me, that one day they’ll question their parents, my children, and ask why they don’t see me.
What makes me really sad is that they don’t have anything to do with my Mum either and she so longs to meet her great-grandchildren but she’s 84 and none of us know how much longer she’ll be with us. Hopefully, she’ll still be here in 5-10 years time but who knows when our time is going to be up? But it will be too late for her and that is so, so awful.
This song is about a couple saying goodbye but I’ve added it here because the emotions are the same when you try to say goodbye to your own children. And I will always love them. There will always be a huge place in my heart for them. I will forgive them for hurting me if they come back. I will always love you, T and C xxx
Essentially Ellie 