MIL Update!

So, if you have been following the efforts to find and connect with my Mother In Law's birth family, you know that we've had great successes and a disappointing setback.

Well last week we flew to New England to see her and share with her what we have found.

The best way to explain her current state is that she used to be bright, sharp and sunny - a 100 watt light bulb with lots of energy.  We are now down to 15 watts, and it flickers - the wires are fragile.

Her mind is thinking, but the connections between it and her ability to speak isn't great and mostly we get one word answers.

MIL cannot walk, and uses a wheelchair to get a around.  She is sharpest in the morning, but confused at night.  She sleeps a great deal.  But her care givers get her up each day, dressed in her own clothes, and she goes to excercise (raising her arms up and wiggling her feet) and sing a longs, and watches movies with the other residents in the assisted living unit.  Still, she is in palliative care - easing discomforts, not trying to cure them.

So we sat down with her last Wednesday and showed her what we found.  She remembers she was adopted.  She remembers how wonderful her adoptive parents were.  She remembered wanting to find her birth parents.  And her face lit up when we told her what we had found for her.

And she took the charts in her hands and studied them.  Her mind was working; she was taking it in.  We explained the charts - which we simplified for her.  She studied them.  We said the names and she repeated them.

So I asked her if this made her sad, or happy.

She thought about it it looking at the pages, and cocked her head and said, with great force and "vigga"...

"HAPPY!"

So evidently we accomplished what we set out to do.

It doesn't seem like we hear of too many successes in the world where children are given up for adoption, and then are raised by parents who adore them, and never think about them in terms less than a biological child.

But we know that chosen children are more often than naught, loved by their parents who raise them, and are more often than naught missed by their birth parents.

MIL was one of the lucky few though, that got to lead a most remarkable life - more remarkable than most children - adopted or otherwise.  And she appreciated that life.

And that makes me HAPPY for her, and very glad to be a part of it.