One Saturday that first summer of our reunion, my husband and I, along with our two closest friends, made plans to spend the day in Toronto. We were going to meet up with our oldest son and their oldest daughter, who both lived in the city. This would be the first time our dearest friends would meet our firstborn.

We had packed a picnic lunch to enjoy on the beach, and then spent time exploring parts of the city for the afternoon. It was a very memorable day. I was beyond excited to introduce our son to our friends. It was the same kind of experience as presenting your newborn baby to friends and family for the first time. I felt so much pride and joy.

I will never forget the day in February we first told our friends about this son of ours. We called to say we wanted to come over and talk with them. Once we arrived, we suggested they sit down before we shared our news. I’ll always remember the look of compassion on my friend’s face as she listened, while tears welled up in her eyes and fell silently down her cheeks. She said that she could only imagine how hard it must have been for me not to keep my baby because she knew how much I loved being a mom.

We shared excitedly about the letter we had received, and our plans to meet our son for the first time later that week.

It was soon time to wrap up our afternoon in Toronto that summer Saturday, and our friends took their daughter to pick up a few groceries before taking her home. This gave my husband and I and our son time together at his apartment.

A few weeks prior, I had asked my son if I could see some of his school work. I longed for a glimpse into his past, to see a part of the little boy I never knew. I wanted to learn as much as I could about his childhood, and the activities he was involved in as a boy and a teenager.

The three of us sat on his living room couch as we looked at school assignments, projects, and artwork. I loved seeing his handwriting and noticed how similar it was to my younger son’s. We listened and observed with gladness as he filled in some details about those years of his life that we had missed out on.

We got to one particular piece of paper, a one-page kindergarten assignment about him. With pencil, in his five-year old printing, he had recorded his full name, birthdate, and the city of the hospital he was born in. Of course this information was familiar to me because I was there. That part of his story was also my story.

As I continued reading on to the bottom of the paper, I read the names of his family members. That is where our stories diverged.

In an instant, a tidal wave of sadness washed over me. The feeling in my body was visceral as I felt the sorrow and despair of losing my baby boy all over again. A lump formed in my throat, and despite my best efforts to fight back the tears, they escaped and rolled down my cheeks.

While I knew in my head that my son had been raised in a loving family, it felt as though an ice pick had been stabbed into my heart, shattering it into a million pieces. I reached over to embrace my son in my arms as I cried. It took all the strength I could muster not to have a complete breakdown in that moment.

Our friends returned to pick us up. I managed to mostly control my emotions while we said goodbye to our son. Then I sat in the car and completely lost it. I sobbed uncontrollably, unable to utter a single word to explain why I was crying. Even if I could speak, I had no words to explain, nor did I understand myself, the deep, intense feelings of sorrow and despair that coursed through my body over the lost years with my boy.

A couple years ago I came across a book written by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D., titled, “The Body Keeps The Score”. While I haven’t finished it yet, from what I understand, it’s about how our bodies remember and hold trauma, even when our minds don’t process it, or perhaps, even try to ignore it. We physically hold on to what happens to us in life, even if we don’t know we’re doing so.

Little did I know, after all those years without my son, my body had in fact kept the score. The grief and pain that had been trapped inside my body, mind, and soul would not stay buried, but would begin to seep out.

“The greatest sources of our suffering are the lies we tell ourselves.”
~ Alvin Simrad