Remembering

KC's worry of last night that he would forget what his grampa looked like has been in the back of my mind today. Because I think that for many adopted kids that thought is there, unspoken for their first families.

Rob's scrapbook has the pictures i could glean of his biological family, but there are not tons. Every picture we have ever taken of he and his sister and brother are there and are also displayed in our home. I can point out that they have similar eyes, or smiles, or even likes and dislikes. When I was able to get small bits of info about each person, I made sure to write that below or near their picture.

I have no pictures to share with Elisabeth when she is old enough to wonder about her birth parents. The adoption agency tried very hard to get the parents to share a picture and they declined. I have one picture of KC's mom and I have saved that for him. I have nothing about his birth father as that person is not known due to the circumstances.

I remember explaining to Chet that i knew nothing of his first family, only that they may have been desperately poor, or ill and forced to make a hard choice to help him have a better life. For the most part, his autism has been a bit of a savings grace. His very pragmatic nature made him less emotionally involved. He truly believes he would have died in India and is very happy to be here.

Because Rob is hard to 'read' I don't really know what he remembers about bio family beyond his siblings. The kids were each other's life line and their focus was almost totally on each other. But I wonder if he remembers what his first mother looks like; if he grieves for the fact that he doesn't. I feel like trying to ask about it would be like picking at someone's scab because some hurts never really heal. So I periodically bring out the scrapbooks and make sure I open to the first pages with the birth family photos. But I notice that if he brings out the scrapbooks he is more likely to bring book 2 or book 3 which is all stuff primarily of the family we have built here. I'd like to believe this is because he is happy and settled; but for all I know it means he is just not dealing with the other stuff.

On the plus side, Rob did ask a bit about the memorial service tonight. We were walking to the park and he asked if Ken would be at the service. He meant the body. I explained that he would all ready have been cremated (luckily we had this done for 2 pets so he is familiar with this) and that he was being buried (and explained the word interred) Thursday. That the service would be to share memories and celebrate the life of someone so many people had loved. He seemed ok with that, and trust me, it is a huge plus that he even asked!