I’m a modern guy. For the most part I understand the latest gadgets, trends, and fashion. Sometimes I even impress my kids with knowledge of current music and media or know when to LOL in a text message. Even before we built our family, I was aware of the differences between how men and women faced grief and loss. Men tend to turn inward and just muscle thru it. Get back to work, or find a new hobby, or do whatever seems to distract from the cause of the grief and sooner or later it will pass. Women, in general, work thru loss as a process of steps gradually bringing normalcy back thru emotion, discussion, reasoning, nurturing and finally the “new normal”. The new normal may or may not look the same as the old normal, but it is the result of the process.
My wife and I, for the most part recognize this difference in our grieving process and meet each other somewhere in the middle. Sometimes she gets a little closer to my recovery steps, and sometimes I move closer to hers. We have always been able to talk with each other, or just be silent and present if that is the way the spirit moves us. Our struggle with infertility and the story of our first non-successful adoption attempt challenged even our great partnership. First, there were the operations to take some of the physical issues out of the equation. Then, there were the daily injections I gave her to make fertilization more likely. Then there is the money aspect (maybe this is more a guy part of the story). How may times do we try and fail before we change trains to a different destination? I don’t remember how many times the monthly cycle came around to prove our efforts futile before we finally stopped, but it was several years’ worth.
Then we moved to adoption. We worked the program for a couple of years before we got the call. A mother wanted to place her child with us. The journey began again, and the pregnancy was a rocky one. Not for the child, but for the relationship between us and the mother. It just wasn’t going to happen. In what felt like nothing short of the loss of a child, we ended the relationship with the mother. We felt the full weight of grief, complete with an empty nursery and future grandparents to notify. No matter how different a father or mother deals with loss, there is no escaping the roller coaster of emotions, and no grieving process will lessen that experience. For us, the solution was not to get back to work or spend time with close friends. We completely separated from our regular routine and took valuable time off. We got away, and just enjoyed our own company. We talked, we cried, we laughed, we didn’t judge or spend too much time playing the what-if game. There was no fault, just a pause before a new plan began.
We grieved together, and apart for a few weeks until the next call came from another prospective mother. This is a story with a happy ending. Three wonderful kids, and all the challenges of parenthood did come along, and rather quickly. But that is a story for another time.
A special thanks to Geoff Godwin, husband of Wendy Godwin, for sharing his perspective, through this beautiful article, on the journey through loss and adoption.