Excerpt from Journeys - Why She Let Go

This piece of my story Journeys is the all important reason why Nora decided to give her daughter to someone else.

"You still really love her don’t you?” I asked, when he came out of the room.
“Yes,” he said. “The only womwan I could ever love and have ever loved.”
“That is so sweet,” I said. “It must have been hard when she got sick.”
“Yes, it was,” he said, sitting down on my bed when we finally got to my room. “I try not to think about it too much. The thought of losing her was so scary for me. And having to raise you guys alone. And even once you were safe with Dawn and Ted, the thought of raising my sons without their mother was terrifying for me. Then I remember when we found out about you, we were both happy but also afraid that we would lose one or both of you. Then we almost lost both of you at the same time once. Then the doctor asked me who I wanted to save if something were to go wrong: you or your mother? My first response was “How can I choose between the two most important women in my life?” I always said save them both, no matter what.”
“What do you mean you almost lost both of us at the same time?” I asked. “Was it when I was born?”
“No, this was another time,” he said.
“Another time? I don’t remember reading anything about that in the diary,” I said.
“It was after the diary was already written,” he said. “That was one of the times that I read it.”
“Oh,” I said. “What happened?” After asking, I wondered if I really wanted to know.
“Well, your mother was driving back from the meeting one night when you were about a year old and she blacked out and drove off the road into a pond. She had a blood clot somewhere and of course you were a pre-me, so you were very sensitive. Thank goodness someone in the congregation saw it happen or we would have lost both of you that day,” he said. “But anyway, you guys were in the hospital for a while. You cried a lot because you wanted your mommy. You just kept saying ‘Moma. Moma.’ She eventually woke up out of her coma a few days later. Actually she probably came out of it because of you. The doctors actually think that it was because of you. After that was when we decided that we were going to consider giving you to someone else.”
I started to cry. I couldn’t believe that something like that happened to my mother. I couldn’t imagine how my mother felt after that. She loved me so much and for that to have happened, she probably no longer thought she was completely capable of being a mother. I don’t know how long I cried. I just couldn’t believe that, after all that they went through with me being born early and having to be in the hospital so long, they almost lost me in that way.
I must have eventually calmed down and fallen asleep because I woke up the next morning in my bed. I immediately started to cry again. I couldn’t seem to shake that feeling that I had. I looked down at my phone and not only was it almost 12 in the afternoon, but I had missed a call from Lane. I called her back and told her that I would be there to get them from the airport. And that I had so much stuff to tell her and show her. Talking to Lane helped me to calm down a lot, but I felt like I would not be able to get over it until I confronted my mother about it. To let her know that I don’t hold it against her at all.
Before the meeting that night, I prayed so hard to focus at the meeting and not dwell too much on everything that I had read and seen and heard. It worked. I was totally focused on the meeting, even though I felt like I wanted to be very clingy to my mother. A few times, I grabbed her hand and she smiled at me. Her smile made me feel instantly better. I socialized a little after the meeting, but when I couldn’t bear it anymore, I just went out to the car and sat in it for a while.
“Nicky?” Terry said knocking on the window. “Hey are you ok?”
I could feel myself just about to burst out crying, so I opened the door and just wrapped my arms around him. He wrapped his arms around me and just held me as I cried. I buried my head in his jacket and just cried. He didn’t ask me what was wrong. He just held me.
I eventually calmed down.
“Thanks Terry,” I said, looking up at him. I’m sure my eyes were still red from having been crying. “Ya know, you always show up the absolute best moments.”
“I’ve been known to do that,” he said. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I can’t yet,” I said. “I have to talk to Nora first.”
“Ok,” he said. “Well, maybe this isn’t the best time to ask you this, but I want to take you out tomorrow night when Lane and Chester get here. Do you think you’ll be up to it?”
“Oh definitely,” I said. “I’d love to.”
“Great,” he said. “Are you going to be ok driving home?”
“Oh yeah,” I said, wiping my eyes. “I’m fine now.”
“Ok,” he said. I could tell that he was concerned. “Well, call me if you need me, ok kiddo?”
“Ok,” I said, getting into the car. He closed the door for me and I went home.
When I got home, Nora was there already. I went in the house looking for her and I could not find her. I was kind of worried, but then I remembered that I was a lot like her and I started walking down to the rock, where she was sitting.
“Nora?” I said. She turned around to me.
“Hey sweetie,” she said, coming down off the rock. “I was waiting for you.”
“Good,” I said. “For what?”
“If you aren’t too tired, I wanted to take you up to see the lighthouse,” she said.
“Oh definitely,” I said. “Do I need to change?”
“No,” she said. “It’s not far. We can ride together if you want to.”
“Sure,” I said. “There’s no use taking two cars when we can just take one. But let’s take my car.”
“Ok,” she said, getting her purse and the keys to the lighthouse.
As we drove to the lighthouse, I could see the reflection of the moon on the ocean and it made me very calm. I thought I would terrified to ride with my mother after finding out the things that I knew, but we got to the lighthouse in one piece.
She opened the door and turned on the light in the living room and it was just so adorable. There was a nice-sized little bedroom on the left and on the right, there was a kitchen with a patio. The front door led into the living room, which was modestly decorated with a little bit of furniture. Then straight ahead were the stairs that lead up to the light room.
“This is so awesome,” I said. “How do you build a lighthouse?”
“Still trying to figure that out, but I’m guessing from the bottom up,” she said, going up to the light room. I followed her up the winding staircase until we got to the top of the stairs. The light room has so many boxes in it. Boxes with pictures and toys mostly. And then around the light on the outside was a patio like skywalk that went all the way around. It was completely dark out at the ocean, but it was so beautiful. After asking if it was still sturdy and safe, I went out on the skywalk and looked around and let the cool breeze hit my face and blow my hair. After going back inside, I went downstairs to join my mother in the little bedroom.
“I love this place,” she said. “Sometimes I come here to think or to sleep when Nick is away, which isn’t a lot anymore. We always used to bring you and your brothers up here. You guys loved it. We actually made a postcard one year with the lighthouse in the background and us in the front of it.”
“That’s pretty cool,” I said. When she opened the closet, a box fell out. It was a box that was full of little baby girl clothes. “Are those my old clothes?”*
“Just a few,” she said. “I gave a lot of them to my brother when his daughter was born and Kylie, but these are the ones I held onto.” I looked in and immediately saw a dress that was blue but looked like it had dark stains on it and little drops of blood. It instantly took me back to the story that Nick had told me and standing there with Nora, looking at it, triggered a tear. I tried to hide it and I was just about to leave the room when Nora said to me, “Nicky? This is why I actually came here.” She held up the little dress and sat down on the bed. “Nick told me that he told you about it and I just wanted to talk to you about it. You’ve been trying to avoid me all day. I saw you crying with Terry after the meeting. And I know that you want to talk about it too.” I turned around and sat down on the bed.
“How did you know?” I said, sitting down on the bed next to her.
“Mother’s intuition,” she said. “It doesn’t fade with age, yours or mine.”
“I never would have guessed that something like that would have happened,” I said. “Reading your diary entries made me that much more upset about it.” I could feel the tears coming out, but I tried to suppress them so that I could get everything out that I needed to say. “I wanted to be mad at you. For giving me away. I felt like it was just too easy for you guys to give me to someone else to raise and stand by, just in case. But being here and seeing you and then reading about what you went through with me, not only being pregnant with me, but when we both were in the hospital in Seattle made me realize that you guys never wanted me to go. And then when Daddy told me that story…” I trailed off into tears. “I’m so sorry, Mom.” I started crying almost totally now and she put her arms around me and pulled me close to her. She also started to cry.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she said, through her tears also as she pulled me close to her. “I never meant to hurt you in any way. I’m sorry. I love you so much. After that happened, I was scared that it would happen again. You were so little and I shouldn’t have driven home by myself that night. The last thing I ever wanted to do was hurt you again.”*
“It wasn’t anything you could control,” I told her as my tears started to stop. “You can’t blame yourself for being sick. It’s not your fault. It was just time and unforeseen occurrence.”
“I know,” she said. “I couldn’t even look at you for such a long time after that. I wanted to hold you so much and just keep you close to me forever, but I was afraid that I might hurt you again. Until one day, I had fallen asleep and you walked in, climbed up in our bed, and basically went to sleep next to me. I woke up and there you were, sleeping soundly. After that day, I knew that even though I loved you more than anything, I had to find someone who could give you the attention that you needed. And Dawn and Ted came to mind almost immediately.”
I was very comforted knowing that they did what they did out of love for me and my welfare. It had brought me a great deal of closure to know all of the things that I knew about my birth and my early life before Dawn and Ted.
As I drove home later that night, I thought about how I had prayed for understanding and how I said if Jehovah thought that I should know he would see to it that I found a way to find out, which he did.

Author's Note

Hopefully the formatting is alright.