These boys deserve everything

The goodbye visit that I watched the other day wasn’t the first one that I have seen. Unlike many that I see, there was hope at the end that despite the fact that the father would no longer be the legal father of this child, their relationship would have the chance to continue.

That’s not often the case.

And it brought to mind one of the hardest goodbye visits I ever watched take place.

I have always preferred to represent children in CPS cases rather than their parents. I have a heart for kids who have been broken by life. But I also recognize the value of being the one person that stands unequivocally on the side of a parent who is struggling with issues most of us will never know or understand. But those things often break my heart and frustrate me more than the situations I deal with concerning the children. Because as much as I often can’t fix the things that are going on with kids, the damage that has been done to the parents to get them in this place is often so much deeper and so much worse.

I have a wise friend who once told me, “Cheryl, you can’t work harder than your clients.” And while I recognized that in theory, it was always hard for me in practice. Because it’s my nature to try to fix things for people and to make them better.

But the circumstances in some people’s lives are too broken to be easily fixed. And that’s hard for me to accept.

Many years ago I was appointed to represent “C”, a mother of two young boys, ages 5 and 2, both within a month of the exact ages of my boys at the time. It was an unusual removal in that the children had not been removed from C’s care, but from the care of the maternal grandmother. C had gone to jail for writing hot checks and had left the boys in the care of her mother who had gotten tired of caring for them and called CPS to come get them. This wasn’t the grandmother’s first dealings with CPS as her daughter, C, had been placed in foster care as a child because the grandmother failed to believe or protect C from the sexual abuse by C’s own father.

When C got out of jail, the boys had begun to settle into a foster home and, as is often the case with children who have experienced trauma, had begun to exhibit some troubling behaviors. The court made the decision to hold off on having visits between C and her children until she submitted to psychological and psychiatric examinations to make sure that she was mentally stable, as she had a history of bipolar disorder and non-compliance with medication. 

During this time, the 5 year old boy, B, made an outcry of sexual abuse against C’s boyfriend, the father of 2 year old D. Both C and her boyfriend sat in my office across from me as I told them about the outcry. C’s reaction was immediate and visceral. “How could you?” she yelled at him, and left him in my office, struggling to find his way back home. I can only imagine her own trauma memories and feelings of shame that must have come up from realizing that she had allowed the same thing to happen to her child that had happened to her.

By the time parent-child visits started, the boys had settled into their new home, and visits were hard for them. Particularly B, the 5 year old. He loved his mother, and clearly felt responsibility for ensuring his mother was okay, but so obviously wanted to be in his new home instead of his old. C often ended visits with the boys early when she realized B was having a hard time and was ready to go back to his foster parents. Within a couple of months of the start of visits, C called me one day and she asked me a question I will never forget, “Do B and D’s foster parents want to adopt them?” “They do,” I told her. “These boys deserve everything,” she said to me. “And I can’t give it to them, but this family can.” 

I told her to take some time to think about what she was saying to me and we would talk again soon. When we talked again the next week, she was sure that she wanted the boys to stay where they were and to be adopted by their new family. I did something I had never done as the attorney for a parent. I asked the attorney for the children to talk to the foster parents about allowing me to come to their home and to sit and talk with them so that I could assure C that they were committed to raising these boys and would agree to allow her to know about them as they grew.

The foster father was very suspicious of my motives. The foster mother, while less so, was very much deferential to his thoughts. I did my best to assure them that despite what had happened to B, C was not an evil person, but the victim of her own history of abuse. I could tell as I left that they were not convinced, but I did my best to have them see her the way that I did. So that one day when the boys asked, they might paint that same picture of her that I had for them.

While the foster parents agreed to provide photos and updates of the boys to C once or twice a year, they were not comfortable with ongoing contact, and the parties agreed that it would probably do more harm than good to the children who were already so confused and guilt-filled about their feelings.

The decision was made to have the foster mother join the last 15 minutes of the goodbye visit between C and the boys so that the boys could see that their new mom was okay with their old mom, and their old mom was okay with their new mom, and to provide C with the opportunity to tell B and D that they were going to be staying with their new parents forever and that she was not going to ever see them again, but that she was going to be okay and so were they.

I attended the goodbye visit in order to be a support to C, who had no real support of her own. I was so angry that of all the parties involved in the case, not one other person came. I felt they should have been there too, to see what their recommendations of severing these family ties actually meant to this family. It was then that I determined to try whenever possible to attend the goodbye visit for any case in which I had been involved.

The last 15 minutes of the visit came and the foster mother joined C and her two boys. B, especially, was very aware of the interactions between the two women he now considered his moms. His eyes went back and forth between them as they talked, and as C talked to the foster mother about their birth history and any relevant history she might need to know. At the end of the 15 minutes, C told the boys that she wasn’t going to see them again, but that it was going to be okay. And as she hugged that 2 year old little boy, I could not help but think of my own sweet 2 year old at home with his grandmother, and of the support that I had been given, while she had none. 

I will never forget the look on her face as she held that baby boy for the very last time in this life. I will never forget the strength that she showed, when it was all that I could do not to break down into tears of my own. I could not have spoken if I had been forced. It was the witness of her strength alone that gave me the strength to keep check of my own sorrow and grief.

One of the very bravest things that I see in this job that I do is when parents do the hard and painful work to recover from their addictions and their demons and their abuse enough to have their children returned.

But I will always believe that the very bravest thing of all is when they are unable to heal the way that they need to heal and they make the decision to give their children a life better than what they can provide on their own. Not because of the money that a foster family might have more of. Not because of the opportunities for education and benefits that they might enjoy. But because of the ability to be raised in a family with people who are well and whole.

C did that for these boys she so clearly loved more than she loved herself.

As my boys have grown through the years, I cannot help but wonder how B and D have grown. I wonder if their new parents ever told them the story of their first mom and the love that she had for them. The love that was bigger than her desire to parent them on her own, and was big enough to give them the life she felt they deserved but couldn’t provide.

I pray that one day when those boys are grown that they will choose to find their first mom. And that she will get the chance to once again hold that young man she last held when he was only 2. And that she will see that her sacrifice was worth the pain as she looks upon these precious young men that were given into her care for such a short time, to love and to hold, and to give away to someone who could give them more. And I pray that as she looks into their grown faces, she will see the little boys that they once were and that she loved enough to give up.