The Siblings

I’ve been thinking about the siblings. Not my own siblings, or birth children, or ones joined through long-awaited adoption.  Not even ones who became as close as siblings joined as bands of brothers and sisters through church youth groups and corps of cadet companies at military school. The siblings I’m thinking about are the ones who were taken out of their home and placed in foster care…with us…a family of 3 displaced…within a crowded home during a time we were also transitioning home with Erin after heart surgery soon before Christmas. Everything changed with a visit to court for them and a phone call to us afterwards.

Three siblings lived in our home. They were not small children. They were two teenage boys and an older sister who was in her early 20s. They came with some of their belongings. Overnight we became an extended family. The older sister had been living with us for some months, so the 3 were rejoined. Our sons and daughters had new siblings. We had talked it over and all committed to being a family while respecting the space for the 3 to be a family within ours. I remember evenings we would sit upstairs listening to the 3 siblings sitting at the kitchen table laughing, fixing snacks, talking so fast I couldn’t keep up with their conversation, and hoping they felt safe and loved in the midst of a not-so-ideal situation…living in a place they did not choose but still having each other.

We had Christmas and worked hard to be fully inclusive among us…to get to know new siblings and meet each others’ friends and relatives that could be together in these early days of our new living arrangement.  We focused on fitting everyone into smaller spaces, finding places for everyone to sleep and gather, watching movies, playing games, talking, cooking lots of food while learning preferences.  There was lots of grace and patience extended by the 3 who joined our family and our 5 also who had every reason to love them as siblings.

We had a history. Rob and I had a connection with the boys through the youth group as volunteer youth leaders.  I had taught the sister in middle school.  We knew them and cared very much about them.  They were so talented, brilliant; yet, also broken.  They loved each other dearly and could also trigger their deepest pain within each other.   

There were lots of directions, directives, and new pathways to navigate within the foster care system.  There were appointments, an influx of support personnel that could change frequently, mountains of paperwork, and our share of challenges as we began to unpack both life behind us and how we were going to do life before us.  Rob and I became advocates and facilitators of what would be needed to move forward while we were learning the processes, timetables, and expectations within our roles as foster parents and with respect to differences in belief systems of how families operate.

Our grown sons went home after Christmas.  We were adjusting to life with teenagers who were active in sports, had bass and drum lessons, needed rides to early morning practices, needed to find work, needed supervision with relationships, stayed up late doing schoolwork and social media, and needed reasonable limitations placed on their daily lives.  They were adjusting to Erin and Diana being in their world.  Diana stayed to herself, but Erin pushed herself into their world and their space demanding they answer her when listening to music with earbuds in their ears while on their tablets or watching TV.  I worried all the time they would not understand her and how she communicated.  Erin was close to the sister sibling who engaged with her very well.  Erin would stop in her room daily after school to tell her about her day.  The boys amazed me in that they never flinched if Erin had a rough night and yelled more than usual. They never acted impatient with her or told her to stop.  As time went on, Erin called back and forth to them to tell them she loved them.  They would answer back with the same, “I love you, too, Erin.”

Erin got sick within a month after Christmas and had to return to the hospital for 3 months.  I stayed with her. Rob drove back and forth daily to the hospital 50 minutes away after working unless Erin was in a very vulnerable place.  Sometimes, we switched places. We made sure there was a parent in the house at night.  The community responded to our need with meals delivered nightly for 87 days.  Our dear friend met Diana from the bus and stayed at our house until Rob returned home.  Other friends took shifts.  Still others picked up the foster sons from practices after school and took them where they needed to go. I organized the daily plan from Erin’s hospital room. The boys never complained.  We tried to shield them, even after Erin came home on dialysis, from the seriousness of her condition and our pain.  They had their own pain.  This was not an ideal situation for them, but they were able to focus within themselves as long as their routines were not disrupted. 

It was different for the sister.  She had been closer to Erin and to me.  Every time Erin was in a really bad place where she was having surgery or hope was waning, Rob and I would look up to find her coming into the PICU to be with us after her shift at work.  She’d sit with us along with some other dear friends and Rob’s dad most of the night until Erin stabilized.  On the night Erin crashed for the last time, she showed up as the team was organizing in the PICU to respond to the code.  She stood beside the two of us while Erin passed.  Our sons and daughter, our close friends, and our foster sons joined us soon afterwards to say goodbye to Erin.

No foster child should have to go through this with a family, but they did.  They took on our pain and trauma along with theirs.  We took on their pain and trauma along with ours. This is not the whole story, but it is what I think about now.  These 3 siblings are a part of our story and witnessed our deepest pain.  We didn’t plan it that way.  We tried to be strong and present for them in the midst of their pain.  We had ten months after Erin returned home to be together as a family.  During that time the sister moved forward in her life and the youngest son moved to another family we knew in our community as we realized Erin might die while he was living with us. He was especially volatile, and we feared the impact her death might have on him.  The oldest son chose to stay with us until the summer after he graduated and prepared to go to college.

I have carried much hurt in my heart over trying to be strong as a foster parent to young men who needed and deserved so much more while also being a caregiver to a child with intense medical needs.  I wasn’t there for Diana at home during all that time. She had our friends taking care of her instead of me.  Time was taken from all of us. The togetherness and blending we intended to create as a family for the 3 siblings was disrupted for a long time.  The extra care we intended to surround our girls with as we moved them in a bedroom together close to ours when the siblings moved in became a close haven of precious memories as we’d hang out together watching their favorite movies while Erin was on dialysis.

I have mourned over having exposed the 3 siblings to these intense circumstances beyond our control. I have also mourned that we had to share the months, weeks, and days so close to the end of Erin’s life with the siblings when we really needed to have space, freedom, and privacy to just be with our family. We were prepared to take on the trauma of another family when we were asked to do emergency foster care. It became apparent there was no other place for the boys to go. The foster care system left them with us when Erin became so ill. I was still pacing the floors talking to social workers on the phone trying to get counseling set up for them while Erin was in surgery or while I was sitting beside her bed in the PICU. We still had all of the same responsibilities on top of the trauma we encountered in our family due to Erin’s illness. There were no offers to help us from the system and only once did social workers agree to have a required family support meeting in the waiting room of the PICU instead of the Dept. of Social Services office to accommodate our needs. Those we encountered in the system were fine people, just overworked with huge caseloads. It’s been an extra layer of trauma to peel back and expose. Our lives became vulnerable beyond our control in front of kids who didn’t choose to have their lives exposed to that world through the foster care system.

I’ve softened over this situation during these past few years and only recently toward the sons.  I have remained close to the sister and am someone she reaches out to for support and a listening ear. I am a phone call away, and I love when I’m able to see her around her busy schedule of nursing school. I am breathing easier when I think of the effects this experience had on me and have tried to shed the heaviness in my heart I have felt over our experience as foster parents during the time (over a year) we were in the midst of our own despair. When Erin became so ill, the oldest foster son told Rob that when his family was falling apart, we were there for them; and now that our family was falling apart, they could be there for us.  The statement holds some wisdom that gives me hope that maybe the siblings took away something positive and sustainable from their time with our family. We did also have happy times and laughter, nights out seeing movies and going to town, two Christmases, and a family beach trip.  There were lots and lots of talks just about their thoughts as they processed all that was happening in their lives. There were very intense times as well as they relaxed in a safe place and the pain of their past would surface.

We tried our best, and when the pressure was on; sometimes the unexpected happened to take the edge off of the stress we were under.  I remember one such instance was the time the youngest son and I were coming home from his therapy session in Charlottesville on a Friday night. We hit a traffic jam due to a wreck on I64 ahead of us.  He was a drummer in the band at school and had his drumsticks in his bookbag. After about 30 minutes of sitting in the car at a standstill, he turned up his music, rolled down the windows, and started drumming on the dashboard of the car with his drumsticks for the next hour.  I took small bottles of hand sanitizer and joined in the jam on the steering wheel.  We laughed and talked a little more than usual. 

Part of the lesson of being a foster parent was mine to learn… to clear my head of set expectations…to just be there and go with the flow. To not judge by typical outcomes…to be flexible…to appreciate the small openings in conversations and humorous interactions where connections were made.

Today, I would just want the siblings to know that I love them.