Have you thought about what will happen to your children after adoption if you were to die unexpectedly? This summer, my husband and I were forced to seriously think about plans for our young boys after we are gone.
In May, after a long while of suffering through lower back pain, I made an appointment for my husband to visit a chiropractor for some sort of relief. When the chiropractor showed my husband the x-rays of his lower back, it became evident that his back pain was the least of his worries. The x-ray showed a large mass on his kidney!
We were on pins and needles as we waited for the appointment with the specialist. If we weren’t stressed out enough, the very next day, I received a call from my doctor that my mammogram showed two suspicious areas.
After that call, we both became overwhelmed by the realization of our mortality. Who would take care of us and our boys if we were both sick? What if we both died with our boys so young? What would happen to them?
In March 2014, when my doctor discovered that I had cancer, for months, I worried about my husband and boys. But this was now different with both of us facing cancer.
We adopted our boys later in life. Our parents are older, and our siblings either have health issues themselves or aren’t in a position to raise two young boys with special emotional needs.
And the questions plagued me and rolled over and over in my mind: “Who would raise our boys?” “Who could handle raising two grief-stricken boys?” “How will the boys be able to handle the grief of losing both parents so young?”
I constantly thought of the Russian boy my husband taught a decade ago. Sergei was 9 years old when he was adopted from a Russian orphanage. He was happy boy and glad to be out of the orphanage and finally have a family. However, cancer decided that it would take over the body of Sergei’s new dad. And cancer took over quickly. Within two years of finally getting a father, Sergei lost him to cancer. We moved soon after and lost touch, but the last we heard, Sergei had become violent in dealing with his grief, and for the safety of his family, Sergei had to move to a boys ranch.
The fate of Sergei gripped hold of me and filled me with fear for my own son that now struggles with handling big emotions. Would my son handle grief the same way as Sergei? Would my son’s life have the same outcome as Sergei’s?
My prayer is that we won’t ever have to find out. Through the battery of followup tests, both my husband and I finally got the fabulous news that our numerous tests showed no cancer. Praise God for blessing our family with miracle after miracle!
