by Karen Ardy

Created on: July 07, 2009

Memoir: A Child Lost

He was taken away. Given to another family to love. My son. My precious, beautiful son. And my heart is broken. The pain is my constant companion.

We decided to adopt a child. We also decided that we wanted a special needs child and one day, a tiny boy with Down syndrome visited our home. He was shy and would not come into my arms but he reached out his little hand and stroked my arm and at that moment, I knew he was meant to be mine.

My other two children are grown now and parents themselves. I have eight wonderful grandchildren that bring untold joy to my life. And yet, I still had so much love to give. I'm not young but I am healthy and strong. I have an excellent job working with special needs children in the public school system and my partner of six years was an instructor at our local college. We had a lovely home and so much to offer a child.

I am a lesbian. Fortunately, I am also a Canadian and that means I have the legal right to marry the woman I love and to adopt a child. I had found the woman I loved and married her and now I was embarking on the road to adoption.

My partner had never given birth to a child of her own. She had helped raise a child from the age of eight but with the breakdown of her previous relationship, the now grown child was not a part of her life. I found this curious and odd but brushed away my concerns over the years. I could never lose touch with a child I loved but I decided I had to respect that she was different than me. That should have been a huge red flag. Hindsight is an amazing thing! She was also an alcoholic with ten years of sobriety. And she was selfish. Her own needs always came first and I accepted this because I loved her. I also truly believed that having a child to love would change this about her and she would come to realize that once a child enters your home and heart - you will never be number one again. I was wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

We became foster parents so that we could take our little boy into our home immediately while the adoption process was underway. Those few weeks of waiting to be approved as a foster parent seemed to crawl by and I anxiously waited for each visit with this tiny angel. We painted his room and bought accessories that hinted at being in a wonderland of dragons and castles. My daughter, waiting with a welcoming heart for her little brother to arrive designed a mural for his wall with a castle and a dragon and wildflowers

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