December 21 will always anchor itself to both ends of the life spectrum in my memory… from a life added to a life absent. Today I’m reflecting on these events from 5 and 6 years ago.
Six years ago today, Jonathan took on a new name. He went from Jonathan S______ to Jonathan DUNCAN. Our adoption paperwork was finalized, a legal seal acknowledging a reality that we were already living- he was ours, and we were his. Though we had been with him just hours into his life in January, December 21, 2018 marked a new, joyful rock of remembrance for our family– a life added!
Adoption always casts its uncomfortable shadows, though. What was gained for us, I grieve for another. While I rejoice on this day every year, I also remember the ones who have an absent family member… family members who never even knew him. And yet his life was protected, guarded, and prayed over by his precious surrogate and a host of others.
One year later, December 21, 2019, we, likewise, experienced the ache of an absent family member. The sacred realities of life’s frailty pulled my mother from this life to the next. In the early hours of the morning, she breathed her last breath.
Her death, etched into the same date as Jonathan’s adoption one year earlier, makes me feel strangely more connected to Jonathan’s roots, and today I sit in the tension of addition and absence, holding both in a delicate balance.
Woven together with joy and sorrow, December 21 will always be a day I hold in reverence.
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