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Kinship Care Resource Network |
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Many caregivers have inspirational stories. This is a venue to share stories and provide encouragement. Contribute your story by clicking on the Share page.
My story, like so many other grandparents who are raising their grandchildren, began many years ago, in 1987 when my granddaughter was born. At birth my granddaughter weighed only 1 lb. 4 oz. When she was born I was forced to quit my job at Strong Memorial Hospital, in order to take care of her. I also had to find assistance from different agencies: my granddaughter was born in Maryland and I wanted her here in me in Rochester. I needed help. I couldn't even bring her to Rochester without assistance. Due to her size a birth and other medical challenges, I could not fly back to Rochester with her on a regular airplane. I was able to arrange a flight to Washington, DC with the help of WVOR (a radio station). WVOR also helped me to arrange a Mercy Flight to Rochester with the my granddaughter. This was a journey that would dramatically change my life. Two years alter my life was significantly changed again, when my grandson was born. He weighed only 1 lb 3 oz. Both of my grandchildren were premature because my daughter was using drugs. I again went to Maryland to bring my grandson home because my daughter was not stable enough to take care of him. Now I was parenting two grandchildren. In 1990 I went to Maryland to bring my daughter back to Rochester. She was living in a situation where she was using drugs and she was being abused. She also had been shot at. I wanted desperately to remove her from the life she had there. I wanted her circumstances to change and I prayed that she too would change. After I brought her back to Rochester she did well for about two months. Then she returned to the drug scene. I had a dream about my daughter back then, I dreamt that she was in a wooded area and she had been shot. Later on in my dream I remember she was laying in a hospital bed, and then dream ended with the doctors pronouncing here and her baby dead. My worst nightmare became a reality when a year later I was listening to the news. It was a Wednesday night. I heard that an unidentified woman's body had been found in a wooded area. The next day while at work, I receive a phone call from the police department. They had found a pin on the victim's clothing which identified the agency where I was working. The pin had belonged to me. Yes, the victim was my daughter. She had been and strangled and found with a plastic bag on her head. Her body was decomposed. It was two days before her 26th birthday. That was 11 years ago. My grandchildren are now 12 and 14 years old. I know the impact the loss of my daughter has had on me, yet--imagine the impact on her two children. My daughter was first diagnosed with mental illness at around age 20. She then became pregnant and placed her son in foster care, deciding after one month that she couldn't leave him there, she brought him home to raise him. My husband I watched our grandson often. Soon after brining the infant home, my daughter had a psychological evaluation and we were asked to come and get our grandson and care for him until his mother could assume her parents duties. At ages 52 and 63, my husband and I were concerned that we were too old to care for the child. Once my daughter was discharged from the hospital she placed the baby in foster care again. We visited often and cried all the way home, until we decided to keep him and establish "legal residence" with the court. Social Services wanted the baby's father to take him, but he had no way to take care of him. Our daughter had been abused by the child's father and didn't her son to face similar abuse. The court granted us Legal Residence. The Law Guardian recommended we apply for Women, Infant and Children's Program (WIC), Aid to Dependent Children, (ADC), and health insurance. He also told us to hire a very good lawyer in case of future problems. Over the next 12 years, we returned to court many times. Three times were summoned. Our second time in court we were awarded "legal guardianship". We were unable to pay this wonderful attorney and he let us keep a tab. Eventually we were able to the attorney fees; it took us three years to pay him what we owed him. My husband and I continued to run our farm during this time and we kept our grandson with us. he would take playpen naps right wherever we were. To this day many people ask about the "little fella in the playpen." Some of the service options were inflexible, like daycare for instance--it was all or nothing. So we hired a daycare providers privately. Our grandson also was enrolled in preschool and attended Bible school during the summers. When he became old enough, we enrolled him in kindergarten at a Catholic School. The staff helped to be a constant in our grandson's life. He sometimes had a real hard time going back and forth with visits to Mom and Dad. Our social life suffered, becoming nonexistent, except for family gatherings. Sometimes I felt estranged from our other children and not as close as we would like to have been with our other grandchildren. However, things have been better the last year or so, and we are starting to have a relationship with all of them. Our grandson has brought us much joy and happiness. We eventually are able to talk through our problems--a major accomplishment with teenagers. I think I'm doing a better job with my grandson than I did with my own six. Our grandson has had his share of swimming lessons, soccer, baseball, basketball and now he's running cross-country. We have begun to enjoy family-type vacations, going to Canada and the Finger Lakes. We like to go fishing together, sometimes with other family members. My grandson has taught me a few things along the way. One day he asked me why I worry so much about him and added, "you know God's always with me." Another time, he said people asked him why he's so nice and he replied "because my Gramma and Grampa raised me, and they are very nice." We get our goodnight kisses, just like we used to get when he was little. Every night now, Since September 11th, he has given us a kiss. He sees his mom about every month or so. He has learned about love, respect and self-discipline, and he shares our faith in God. His is our boy, we are his parents, no one else can relate to him the way we do, and no one understands--not our children, our grandchildren, nor our brothers and sisters. In many ways, it is a bittersweet journey. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________ When my daughter and her husband had their son, my daughter didn't immediately recover. A staph infection set in, and she ended up spending more than month at our house, so we could care for her and the baby. She was eventually well enough to return to her job as an RN, but her nightshift hours made it easier to simply leave the baby at our house, where we already had a routine, rather than transfer him around at midnight. My daughter was not well, emotionally or physically. If she took the baby home, she brought him back within a day or two, exasperated and impatient. It was hard to put my finger on just what was wrong, but she didn't seem to be bonded to her baby, and finally admitted she was having a problem with alcohol. She started attending A. A., but continued to leave the baby with us. Within a few months, she and her husband separated. As the months and then years went by, somehow, our grandson never did go home. It was a very difficult situation in so many ways: My daughter was difficult to deal with. She couldn't cope with her inability to care for the baby, and lashed out verbally at us and him. One day she might seem willing to let him stay with us, another time she would come over hysterical and angry, threatening to take him and put him in foster care. Her husband moved out of state shortly after they divorced, and our little grandson had to do without his father. We did everything we could to give him a stable, loving home, but we could not erase the insecurity or hurt he felt. Then, we had to deal with the emotional and academic problems he developed. By the time he was in Pre-K, he had developed severe asthma and allergies. Friends and family had a field day commenting about and dissecting the situation; it seemed everyone had an opinion on what we should have been doing, although they knew little of the true facts of the situation. Many people insisted we should force his mother to take him to live with her, and became almost contemptuous because we were not willing to do that. We did not want to punish our grandson because his mother was not capable of caring for a child. Over the next twenty years, we provided a home for our grandson, without support from either of his parents. We didn't know we could have gotten some financial help. His mother would become sporadically involved in his life. Our grandson loves his mother, as we do, but that does not make the situation any easier. When his school problems became severe, his mother tried to have him removed from our home and put in foster care. We ended up in court, and thankfully the judge ruled that we were not guilty of educational neglect. It has been very painful to watch my daughter try to deal with her guilt, and to see our grandson struggle with his own feelings. We have always encouraged him to keep a relationship with her, I only wish she was able to have a real relationship with him. But we will always be here for him.
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