owning up to an Abortion

it was the courage of a fellow blogger that led me to write this post

jayleen over @ from GRRRR to there posted her own abortion experience

Today is Mother’s Day

it took a lot of courage for her to post this (not only @ :: GRRR, but also @ :: to slam a revolving door, a spiritualist site she co-authors)

and those posts inspired me to detail my own experience with abortion.

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i made some reallllllly dumb decisions in my youth

chief of which was walking away from the love of my life . . . followed closely by my decision to defraud a few banks out of about a quarter million dollars.

both decisions played heavily in the death of my daughter, my only child, by abortion.

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i won’t bother going into the whole *tissue-versus-toddler* issue.

any lump of tissue that comes with it’s own brain and motor function gets the benefit of the doubt from me.

and in the end, the argument is moot. it doesn’t matter the least to me what anyone thinks of that lump of tissue because my grief at her loss is not a mere philosophical debate. it is a personal tragedy. because to me she wasn’t a lump of tissue. she was my daughter.

the pregnancy wasn’t planned.

hell, the relationship wasn’t planned.

(as i said, i had left the love of my life-otherwise i’d never have been with this girl)

but it happened. and it happened during a time in my life when i was doing some pretty dumb sh*t. i was running around with a girl i shouldn’t have been running around with doing things i had no business doing.

long and short, i ended up in prison facing down a sizable chunk of time

& my young girlfriend was left holding the bag

after the first two weeks of my incarceration, long before anything was decided, the letters stopped coming and my own letters were being returned unopened. after a few months of silence, i began to adapt to the idea that i was all on my own.

then it came.

a single letter.

i had, for whatever reason, decided to skip rec and as a result was the only man in my cell block when the mail came early that day.

so, i was alone as i read the news and i dropped to my knees as if someone had neatly sliced all the tendons in my legs and feet. yet even in that moment, as my body fell and my mouth stretched and my heart beat against my ribs like it was willing to break them in pieces to gnaw its way out of my chest, even then i felt god with me.

and clear as day i heard that divine voice inside myself, forbidding me to grieve with a few simple words ::

she is with me

i later had it confirmed that the baby we had aborted was indeed a girl, a daughter. she had no name and where she dwells i don’t much think she needs one, but in my heart i call her samantha because that is what i would have named a daughter i had with that woman at that time in my life.

now, i’ll be the first one to advocate a father’s right to at least have some input in a decision like that, but then i also take responsibility for my own part in driving her to that decision.

it is not the decision i would have made. but it was my decision (in a round about way) to leave her alone to make that decision on her own

::

i believe i will see my daughter one day.

and i look forward to that day

i do not agonize over the decisions that led me to conceiving her or the subsequent decisions that led to me losing her.

i mentioned something similar in a recent post, but it bears repeating ::

as christians we believe in heaven, but we take great offense at death . . . forgetting that death is our door into god’s presence.

all other ways are but windows, providing glimpses, perhaps, but no real means of entry.

::

would i change things if i could?

i suppose i would.

but lacking that faerietale option, i choose to smile when i think of her

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she did not experience this life. but i do believe she is experiencing a life i have only barely glimpsed. a life i will one day share with her as i will share it with the ones i have loved in this life

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i will not call her samantha

she will not call me stephen . . . or dad.

::

we will know even as we are known . . . and it will be enough