so very sad.....

ok, so...we got a late christmas card from a couple that i hadn't thought to mention in my earlier blog about missing greetings......and their note was so sad it was painful for me to read.....they had been elated in last year's card about their upcoming trip to one of the 'stans to adopt a pair of siblings...older children with some health problems....she is a nurse and he is a physician...so it seemed a good fit......they underestimated the degree of difficulty....turns out the problems were mental as well as physical......and they ended up relinquishing custody to a couple in oregon who had experience with this sort of thing.....and so they are back to square one....and unsure if they will make a second attempt.....not many options given that they are over 50...china is now off their list.....so very sad...the business of over 50 and off the list.......an aquaintance of ours is having a hysterectomy(we suspect...she is using the euphemisms for her female surgury) soon....and is in quite a funk over it..... she is over 50 and has never had children....and now she can't ever......the finality of the missing uterus must be quite difficult to accept......i cannot imagine......my parents have friends from college, married 50+ years like my folks.....and childless.....i trust they couldn't have children..i cannot imagine that such loving people opted out of parenthood.....i keep in touch because i have fond memories of summer trips to see them.....and because i know that they will mourn with me when my mother passes on......but did they mourn their childless state......ever come to grips with it....or was it so painful as to not be put into words by either party...that their lives were somehow a tad emptier for lack of offspring.....or did they focus on what was right with the picture.....time with each other undivided by the responsibility or the expense of progeny......one cannot know....this is the stuff from which novels spring......books that i will put down because it is pain that i cannot bare to shoulder even for the length of the storyline........