Dear Daisy …. A Letter To A Lost Grandaughter

Last Updated on: 28th February 2020, 08:16 pm

Dear Daisy

I have been thinking about you a lot recently because you started school this September. I can’t believe the time has gone so fast! It doesn’t seem like 4 years ago that you were taken from us. I pray all the time that you have a better life than the one you were destined to have. And I think about the lucky escape you had from the life you could have been faced with. I thank God that people intervened and you were safe from the moment you were born. I miss you like hell every single day. I never even got the chance to meet you, but that was my choice. I wanted to protect myself from the hurt of becoming attached to you and then losing you.

Photo by Karl Fredrickson on Unsplash

Every day I hope you are safe, that you have been placed with a loving family and that they are going to keep you safe. A family that would never dream of putting your own safety at risk like your own father. For a while, whilst you were being fostered, a friend knew of you and would let me know you were safe and happy. But as soon as you were adopted, I knew I had to let you go for the sake of my family. I couldn’t mourn for you anymore.
The main reason I think about you is that I am going to be a grandma again! Zach and Amber are having a baby in March! Amber called me one day whilst I was at work, she wasn’t going to tell me but I guessed. I was so excited for them, but also worried about losing another grandchild and telling Tilly would bring so many memories back for Tilly of her sister being pregnant and her wondering where the baby had gone. Tilly was only 5 years old when you were born and it was difficult enough for her to deal with Beth disappearing from her life and all she knew was that her baby was with a new family because Beth was too poorly to look after her.

It took a few years of therapy to get Tilly back to where she is today, a happy content child. She still has her bad days. She has separation issues and worries if things don’t go to plan. If we are doing something different than normal, I have to go through it with her a dozen times before she is confident enough to do it.  She worries every single day that there will be nobody to collect her from the school gates at the end of the day. We are working through it and she is starting to trust again.

But now I get a second chance at being a grandma. And Kim and Tilly get a chance to be an active aunty to a baby. I don’t see the sparkle in Kim’s eyes like there was when Beth was pregnant with you and that saddens me a little.

But we are all being blessed with a new baby, it’s a fresh start and it’s a future for us all. A miracle baby that will bind my little family, even closer than it is now. Amber and Zach have been wonderful and they are including us in everything from the pregnancy updates to the scans. Tilly is looking forward to being an aunty, and is as impatient as ever! She was amazing at keeping it secret and she has been carefully looking at baby stuff in the shops with Amber, being her bossy self and deciding what’s good enough for the baby.

The new baby is going a long way to help heal my broken heart but it will never be completely healed until you are old enough and come home to us. When you’re old enough to understand what happened so early on in your life. I thank your adoptive family for looking after you and even though they didn’t give birth to you, they are your real parents. They love and cherish you, they sit up with you all night when you’re sick and they held your hand as you walked into school for the first time. They have wiped your tears away and shared the good times with you. I feel jealous that I missed out on all of this, but I know you must be happy.

People ask me if the if the new baby is my first grandchild, sometimes it’s easier to say yes because I don’t feel strong enough to explain about you. Other times I say no, it’s my second grandchild and explain my first one is with another family. You will never be forgotten, there is a huge peice of my heart that belongs to you. One day my heart will be complete again.

I am so scared of being hurt again, of losing another grandchild, I don’t think I could cope if I did. I’m scared of getting close to a baby again like I did with you when Beth was pregnant and it seems easier to distance myself a bit at times. It’s not that I don’t care for my new grandchild, it’s that I am so scared of my world collapsing again. I know deep in my heart that it’s not going to happen, but there is always going to be that worry until the baby arrives safely.

I feel saddened that you won’t grow up with the new baby, as much as you won’t grow up with Tilly. But I know that one day you will meet them and you will meet Amber, you will find out for yourself, what a wonderful person she is. She is doing so much to get us involved with the pregnancy and Zach has already told me I have to go to Holland more than we do already after the baby is born.

Until we meet again

Love from your grandma.