Remembering a Great Man

A few days ago I ran into one of my neighbors at a local Starbucks. I met her in 2008 when she and her husband Don volunteered with me on our neighborhood team working to elect Barack Obama. Don was a soft-spoken man, but he had so many important things to say. I was always impressed with his calm demeanor and his way of diffusing difficult situations. He had an adult son with special needs, and my heart melted when I watched the two of them together. He was an amazing father; he was a good person with a special soul. He was very Zen. He was the type of person you felt lucky to know. While I didn't keep in close touch with Don and his wife after the election was over, I frequently ran into them in the neighborhood and we'd stop to have coffee or chat with one another whenever we had the chance.

So I was absolutely floored a few days ago when I ran into Don's wife at Starbucks and she told me that he had passed away. He had been diagnosed with the late stages of pancreatic cancer and there wasn't much that could be done. I still am having a hard time believing that he's gone.

There was something else very special about Don. After we adopted Lily, it was normal for us to run into friends and acquaintances in the neighborhood and get some surprised looks when they saw us with a baby. I clearly hadn't been pregnant and I wasn't at all offended by people's interest in how Lily came into our lives. In my 60-seconds-or-less version, I always mentioned the fact that we have an open adoption, that Lily's birth parents live locally, and that we would be having an ongoing relationship with them. I did this in part because I wanted the rest of the world to know that open adoption is happening and it's not something that should be shocking or something that we should be afraid of.

The response to the fact that we have an open adoption has often been "that's so nice of you," which of course sets off all sorts of alarms inside of me. I would explain that we are the beneficiaries of Lily's adoption, and having an ongoing relationship with her wonderful first parents is the natural thing to do. (After all, no one tells me how nice we are to facilitate a relationship between our children and my sisters and parents.) But when I told Don about our open adoption ... for some reason, I don't remember exactly what he said, but I do remember thinking that his reaction to our open adoption was different. He also complimented us, but in a different way. It wasn't until the third of fourth time I saw him after we had adopted Lily that he told me that he had been adopted as a baby, too. And so had his sister. He told me that his sister had searched and searched for her birth parents but never found them. He gave me the impression that it had somewhat broken her. He also told me that he never had the motivation to search for his birth parents, but I could see in his eyes how happy he felt for Lily that she wouldn't ever have to search, or think about whether or not to search.

The world lost such a wonderful person when Don passed, and at the risk of sounding childish, it's just not fair that he had to leave so soon. Adding to the heartbreak is the fact that his birth family never got to know what an amazing person he was. What a tremendous loss for them.

I will think of Don often. I will remember his smile, his witty remarks, his fighting spirit. His passing reminds me how thankful I am for all the people in my life, for my family that grew in such unexpected ways. It's a bittersweet new year. I'm ready for 2012.