Maybe the hardest thing for us to face each day is the empty bed.  I bought the bed well over a year ago.  It was like striking gold when I found it on ebay.  It was a perfect match for Caelan’s bed, a bed my grandmother had bought for my mother over 60 years ago.  Caelan’s bed is on one side of her room, and Jennifer’s is on the opposite side.

 

I shopped so carefully for sheets and a comforter that would accent what I’d already put together for Caelan.  I made sure each detail was matched in quality so that our Jennifer would know she was on equal footing with her sister.  We set the bed up early last fall and it has remained untouched, unused for nearly ten months now.

 

Caelan started to complain to us about the empty bed. She said it bothered her to see it empty. We asked her if she would like us to take it down. She quickly said no.  She said if we took the bed down then there was no hope that Jennifer would ever come home.

 

There is no hope that Jennifer will be coming home. Our adoption failed because I have multiple sclerosis.  I was diagnosed five years ago, but since I have no disability, I didn’t see any reason to be public about it.  That, and people immediately begin to treat you weird when you tell them you have MS.  So Brian and I have pretty much kept it quiet.

 

But going into the adoption, I knew certain countries would reject us outright because of my MS.  So we asked our adoption agency to find out if Peru would accept me as an adoptive parent.  They responded, via email, that my MS would not be a problem.  We proceeded with the adoption.  About a month later, we received a phone call from the adoption agency saying that the Peruvian attorneys had decided that it would be better to keep quiet about my MS.  We were instructed to remove all references to it from our dossier.

 

When we traveled to get Jennifer, I became overtired and suffered an MS flare up.  That’s what triggered my intense vertigo.  You all know what happened after that.  When Brian and I returned home, we pressed our adoption agency repeatedly to disclose my MS to Peru, but they refused, saying “that it was not in our best interest.”  

We finally began a direct dialogue with Peru, during which we disclosed my MS.  Since telling them I have MS, Peru has stopped discussing the adoption with us.  They will only tell us that a decision has been made in our case and that we will be receiving a letter.  We’ve yet to receive it.

 

 I was never a candidate to adopt from Peru and our adoption agency should not have taken our money.  The agency’s contracted attorneys never cleared my condition with authorities as we asked them to.  While in Peru, they dragged me to a back alley doctor and paid for a diagnosis of reflux to try to explain away my illness.  

 

We’ve been struggling all of these months to try to heal as a family.  And then we heard about a program called KidSave.  It is a non-profit organization that brings orphans from Colombia to spend 5 weeks in the United States in the hope of helping them find adoptive families.  This year Orlando was to be a host city.

 

The empty bed!  For at least five weeks we could have that empty bed filled with a giggling, wonder-filled child.  We could put some life into that empty bed and perhaps help to heal the wounds left by Peru.  We signed up immediately.

 

But the empty bed will remain as it is at least for the summer.  The Orlando program didn’t raise the funding needed to bring any orphans from Colombia.  What’s worse, we were the only family who volunteered to host.  And so for now things stay as they have been.  The adoption agency has our money.  Peru has Jennifer, and all we have is an empty bed.