The Cost of Forever

Tonight, the house is quiet. The kind of quiet that feels thick, like it’s holding its breath. I tiptoed into his room a little while ago, just to watch him sleep. My nephew. My son. My little boy. Tomorrow morning, I will walk into a courtroom and, with the bang of a gavel, the world will finally recognize what my heart has known for over eight years: he is mine. Fully. Forever. And while tomorrow is the culmination of years of prayers, paperwork, and perseverance, tonight is something else entirely. Tonight is sacred. Heavy. A mixture of mourning and blessing that only my soul seems to understand.

Before there was this chapter of motherhood, there was a page torn out from somewhere else, ripped from the story of someone I love just as fiercely. Because before I became his mother, I was his father’s sister. And I still am. And it’s in this space, this impossible, emotional in-between, that I sit tonight. I’ve never been able to say this out loud, not really. But tonight, it sits heavy in my chest, unrelenting. Loving someone with addiction is a grief unlike any other. It’s like loving a ghost still trapped inside a breathing body. There’s no funeral. No final goodbye. Just a slow, quiet vanishing. You watch them fade in pieces, bit by bit, while their eyes still open and close and their voice still speaks in familiar tones. You hold hope in one hand and heartbreak in the other, praying one doesn’t crush the other completely. You mourn someone who’s still alive. You scream into a silence that stays cold and still. And the worst part, the part that never stops cutting, is knowing that sometimes love demands you draw a line. That sometimes saving a child means losing a brother. That sometimes helping means becoming the villain in someone else’s story. Like a betrayal born from love. Like trying to stop the bleeding for someone who swears you’re the one who stabbed them. You want to help, but sometimes helping them means hurting them more. And that’s what this feels like.

It feels like betrayal. And when a child is involved, that grief becomes even more complicated. Choosing what’s best for the child you love deeply also means stepping into a space your loved one couldn’t hold. That has never stopped feeling like treachery. Like I’m reaching for the life my brother lost while holding onto the one he gave. Like I'm holding my brother’s baby in my arms and saying I’ll do what you couldn’t. And how can that not feel like a knife twisting in a wound that already bleeds?

But what people don’t often see is how many tears I’ve cried for him. How many times I’ve begged God to just let him come back. How every ounce of love I pour into this boy is steeped in the ache of missing his father. This choice didn’t come from anger. It didn’t come from judgment. It came from love… raw, desperate, all consuming love. Love for my brother. Love for his son. Love that begged for something more than what either of them had. I remember who my brother was before the darkness swallowed him whole. And this little boy, who I’ve rocked through night terrors and cheered for, he has never been just my nephew. He has always been mine. And yet, the moment of signing that paper, of hearing that gavel, still feels like I’m stealing something. As if somewhere deep inside, I still want to believe my brother will come back and be who he was before the weight of life crushed him. But I know he won’t. And I know, without a shred of hesitation, that adopting his child is the right thing. The best thing. The only thing. Still, that doesn’t make it easy.

I wanted both of them. I wanted my brother whole and this child safe in his arms. But I couldn’t have both. So I chose the innocent child. And I’ll choose him every single time. The love I carry for my brother hasn’t vanished. It just changed shape. It became lullabies at midnight and homework at the kitchen table. It became doctor’s appointments, birthday parties, and a million whispered prayers. It became motherhood. And it’s a strange, sacred thing to realize you can grieve and honor someone by stepping into the space they couldn’t fill. It’s also terrifying. And holy. And endlessly humbling. I’m not sure I’ll sleep tonight. My body is too full of memory. Too full of pain. Of both of them.

Still, reconciling the fact that my greatest gift came from his greatest heartbreak is something I may never fully make peace with. This little boy wants this. He’s wanted it for a long time. He crossed off the days on his calendar, counting down with giddy anticipation. He smiles when he says the word “adoption.” He tells me he’s proud to be mine. But if I could undo the pain that made this necessary, I would in a heartbeat. I wish he had never known what it feels like to be left. To be afraid. To feel like he had to be small to be safe. I wish love had reached him sooner. I wish love had reached his father sooner, too.

My brother is angry with me. Furious, really. The kind of fury that scorches everything in its path. The last words he said to me were that I was dead to him, that he never wanted to see me or speak to me again. And as much as those words tore through me, left me gutted and gasping, I understand. I really, painfully do. Because what felt like an act of mercy from where I stood must’ve felt like the deepest betrayal imaginable from where he was falling. I took his child, and no matter how right, how drenched in love, or necessary that decision was, it still came at the cost of something sacred. It came from love, but it didn’t feel like love to him. It felt like loss. Like rejection. It looked like I’d given up on him. And I know that, to someone already drowning in shame, it probably felt like I was the one holding the weight that finally pulled him under.

What he can’t see, what he may never see, is how long I fought for both of them. How I stood in the storm long after it had swallowed the sky, breaking over and over again while still reaching for the brother I knew was buried beneath the wreckage. I clung to the hope that the man I remembered, the one who loved fiercely with his wild heart, was still in there somewhere, waiting to be pulled from the edge. But when the storm kept raging and the cost kept rising, I had to choose. And I chose the one who couldn’t choose for himself. The innocent child caught in the crossfire of someone else’s undoing. I know his pain has its own gravity, its own rules, its own rhythm that beats louder than reason. I know his anger isn’t just rage… it’s heartbreak that doesn’t know where to land. And I don’t blame him. I really don’t. All I can do is carry the ache he left behind, and hope that one day, when the fog lifts and the wounds stop gushing, he’ll see it clearly… that this was never about giving up on him. It was about refusing to give up on his son. About stepping in where love was needed most, even when it shattered me to have to do it.

Tonight is a night of remembrance. Of grieving what was lost and giving thanks for what was found. It’s a night of sacred contradictions. I am tired in a way that only the soul feels, but I am also more alive than ever. Because tomorrow, I don’t just gain a son. I gain a forever. And even if the world says it’s just a piece of paper, I know the truth. It’s the closing of one chapter and the beginning of another… but it’s more than that. It’s the burial of a dream and the birth of a promise. It’s the ache of letting go and the breathless wonder of holding on. And as I sit here, wrapped in the silence of everything this night means, I offer one last whispered vow to them both, to the brother I lost to a battle that swallowed him whole, and the boy I get the sacred, terrifying privilege of raising: I am doing my best. I am pouring every fractured, healing, fiercely beating part of me into this child. I am loving him in all the ways I wish we had been loved. I am loving him for both of us. And I pray that somewhere in the space between what was and what is, that’s enough.

Tomorrow, the gavel falls… loud, final, undeniable. It will echo through a courtroom, sealing a forever we’ve already been living. But tonight, I will allow myself to feel it all. The weight of what’s been lost. The cost of what’s been gained. The love that saved him. The grief that nearly drowned me. Every moment, every memory, every ache and every answered prayer… it lives here, in this silence, in this breath, in this sacred pause before everything changes and yet nothing really does.
Forever starts in the morning.
And tonight… Tonight, I let myself feel the cost of it all.

Author’s note:
Originally written September 22, 2021 - "Some things break your heart and heal it in the same breath."

It’s been three and a half years since I wrote these words. Three and a half years since I sat in the dark, holding the weight of both love and loss in trembling hands. Three and a half years since the gavel fell and made legal what my heart had already claimed. And three and a half years since my big brother - my first friend - last looked at me with fire in his eyes. I’ve spoken to him twice since then. Just two brief conversations over messages in a stretch of years that feel like a lifetime. He still won’t speak to me. And as much as that fractures me in places I thought had already broken, I still understand. I always have.

The ache of loving someone who feels betrayed by your love is not something that dulls. It lives just beneath the skin, raw, pulsing, ever-present. I miss my brother in ways that language still fumbles to express. I miss the version of him I grew up with. I miss the sound of his laugh, his quick witted jokes, the way we used to sing in the car, using random objects as microphones and props. I miss the way he’d tease me for crying over ET. I miss the way he looked at me like I was safe. Like I was home. And I’ll never forget the last time he looked at me - like I was the one who burned it all down.

What no one prepares you for is how hard it is to grieve someone who is still walking around in the world, still breathing, still living, but not here. Not with you. It’s an invisible loss. One that’s difficult to name but impossible to ignore. Especially when that grief is layered on top of the ones we already share, the ones we already survived together. We buried our mother. We mourned our baby brother. We carried each other through that kind of sorrow. And now, somehow, I’m carrying the loss of him, too. While he still walks this earth. That kind of grief doesn’t scream. It just lingers. Quiet and unrelenting.

And even still… I would make the same choice again. Because the little boy who now calls me "Mom" needed someone to fight for him when everything else fell apart. And I couldn’t stand in that storm and let him slip away. I chose the child, not to punish my brother, but to protect the best piece of him. That choice came from the deepest place of love I’ve ever known. It was the hardest and holiest thing I’ve ever done.

Grief has layers I didn’t know existed. And somehow, I’m still peeling them back, even now. There are days I want to pick up the phone and just say, “I never stopped loving you. I never stopped hoping for you.” But the silence remains. And I’ve learned that sometimes, all you can do is honor people from afar and love them in the quiet - when they can’t see it, can’t feel it, maybe don’t even want it.

I still carry him with me. Every single day. In the way I parent. In the way I protect. In the way I hope. His absence shaped this version of me just as much as his presence once did. This journey hasn’t gotten easier. It’s just gotten… deeper. The roots of love and grief tangled so tightly that I stopped trying to separate them. Now, I just let them grow.

Three and a half years later, I am still doing my best. Still loving fiercely. Still hoping quietly. Still missing him loudly. And still whispering into the silence: I do understand, big brother.