My first son was born September 20th, 1996. That day was memorable for so many reasons. The fear of not knowing what to expect during childbirth was now behind me, my family was all there to help us welcome him to the world, and most importantly my husband Quentin got to meet the first person in his life that he shared a bloodline with.
It was a moment that you can’t quite describe on paper but it is one that will forever live in my heart and one that changed my husband’s life.
As you may have guessed, my husband was adopted. Having grown up with a mother who was adopted and then a husband who was, I saw very quickly what a moment of meeting someone for the first time, who you share blood with, meant to him. My mother is no different. The bond she has with her biological brother is remarkable and touching and true. That bond means acceptance, belonging, connection, family. Looking into the eyes of his son that first time he held him, you could tell that Quentin felt all of those things.
It was only a year before my husband met his son for the first time, that he found himself strapped to an EKG at the St. Boniface Hospital in Winnipeg. He had been experiencing chest pain, labored breathing and light headedness. He was 26 years old and not your typical patient to be having a heart attack! I’m happy to say that in the end, it wasn’t his heart but rather a culmination of a stressful job, inactivity and anxiety. What that moment did do for him was to prove that he needed to take better care of himself, both mentally and physically. When you are lying in a hospital bed not knowing what is wrong with you, but knowing that clearly something is, it can bring such moments of clarity, as it did for Quentin. He realized that he didn’t want to die and that he would do anything to prevent that from happening. And pretty much from that day on, Quentin has gone to the gym for his daily workout.
He did it for himself. He did it for me. He did it for the only 3 people he knows in this world who share his blood. He did it so that he can have more time in this life to experience acceptance, belonging, connection and most important of all, family.
