9/11

I never thought this day could be worse that it was 7 years ago. My husband and I have gone over what to do "just in case". "Just in case" it happens again. "Just in case" it happens on our door step. We've gone over what to do, how to handle the children and ourselves. We've made sure that we've made plans to tend to our family "just in case".

What happens now? What if it does happen again? Or what if it's worse? What if ...

Our children are out of our care. We don't know what would happen to them "if". We don't know how they would be taken care of. We don't even know if they would be thought about.

I tense at every breaking news story that I see. I cringe at every teaser for our local news station that starts with "child injured" and ends with "details at 11" with nothing in between. I hope and pray every time that it's not one of our babies. That our babies are safe. But we can't know. We can't take care of them. We can't make sure that they're safe.

We were accused of neglect. We never neglected our children. We have stood up, silenced by all parties, and had to take it when they dissected our lives bit by bit. We have taken it. When is CPS going to face that charge? When are they going to have to stand up, not be able to say a word in their defense and be accused of all that they have actually done... torn apart a wonderful, strong family, abused our children (not to mention, us) by tearing them from their loving home and their adoring parents, attempted to destroy four innocent lives because of one bad day? When do they have to take it?

I want the hurt to stop. I want the waiting to be over. I want my children home where I know they are safe, fed, warm, comfortable, loved. I want them home and CPS gone.

I never thought that I would have to go to sleep not knowing what my little babies had for breakfast, what they wore for the day or how their days went.

I feel so empty with them gone.

It's been a long time. Nothing much has changed here. Our children are still gone, with no reunification in sight.

For a while all of this actually started getting easier. The once a week for an hour visits, the near constant services, going to be every night without any little, loving night-night kisses. I started seeing a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. I don't know what changed and took it back to being hard as hell. Maybe it was the fact that the relative that our children are staying with stopped communicating with us. So now we don't know what's going on with them. We don't know how they are or what they're up to (big change after knowing everything about them). We don't know when they're ill or injured. We don't know anything. They might as well be with strangers for all we know about them right now. At this point, after hearing and learning some things, I don't even trust that they're safe anymore. But what do I do? As far as CPS is concerned, our relatives are wonderful people. So they passed the background check. So what?

Maybe it's gotten tougher because so much time has passed with no clear end in sight and every time we head into court, there's another obstacle placed in our way.

Maybe it's gotten tougher because every day that passes is one more day I've missed with my babies.

The house is so quiet now. It shouldn't be. It's so tidy now. It shouldn't be. Stuffed toys that were never put down now have gathered so much dust that you can't even tell what color they were meant to be.

This stinks.