Today I got a rare opportunity, and I took it. I seized the moment, right here and now, to let my long lost niece know that I love her.  I let her know that things are not as they seem, nor as she was told.  While it started off kind of rough in a Facebook message, with my detecting her sarcasm and angry tone in her postings, I knew deep down inside that this 14 year old child needed to hear what I had to say. And … I think she wanted to or else she would not have engaged me in conversation.  It would have ended with a few cross words from her, but it didn’t.  I have been waiting for the past four years to tell her, and I had the chance I’ve been looking for.  The chance to tell her I love her, even with no response back from her.  That was okay that she didn’t return the words of love to me.  It is okay if I tell her a million times and never hear it from her lips or see it on a screen.  It is only important that I tell her, and I let her know.  I also had the chance to tell her that she was taken from us years ago, and we were forbidden from having any further contact with her.  At one point, she was to come live with us as her father asked this of us four years ago, yet shortly thereafter, her father and his family snatched her back away from us.  I told her that I wish things had been different and had I been given the chance, I would have raised her as my very own.   She is bitter, and I can sense through her hostility, that she is just a lost little girl that needs love. She needs to know that she matters and that above all, she is loved completely despite how she is right this very minute – distant, bitter, cold, and hurting deep inside.  I told her that today.  I let her know that I am still a part of her family – whether she wanted me to be or not – and I love her.  Oh, how I wish my sister was still here, things would have been so much different if she would not have ended her life 14 years ago due to postpartum depression.  But today, here and now, I got a chance to tell her daughter that her mother — my sister — loves her (I refuse to use past tense), even still today from Heaven.  She loves her daughter — my niece — so much, and this little girl, who feels so lost, unloved, and unhappy, is still her mother’s pride and joy.  All the way from Heaven’s door, here and now.

I thank God for this opportunity today and my niece’s openness to a conversation with me.  Although she made negative remarks about her dad and step-mom, I focused on stating what I knew for a fact from my perspective, as I am sure no one told her why we are no longer a part of her life.  It is not by our choice.  She learned the truth today.  Here and now.

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This post was inspired

by the prompt word of “Here”

for Kate’s Five Minute Friday.

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One of the last pictures we have of Melanie from 2011 when we were allowed to have her.  I treasure our time together.