What if he goes and never comes back?

The respite girls come and go. Even those (except Ann of course) that I have got close to I do not have trouble letting go of.

Miss E will leave and never look back. If I see her again it will be entirely by accident. My place in her life, as in the lives of all the respite girls, is comparable, at most, to that of a teacher they liked or was helpful to them. They will be happy to run into me and they just might make an attempt to say hello, but not likely. I feel completely at peace with that. That is all I ever intended to be to them.

Carl and David don't have family, or don't have family they are connected to. Even if I don't hear from them for months I do not worry about it. They will call eventually. Even if it turns out that Carl no longer lives where he was living, I know he will call.

Evan is unique for me (even from Ann). I invested my heart with Evan, like and unlike the ways I did with Carl and David. And Evan has Family; the kind of Family you spell with a capital F. They are not his birth family; they are his family.

I am thrilled, I really, really am that he has them. I think it is wonderful that he and his mom are tentatively reaching out and connecting. I am so very thankful that I work for an agency that has the money and good sense to offer to buy him a plane ticket so that he can re-connect to brothers he has not seen in years. I want to hug each and every one of his half sister's family who don't care if he is no longer even related to them by marriage. When he leaves it will be his grandmother, his ex-step-father's mother, who will store his boxes and, when he comes home from Scotland, it will be to her house he will go to stay while he figures out his next step.

They are wonderful people and it is wonderful that Evan has them.

But it means he doesn't need me.

But what if he leaves and never comes back? What if he doesn't stay in touch?

I want to say, "Don't be silly. Of course he will." But that is not true. There is no "of course." As he moves on will I become just the foster mother who took care of him for a little more than a year? That woman who used to yell at him for not doing the dishes who had the boys he never really got along with?

What if he never comes back?