My real mom who wasn’t my real mom. That’s how I would describe Anna Lucia B, now that I know how to spell the damn name right, including her maiden name. I am so, so very heartbroken to learn of my beloved Italian foster mommy’s death exactly two months ago yesterday. She was the mother I never had and I could really kick myself for not staying in touch after leaving Phoenix. I thought about her on and off throughout the years and she always remained dear to me in my heart. The fond memories I have is something I will always cherish. But now it’s too late to say goodbye and I am so, so saddened. Funny how I have cried buckets of tears for this woman while I never shed a tear when I lost my bio mom the previous month.

I’m really glad the year is almost over for there’s been an awful lot of death this year, even if some of those that died won’t be missed. I’m just sorry I couldn’t hug the woman who should’ve been my mom one last time and that I never got to say goodbye.

But maybe she said goodbye to me. Yeah, that’s where it gets weird. I don’t know for sure what happened but something happened that has me not 100% convinced of the afterlife, but that makes me suspect a little more that there really may be one.

Let me back up first and say that as an adult who is much smarter than she was at 16, I can see where some might’ve been deceived by my real parents, who just had to put on a show about just about everything. Including the fact that someone (my high school music teacher? He was the only one I confided in back then and one of the few guys I was totally hot for) reported them for abuse and caused them to lose custody of me. Just wanted to set the record straight before I move on. Knowing my parents, they would’ve covered something like that up big time. If they would want to cover up their finances, they would certainly want to cover up that. Image was everything to them. But no, as much as they loved to ship me off to various places, they didn’t give me up because they thought it would “make things better,” or because they thought it would “do me some good.” They lost me because they couldn’t be decent parents to me. And no, I didn’t see them for a year not because they thought it would be best to “let me get settled first.” It was because they weren’t allowed to see me. Being the naïve kid that I was at the time, though, I bought all their lies, stories and excuses.

Anna, who was also called just Anne, and her husband of what was then 20 years (Harry) owned a group home for physically and mentally challenged adults. They owned 7 large houses in Springfield and a modest home of their own in West Springfield. I lived in the main house which they would occasionally spend nights at, and sometimes I was taken to stay with them in their regular home as well. I was the only minor living there and the only foster child they ever had. Why them, I do not know. I was pretty fucked in the head at the time and I still had suicidal tendencies despite how much happier I was with them. Hey, you can’t fix this kind of stuff overnight and undo the damage caused by years of abuse in just a matter of weeks or even months. So I was probably hard to place and that’s why Anna and Harry were kind enough to take me.

The minute I stepped foot into the place and was greeted with a loving smile by the slightly plump fifty-something woman of average height and short dark hair and eyes, I felt right at home. Harry, who was always an easy-going teddy bear in my eyes, contrasted in looks with his light eyes and gray hair.

They loved me unconditionally and accepted me as a whole. They never tried to put any kind of restrictive chains on me that made me feel imprisoned in any way. At Valleyhead if you so much as dared step outside for a breath of fresh air, that was automatic restriction.

With the passage of so much time, I remember only bits and pieces of my much too brief time with the Italian couple that truly loved me. It was 30 years ago, after all. I know they tried to gain custody of me, and that it was even a done deal at one point because I specifically remember being all excited and saying to Anna, “You mean I get to stay with you till I’m 18?” Anna grinned ear to ear and nodded her head happily.

I used to love to help serve dinner to the 50 or 60 people who came to the main house each night. Made me feel oh so grown up, LOL. Then I would eat with them and a few other relatives of theirs in the big kitchen in back, sharing occasional scraps with Max, the large German shepherd that was their guard dog, after Anna’s mother Kate, who had started the business, was maced and robbed one day, not long before she died.

Days were spent helping out around the house, nights were spent relaxing to music in my room above “Mom and Dad’s” on the third floor. It was late spring, so the weather was gorgeous. I would be invited to mom and dad’s regular home for swimming and barbecues every so often as well.

And then one day it all came to an end like a car screeching to a halt and I have no idea why. I can only guess my parents got in the way. Or maybe it was my own stupidity since I was still cutting myself, and then one night I called them from the office phone, something I wasn’t supposed to do.

Next thing I know I’m in the state psych ward for a week of hell where old ladies loved to beat me over the head in the bathroom with their handbags, and younger ones liked to sit in bed in their cubicles and masturbate, while the staff was just as crazy as the patients. I wished all they liked to do was weave baskets and sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes like Napoleon’s song says.

After a week of surviving that jungle, it was off to a black woman and her highly scary friend where I wouldn’t be fed very much or very often. I left there a month or two later at just 85 pounds, bound for two years of hell at Valleyhead. I suffered severe depression there and even tried to take my life.

I saw Anna and Harry a few more times both as a kid and as an adult, then we exchanged a few calls and letters from Arizona. I was around 30 when we were last in touch. Like I said, I don’t know why we didn’t keep in touch. Maybe I felt they were too busy or just not into it or something, though I know they truly loved me and that I was like the daughter they never had. Anna once said she’d have had 6 kids had she not needed a hysterectomy after her one child, a son, was born. They loved me as one of their own, but they never tried to replace my real parents. They even hoped things would get better between my real parents and me.

I wonder if they’d be impressed with all the Italian I’ve learned, LOL. I don’t think they spoke it. At least I don’t remember them speaking it, though Anna sure was proud to be Italian.

It was about a week or two ago when she popped into mind and the urge to contact them before it was too late came over me. I never stopped thinking of them from time to time, but now I wanted to make contact. Too many years had gone by as it was. But it was like they fell off the face of the earth and never existed. I couldn’t find the business or any phone numbers or obituaries or anything. I even checked listings and obits in Florida knowing that many New Englanders retire there, though it never struck me as anything she would do.

I thought she would now be about 85 and that Harry would be a bit older and that they could very well be gone or not have much time to go if I didn’t hurry up and find them. As silly as it may sound, at 47 years of age I wished I could run to my Italian foster mom for one last hug. Everybody loved her. She was a hard-working, caring, compassionate soul who didn’t take any shit from anyone but who wasn’t the negative, domineering control freak my bio mom was either. For some reason, my sister was the only one who ever expressed any ill feelings for her and Harry. I assume it had to do with them wanting custody of me. It’s ok, whatever it is, but I’ll have to ask her sometime just out of curiosity.

Unable to find them, I let it go until yesterday, which was when things got slightly strange. Like I said, I don’t know what, if anything, really happened, but it kind of made me wonder. Anna came storming into my mind like a gush of wind from a hurricane and she would just not leave it. Random memories of the few months we spent together paraded through my mind like movie clips and I suddenly burst into tears, missing the hell out of her. She, Harry, their long-dead dog Max, and myself, were running through a field in some of the images that played through my mind. It was a beautiful, warm summer day and I ran ahead of them, giggling like a kid again without a care in the world. Max chased me playfully and then we would stop and let Mom and Dad catch up to us before we would run off again.

Now I just had to know where she was. Still unable to find her, I went to bed still in tears. I prayed to God for help in finding her, dead or alive, something I don’t usually do.

In the midst of past memories, several possibilities came to mind. Maybe all this thinking about her all of a sudden and the strong desire to find her was just because I missed her. Or maybe she was thinking of me quite a bit all of a sudden and I was just picking up on the thought vibrations. Maybe the obit site was messed up or maybe she was still alive and I wasn’t REALLY sensing her presence and that she now had a better understanding of what I’d gone through in life as I lay there in the dark. After all, I hadn’t sensed my own parents since they died. And so “Peanuts,” as she often called me, fell asleep with thoughts of her Italian mother spilling over into her dreams. I don’t remember the dreams, though.

Having studied Italian, I thought about the way I had been spelling the name of the business when I woke up and realized it made no sense. It was just all wrong. Maybe the same went for Mom’s name. So I got up the next morning, made my coffee, tried a few spelling variations on the name, and then I found her obit. pauses to wipe tears I burst into another round of tears. My eyes are redder and more swollen than when my real dad died and I feel like someone threw sand in them. What stunned me was learning that she was 81, only a year older than my real mom. She would be turning 82 in a few days if she were still alive. She smoked for a long time, so maybe cancer killed her, but I have no idea what it actually was.

I’m also shocked to learn that Harry’s still alive. If I’m as devastated as I am, I can just imagine how Harry and the rest of the family must feel. I’m so, sorry it’s too late and that I never got the chance to say goodbye, but was happy to read she passed peacefully in her sleep at home, surrounded by friends and family.

As sad as I feel, we carried on with things as planned, though Tom offered to take me for my belated birthday shopping spree some other time. I knew getting out would help perk me up and take my mind off things if only for a while, so we went to Target. I’ll write about that some other time.

Another weird thing this morning was the rat. I picked Romeo up for his usual hug and kiss. He sat in my arms very calmly. Then all of a sudden he completely freaked out on me. I don’t know what the hell it was but something must’ve terrified him cuz he leaped out of my arms and hid behind the blinds for a few minutes before he would approach me. I hate to ask, but did he see a ghost or something? And were last night’s feelings, thoughts, memories and dreams of the loving woman, who ironically died just 60 days ago, just a coincidence? Or was it her way of grabbing my attention so she could say goodbye? I guess I’ll never know. Meanwhile, I left my condolences.