Sitting here with my fingers on the keys as if in a trance, numbed with disbelief and sadness.  Over the past few years, I have studiously endeavored to follow my Spanish blood line, trying to walk in my grandmother's footsteps across Spain, sailing with her by ship to Hawaii, learning about the flowers and growing up in Hawaii before moving to California with her family and eventually becoming my adored grandmother/abuelita.  Over these years I have met so many lovely, loving members of an extended family I was unaware of and many people do not know my story, somehow lost in the genealogy midst of investigating the Spanish lines of our family.

When I was eight years old, my "dad" married my mother, my two brothers, Rick and Steven and me.... in Woodland, California.   Over the years, he became my dad in every way but his blood line.  I was born a Spaniard but adopted into the Portuguese world.  He always let me visit my grandmother/abuelita from my Spanish family on every visit to California (he also loved her).  It is true when you read ANYONE CAN BE A FATHER BUT IT TAKES SOMEONE SPECIAL TO BE A DADDY.  Manuel Joseph "Koffee" Bettencourt was my daddy and he died May 25, 2012.  My heart aches with a choking sadness.

I lost a friend and my dad that day and I am blessed to have been in Portland at the end of his life.  I am blessed to have been around all my family and be there for my mother, my brothers, my son, my daughter, my nieces, my nephews and my grandchildren.  I am blessed that I could hug dad's sisters, Aunt Ida and Aunt Dee.  I am saddened they didn't arrive in time to say their goodbyes.  And then there is dad's first daughter, Becky.  His blood daughter.  She missed him by one hour.  She tried.  Nobody expected him to move out of our lives so quickly.

We thought he had more time.  We thought we had more time.  And now the rest of the family sits in stun mode with their hearts breaking, their lives changed forever as dad/grandpa/brother/husband moves out of their lives forever.  Forever. 

And then there is my dear mother whose heart is broken, her life in shards.  I am thrilled she agreed to return to Virginia with me for a visit.  She saw dad in every corner of every room of their home and facing the pain is more than she can endure.  Here in Virginia, we cook together, walk together, pack up boxes together and share wine and good memories.  Soon, we will head west where she will help me move into my new home in Arizona.  She will need all her family to embrace her in every way possible when she returns home in July.

Family and blood lines vs adoption lines have blurred over the years.  I am Spanish, yes; but Portuguese through and through, woven through my mind and heart by a man who was always there for me, always listening.  He was firm, sometimes quite so.  But he always loved his three Spanish children and felt we were Portuguese too.  His children to join our baby brother, Carl, who made our family whole.  I will miss this man always and hope others realize how important family is regardless of whether they are born to or adopted into the wonderful circle of life they are blessed with.