angry

In theory, I understand it.  It's a shield and a sword.  Protection from the knife-sharp comments or the knife-sharp silence and a blade you can turn against them.  It's the panther that walks with you, straining against its slender leash.  It's a Molotov cocktail.  It's a loaded gun.  

But, in theory, I understand a lot of things.  In practice, I wonder about the burden anger can be.

I don't generally get angry, even when, perhaps, I should.  Once upon a time, the man I couldn't imagine life without and the woman who knew all my secrets found each other and left me completely alone.   "You must be so angry at them,"  people would say. 

But I wasn't angry at all.  I was sad, terribly sad, so sad that I had to force myself to breathe, but I understood why they had done what they did and, more importantly, understood that, they hadn't really done anything to me. 

So it's hard for me to even imagine the rage that so often seems to swirl around the death of a child.  You could be angry at yourself, the doctors, your husband, your friends with healthy babies, the gods, the sunlight on the garden, the earth that spins in its monotonous circles as if nothing at all had happened.  But it all seems so meaningless, so futile, like being angry at a coin for coming up heads when you wanted it to be tails. 

You could be angry at other people's reactions.  People generally don't respond well to loss and say and do all the wrong things.  But, for the most part, they're not being malicious, just selfish and thoughtless.  And, while, sometimes, some people surprise you, expecting people not to be selfish and thoughtless is expecting far too much.

Sadness makes sense to me.  Anger -- at least anger at a loss --often, well, doesn't.  And, while I know there are emotions that transcend reason and that anger can be a force for healing, what I think about is the fable of the miller, who got rid of the mice that were stealing his flour by burning down the mill.

Your turn.  Tell me why I'm wrong.  Have you felt anger in the wake of a loss -- whether the loss of a child or some other loss?  What was it like?  Who or what were you angry with?  Was your anger an additional burden or a source of strength or comfort? 

Layers

I don't remember what I was wearing that day. I remember my long black winter coat because before I left I asked Monkey for a hug. But I don't remember what I was wearing under it, what I must've seen all day as I caught sight of myself-- my sleeves as I typed, my pants as I sat down, my belly as I balanced the laptop on my lap while I waited for Monkey at gymnastics that afternoon or as I waited for the kicks that never came that night. I remember the dinner I ate as I tried to coax those kicks, but I don't remember what the shirt was that covered the belly on which I balanced the plate. I remember that the radio was on as I drove to the hospital, and I remember that I thought the program was interesting, but I can no longer remember what it was about. Now that I know that the full moon was in fact supposed to be there, I can verify that the memory that started knocking on my brain's door recently, of the full disc as I drove, wasn't a figment of my imaginataion fabricated later on-- I really did see it. But I don't remember what I was wearing. Not as far as anyone else could see, at least.

I remember what I was wearing under my shirt. A bellybra, that wonderful contraption that distributes the weight of the belly over the whole back, making it much easier to function. Even if I didn't rememeber, this detail I could reconstruct, as I never went a day without it the last couple of months of A's pregnancy. But I do actually rememeber. I remember because the nurse asked me about it as she was preparing the probe to look for the heart beat. I gave her a glowing review, and she said she needs to remember it for next time because her back was killing her the last couple of months with her first-- what with being on her feet all day. I wonder, given what happened in the next 5 minutes, does she remember it now?

When I first discovered that I couldn't remember what I was wearing I thought of it as a good thing-- next time around, I reasoned, I wouldn't have bad associations with any of my maternity clothes, I could wear all of them again. Except for that bellybra, of course.

I am 28 weeks 4 days along today. If you come to my house, I doubt you can miss the belly. And yet, when I am out and about, I still wear a shawl. Unless it's over 90 degrees outside, and then I put on this net-like thing that goes over my head, is long, and a bit shiny, but is far less of a  disguise, though it still makes me feel a little covered, a little protected.  I waddle, by the way. Thanks to the pelvic pain that makes it hard to walk straight. So I waddle, and the belly sticks out farther then the boobs, and has for a couple of weeks now. And still I insist on having something that gives me some illusion of maybe fooling someone out there.

At first I thought that the shawls were my protection against the stupid that is out there, against the untouched who think a pregnant belly equals a live healthy baby 40-X  weeks from now. I didn't want to talk to them. I didn't want to deal with their "congratulations" and their "is this your first?"s. I didn't want to give them an opportunity to tell me all about their utterly normal life where assumptions of invincibility hold. A bit later I understood that I was also avoiding having to tell people that I am not jumpy and comfy because the baby before this one died. I didn't want to have to tell the story, anew.

It's a weird thing, really. I want people to know about A. How few people know that he existed used to be one of the biggest crazy-makers in my head. It's better now, the crazy is, but this particular thought is still sad to me. It seems, though, that I need to control the context in which I want people to learn. I don't know that it is even possible, but I seem to want to introduce him in some way that isn't all about pain. I want people to see that the pain is there because of how much we love him, how much we wanted him, how much we miss him now.

I remember, so very vividly, being pregnant with A, out and about with Monkey, and conscious of how lucky we were and of how much our luck can hurt to look at. I was thinking of infertiles at the time, but boy can a sight like this hurt a dead baby mama's heart.  I remember, too, last spring seeing pregnant bellies and babies wherever I turned my head. A veritable sea of happy that had no room for me. I started coping by making up sad stories for these happy people I saw on the street-- this one had five miscarriages before this baby, that one needed an IVF or three. I knew, even as I was making up these stories that they can't all be true. But that was what I needed to do to be able to navigate the world around me.

Recently some of the dead baby bloggers have been confessing to having a hard time with other people's pregnancies.  Is it any wonder? And what I realized, reading these bloggers, is that my shawls are a little about all of you too. If I can help it, if I can help it at all, I don't want to add to your hurt. I don't want to, as Bon so aptly put it, stab you with my roundness.

My sister is getting married this weekend. My parents arrived a few days ago and other family is about to descend on us in mere hours. To some degree, I have been measuring this pregnancy in intervals of and between significant events. For the last few weeks I have been terrified that this baby would die before the wedding, adding new layers of terrible to what would be horrific any day all on its own.  Before that I was similarly scared he would not make it through the week Monkey and JD spent in the Old City. 

That Monday, Memorial Day in fact, I wan't feeling as much movement as I had been used to. I tried the water, and the couch, I tried this, that, and the other. And finally I couldn't handle it anymore, and I went in to triage. A friend of mine is a high risk OB in my practice, although he didn't start there until last summer. When I first heard that he was joining the practice, I thought I didn't want him to ever have anything to do with my care-- I didn't want him to have to feel bad if shit hit the fan again. But as I pressed the intercom button outside of triage that Monday, I saw my friend walking down the corridor. And suddenly I very much wanted him to be there. I was alone and scared, and not until that moment did I know how much I wanted to at least not be alone.

It is good to be a friend of the attending, let me tell you.  He brought the shiny new ultrasound machine, not the old clunker that told the doctor all those months ago that A was dead. He was gentle, and kind, and attentive, and exactly what I needed. He didn't just do the one peak to make sure the heart was beating-- he sat there for ten or fifteen minutes carefully studying everything, watching my son wiggle behind my anterior placenta that with its movement-cushioning ways was the likely culprit behind that day's freakout. Twenty more minutes on the monitor and one fine-looking strip later I walked out of the triage room next door to the one in which they told me A was dead. I was light-headed, shaken a little.  But I managed to only be ten minutes late for dinner with a friend. And the next morning I took a deep breath and pulled that bellybra out of the drawer.

When A died, six months seemed like a ridiculously long way off, like it should be enough time to close the gaping wound, to let my heart scar over.  And now, nearly a year and five months out, what I am wondering is whether there is ever an end to the layers left to uncover. I suspect not so much.

turn and face the strange

you haven't changed a bit, she effuses, intuiting this wisdom from a superficial eight-second conversation in the grocery aisle amidst the turnips.

i swallow a flippant reply.  i haven't seen her in, like, nineteen years, maybe since high school graduation.  i recall the picture of she and i at prom, casual friends: in said photo, i am wearing a pastel floral puff-sleeved dress in which i resemble a large Laura Ashley sofa, and my hair is braided on top of my head like Heidi of the Swiss Alps.  my shoes have bows on them and my eyebrows are as fluffy and thick as a caterpillar.   haven't changed?  haven't changed?  oh god, old girl...shut your mouth, that's crazy talk.

i understand that my once-upon-an-acquaintance was merely being polite.  she wasn't trying to suggest that i haven't grown, or grown up, or that i look like a refugee from 1989.  but her comment still spawned in me a bizarre and powerful urge to strip my clothes off right there amongst the root vegetables and the happy shoppers and force her to see my scars, acknowledge them...all the years and the wrinkles and the sorrows, all that life has wrought on me and me on myself.   i wanted to shake those raw, scabbed beauties in her placid face, shock her with them, own them.  at least, erm, figuratively.

it's been a couple of months since i had that conversation.  in the interim, i've wondered at the vehemence of my reaction.  it most definitely stemmed from my grief, however far along the healing path i may think i am.  and it reflects, i think, a process of integrating grief into my own identity.  in the early months after Finn died, all i longed for - on those rare occasions that i subjected myself to random interactions at all - was to "pass" as normal.  had some aged cheerleader told me then that i hadn't changed, i would have preened, i think, at a performance gone right...and then darted back to the sanctuary of home to nurse the raw wound that was my reality.  later still, i just longed not to be reminded publicly of said wound at all; hated to be exposed in my grief in any circumstances not under my control (ie, any circumstances outside my own blog, basically).

but then i guess i internalized it.  i accepted it, and came to terms with it, and became able to speak it, and became accustomed to it as a part of me.  and that has been good.  bringing my grief out into the light has, for the most part, shrivelled its power to wound me, and allowed me to become some version of whole again.

but i'm not the same as i was before.  as i was not the same after any of the other great upheavals/sorrows/betrayals of fate that have sporadically marked me since that hideous prom picture was taken.  as i was not the same after i fell in love for the first time, not the same after i brought home my living son and discovered the strange half-life joy of sleep deprivation.  life changes us, the best and worst things the most deeply.  i think that needs to be honoured, though not necessarily in grocery store aisles.  and yet i wonder if i've integrated grief too much into my sense of self?  if it's normal to react so fiercely to someone's passing comment that i haven't changed?  if it's healthy to have integrated grief and scarring so much into my identity that i'm offended when someone - even innocently - tries to pretend it's not there?

i don't want to go back to the person i was before Finn.  i'm not sure i ever did, even in the worst of it:  hell, i was not so carefree even before, and in his short life he taught me and brought me things i will keep close to me all of my days.  but as i've healed, i've become more attached to that not wanting to go back, more invested in my self-identity as this tempered vessel, this patch-ridden human being.  i have become disdainful of attempts to present life as sunny and perfect, dismissive of easily-won happiness as naive, even banal.  i have also become inclined to assume that things will go wrong, particularly around pregnancy and childbirth, because my experience has repeatedly borne this out in one way or another.  i have succumbed to the hubris of believing that i am special, unlucky, marked...even though in this online world i have come to realize that i haven't lived the half of it.

i think part of this identification with loss has been a reaction designed to assert my right to space and existence in a world that often seeks to dismiss the sorrowing, bury them with their dead.  but i wonder about going too far, holding so tightly to the fact of loss that the rest of me gets subordinated to that tragedy?  is the fierce, fey compulsion to inflict my stretch marks on a bygone acquaintance at the Shop & Save an, erm, bad sign? 

do you want to be told you haven't changed a bit?

The luxury of choice

I recently told a friend, who happens to be a former colleague, that I watch House for professional development. She laughed. Nevertheless, it's true-- my training focused on the molecular level, and not until my current job did I need to know much about organismal, particularly human, biology.  Medical story lines on the show are pretty well researched, and they make interesting and weird connections-- all pluses in my book. But the real reason I can watch the show in that particular way is the writing. No, not because it's that good, or because they place all the clues out in the open. No, it's because they are forced to write the episodes starting from a medical scenario. 

What that means is that while they can and do develop the characters of the doctors on the show to reveal facets of personality or elements of background, to fill in the dimensions, to make them believable, at least to a degree, they have far less flexibility with the patients. If the patient in episode N needs to collapse unexpectedly in the opening sequence, pee blood right before the first commercial break, go into v-fib seven minutes later, fail to respond to the first several treatments House was sure were going to work, lie about something or other, and finally recover or die with enough time to spare to give some  screen time to the storylines about doctors' personal lives, well, that just doesn't leave much room for dramatic  and believable character development, does it? Which suits me just fine. If I don't buy the patient as a real character, I can concentrate on the medical aspects. So yes, professional development. With a side of ahem... eye candy, as my sister calls them.

One teeny tiny complication there-- they do develop their doctors as characters. Which is normally a good thing in a TV show. Completely messes with my frame of reference, though, when they make one of their own a patient. Can even make me cry when they then kill her. Yes, the season finale. Very well done episode, wherein they try and fail to save the life of one of their former colleagues who is also the newish girlfriend of the title character's best friend.

Tears show up for me a lot these days. Any report about collapsed schools in China is guaranteed to make my eyes water. Music can get me to well up, and I won't even watch some movies that I expect to be upsetting. And yet, over the last week I watched over a season of House on DVDs (thanks, sis), learned a bunch of new stuff, made some cool connections with the things I learned over this past semester, but didn't cry once.  I cried over that season finale, though. Couldn't articulate why. So I watched the second half again. Brilliant move, I know. But my need to know what was affecting me so much was greater than my need not to be affected again. I guess I can be analytical like that.

The second time I saw it, I knew right away. It was the dying doctor. Not that she was dying, but that she was making a choice, and articulating that choice. Her boyfriend asking her why is she not angry, why is she ok with dying. Because, she says, that is not the last emotion I want to experience.

She was dying. There was no way out. No choice, it seems. But she found something she had control over, and she made a choice. And the reason it made me sad, profoundly, deeply, for days after, is that I realized not everyone gets to make choices.

One of the things I try to do in my parenting, one of the things I articulate for my daughter is the issue of choice, of responsibility, of consequences.  Most choices children make are not of great consequence. You can choose to wear X or Y today. You can have this or that for dinner. But slowly, as they grow, so do their choices, and the consequences of those choices. Watching my daughter make increasingly more weighty choices has been one of the subtle pleasures of parenting.

I have appreciated for a long time,  from the very beginning, actually, that after A died, we did have some choices.  I chose to start the induction that same night, and to eventually accept pain relief, even though I wouldn't have likely for a live birth. We chose to name him, to hold him, to take pictures, to follow our doctor's recommendation and ask for the autopsy. We chose things after that too. Telling Monkey the truth, but not taking her to the funeral. Leaning on our friends, but not letting them come to the funeral either. Going back to work when each of us did. Many, many choices.

What I didn't appreciate, the way I never looked at this before was that making choices is yet another thing my son never got to do, will never get to do.  Babies have preferences, but no choices. His entire human existence passed, and he had no control of it, he never got to choose. I don't know what the last thing he experienced was. I do know he didn't get to choose it.

Maybe I am nitpicking. There are so many things that our babies won't get to do, so why am I focusing on this? My son also never drew a breath, but that thought has never made me sad for days on end. What is it about choice that makes it so fundamental to me, a loss in its own right? Perhaps it's all about what choice means to me. Autonomy, ownership, even avoidance of guilt. Because to me making a thoughtful choice means making the right choice.

I know that not everyone feels this way about having choices. I know people who hate having them, hate having to make them. So this is what I wanted to ask you today-- how do you feel about choices? Are they a cornerstone of human experience or a giant cosmic torture?

grade me not

So once, when some (!!) people said and acted really insensitive and stupid to me, I cried. Not right in-front of them. I was hypocritical, weak, and dumb. So I acted like it was ok but once home I burst into tears. And so poor R had to comfort me and he told me, "In times like this, you really get to see the true mettle of people. You know what they are really made of."

Whoa. That made me tilt my chin up. Huh! Now I have been placed in a position where I can judge and evaluate people, woo-hoo! So, based on what they said or did not say; did or did not do, I get to grade them, yes?? I get to tick off what they are made of. Heck, if they appear in-front of me wearing a shirt the wrong hue or a pair of sandals I just hate, I can give them a thumbs-down and put them on a black list with skull-bones and hissing snakes as border. Wow. It's like getting a new toy.

Except, very soon, a small little voice in me asked, "So you think you can judge them because your baby died?" I have flashbacks of soap operas or movie scenes wherein one accused the other, "Don't think you can judge me just because you are blond/taller/bigger/fair-skinned/older/skinnier/younger/drive a fancy car/have a PhD, etc!!!" There was not one that said, "Don't think that you have a right to judge me because your baby died!"

No, I have no right. Sure, there are dumb ones, clueless ones, obnoxious ones, whatever ones, but I am sure at one point or other in my life I was also dumb/clueless/irritating/annoying/obnoxious/crappy, etc.

So, I was deflated. Chin down to chest. I slumped back down into my little corner to ponder life after a loss.

BUT. I was not left alone.

There are people who think they can judge me because my baby died. Grade me even. You know, how well, or how awful I am coping? How slow I am getting out of my grief. How bad I am mothering my two living daughters. How I could have done more. How the house could have been neater, since I do not have three, but only two kids to handle. How I must be in self-denial. How I am ruining my children's lives. How I should be over it already, and quick! have another new baby! How I think too much. How I am thinking the wrong way. How I am blah-blah-blah or how I am not blah-blah-blah. I am either too blah-blah or not blah-blah enough.

I don't need all these evaluations, judgments, or advice. Unless I ask. And sometimes, I do like to know, like if I totally am beyond salvation; if I should just go jump off a cliff already, or if i have a halo above my head. If the cake I baked is out-of-this-world or awful-inedible. If I really should get some hot-pink lacy underwear, or if my face resembles a prune by now. But, often I get unasked for judgments and evaluations, and even more harassments, without my asking. I just need to stand there and whoosh--- watch out! there they come.

Why? Is it just an expression of the overwhelming need to be of help? And thus, they have to give an opinion of how I am doing? Is it an art of conversation? To tell the other where they are on a certain scale? (Good/not bad/ failure/ try again)

How do they know? What makes them the expert? What makes them think that they know? But really, if they wanna help... come and clean my house. Come and cook my meals and do the dishes and scrub out the kitchen grout. Buy me a good supply of expensive chocolates and/or truffles (dark ones ONLY, please). But really, if you cannot bring me back my baby, just sit there. Just hold my space.

Sigh. I just want to be a human being. That means, I am not static, even though it may look that way. But bear in mind that you are not in my skin, and looks are deceiving. Being means to be, and that -ing part means ongoing. To me it means constant change of the state of what one is. From one second to the next; from one breath to the next. Even if I choose to remain in a state for a longer period, it is my decision. It is my journey to walk. (If you tell me everything happens for a reason, then maybe there is also a reason why I need to freakin' dwell.) The best you can do is walk alongside with your mouth shut, unless I am stepping right off the cliff; or a bear is breathing down my neck already or you can run and get me water when I run out; or keep watch for me when I need to sleep. And you know what, journeys are not necessarily made in a straight line. Not every journey is a straight line between destination A and B. Sometimes it is a circular path that needs to fold over and revisit some places. I sometimes think it is a spiral, always coming back to some same points, but passing with a distance, and it is never static. Although sometimes I do need to sit down. Or lay across the road. (If you come across me like that, step over. Please do not try to evaluate if I am dead or alive.)

But please, let me be. Just like I have no right to judge you because I lost my baby; you have no right to judge me because you have not lost a baby. Especially if you do not get it. Don't tell me what to do.

I know, the line between being concerned and being intrusive is very fine. Sometimes it takes intrusion, a gentle one, to express concern. It truly is not easy being a friend to one who walks the grieving/healing path. So I thank all those who have done so and for being so patient and wonderful. And those who have stuck around despite my sour face the last months? Precious.

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What about you? Do you feel judged and evaluated? Do you feel concern is sometimes intrusive? What are the best ways someone can express concern without making you feel evaluated or judged?

The Rule of Thirds

“Keep in mind the rule of thirds:  one-third of your friends will be supportive of your need to mourn, one-third will make you feel worse, and one-third will neither help nor hinder."

--From Alan D. Wolfelt, Healing A Parent’s Grieving Heart:  100 Practical Ideas After Your Child Dies

A good friend who lost her husband very suddenly to a brain tumor in ’04 sent me this book last year after Maddy died.  She liked the “Spouse” version, and being cut of a similar cynical edgy sports-lovin’ foul-mouthed cloth as I, thought I might appreciate Child version.  I did, it’s the griefbook I appreciated most, and still find myself picking it up a year later.  One thing I really like about this book is that every page is a topic with a few bullet points, so you can open it randomly and discover something, and if something sits wrong on a particular day you can just flip to the next page and see if that feels better.  (Or put it down, and pick it up months later.  I find it to be rather timeless that way.)  No need to sit and feel like you need a few hours to go through something linear.  I also like that, for-all-intents-and-purposes, it’s genderless and can be applied equally to a husband or wife -- and let’s face it, very little out there on this subject can be.

I'm sure I read this particular passage long ago, during the first pass, but wish it had stuck.  It did not.  And so I am constantly amazed at those thirds who fall at the ends of the spectrum, the ones who surprise me with their understanding and kindness, and the ones who floor me with their inability to show even a modicum of compassion.  The other surprise for me was that this “third rule” included family.

Let’s start with the innocuous middle third.  There will always be those who will treat your life-altering experience as a vacation:  you were gone for a while, you came back, maybe shared some pictures and stories, people mingled around the water cooler for a few days to follow up, and then it got dropped and life moved on.  At some times I’m a bit taken aback at what appears to be complete ignorance (“Did I tell you?  You do know that my kid died, right?”) and yet 30 seconds later am so fucking relieved to be deeply involved in a conversation about how maybe I should pay attention to the  Penguins in the playoffs this year.  Aback that they wouldn’t say anything, relieved that they said nothing, all the while rather pleased that they don’t view me as some bad jinxy hex that needs avoided altogether (although I may be missing some crucifix and garlic waving when I turn to leave).  And frankly I’m at the point where I’m rather pleased that I can go places and talk to people WHO KNOW about things like books and dogs and whether the Steelers did right in the draft (another quarterback?  really?).

I’m constantly surprised by the bookends.  I’m blessed to have some very good friends and family in my life that I knew would be supportive, and they are, but I’m always so impressed by how much.  These are people who have such grace, they make it seem so effortless to say the right thing at exactly the right time.   I end up thanking them, they are just so meaningful and classy, and they look at me as though I’m thanking them for breathing or combing their hair – they simply can’t understand what it is they’re doing that warrants praise when it is simply how they are.  And I realize:  I probably wouldn’t be one of these people if I were on the other side of this mess.  I’d be tongue-tied, never knowing what to say, not horribly sure of my own emotional sanity, and probably wind up in the innocuous middle chatting about the NFL draft.  

But I know I give thanks, and am so surprised by the outpouring of kindness, because of the other end of the spectrum where people shock me with their unsympathetic cruelty.  I don’t think in a million years I would’ve thought that someone could turn my baby dying against me, but indeed, some have.  If someone had told me the day after Maddy died that friends and (gasp) family would not just behave awkwardly around us but actually treat us poorly I would’ve scoffed.  No way.  People are not that stupid and cruel, are they?  (are they?)

Um, yes, gentle reader, they are.  It really began in earnest around six months after.  And suddenly  people began leaving signs in fluorescent paint:  enough.  Stop.  You’re wallowing.  Party poopers.  Isn’t it time to move on?  How dare you suck the life out of someone else’s joyful event.  Don’t want to call me?  Well, two can play at the game.  Apparently six months is about the time when the people of little patience move into that end of the spectrum, and begin a not-too-subtle dance of pushing you, hurrying you, belittling you, ignoring you.  I think it dawns on others, if you’ve ignored them for this long for other reasons (say, they have children that would’ve been the age of your deadone and they haven’t been horribly involved anyway, staying in the middle third for so long), that you’re avoiding them.  No, you’re angry at them.  They develop a complete psychosis about how you must feel about them, without them asking you.  And if you’re unlucky, someday they’ll dump it on you – like one of my neighbors did.

Perhaps most surprising and upsetting to me was that family fell into this category of the “make you feel worse” third.  I should add a disclaimer here that I do have a couple family members – one who I assumed would handle the situation poorly given past experience, and another who had a baby shortly after who we ceased contact with – who have flabbergasted me with their solid appearance in the front end of the spectrum.  They are patient, articulate, compassionate, and the latter even defends us against the detractors despite the fact that we haven’t seen them much since the birth of their son.   But to think your own flesh and blood would grow tired of your grief -- tire of hearing of their relative!  Maddy!  Don’t you miss her too? --  impatiently try and hustle you along through the alleged grief steps (“They must be in that anger phase”), wonder if you’d ever snap out of it.   And then do things like fail to show up at a memorial service for your daughter after promising they’d be there, refuse to answer your calls (even on holidays) after telling them they were disappointed, and as Julia so eloquently put it a few days ago:  refuse to check their shit at the door.  It’s not about them, none of this.

I’m torn; while I’m relieved to look around the blogverse and realize other people’s families let them down too and we’re not the only dysfunction to arise from the ashes of a deadbaby, I’m also saddened that it seems to be such a pattern.  There’s a dissertation to be written here, about the pressures such tragedies put on extended families and how they deal with them long term.   Are they more invested in our happiness than our friends, neighbors and coworkers?  Or does the law of averages simply say that a third of the people you run with, no matter their relation to you, will fall over there, off the edge into a pit of selfishness and denial and ignorance?

But when they get me down, I flip over and revel in the wonderful part of the spectrum again, and wonder why it is that everyone isn’t wired like that.  I would like to think behaving that way is human.  It’s clearly not.