Mirror of Erised

She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes – her eyes are just like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the glass. Bright green -- exactly the same shape, but then he noticed that she was crying; smiling, but crying at the same time.

I reread the first book of the Harry Potter series last week. It’s been a long-long time since I first met The Boy Who Lived. I’ve been trying to remember exactly how old I was then, and I can’t put my finger on it. Young, incredibly young, is the answer that matters. Funny, because I do remember that when I first read it, on my sister’s recommendation, I had to tell myself that it was ok for the much older person that I was to read the children’s/young adult books. You know, because they are good, and they just happen to be being written when I was no longer a child or a young adult. It turns out the definition of “young” changes a lot as one ages. Go figure.

I first read the book in the American edition, but by then I already knew that Sorcerer’s Stone was the weak tea Americanization of the original British Philosopher’s Stone.  I knew about Philosopher’s stone—learned about it from some adventure stories I read when I was actually a bonifide kid growing up in the Old Country. And I remember that the words sorcerer’s stone kept bugging me in the text, as did the references to soccer (because, you know, the rest of the world calls it football) and a few other things. I tell you this because this time I read it in the Old Country Language translation—we got it for Monkey, but as a responsible parent I had to check out the translation, don’t you think?

It’s a good translation, with less than a handful places where I thought the translator didn’t appreciate an idiom or a standard turn of phrase, and as a result, produced a clunky sentence that didn’t read like it belonged. I’ve forgotten some of the plot points, though they all came to mind easily at the first hint of each in the text. The cleverness of descriptions delighted me again. Uncle Vernon wishing hearing Harry’s name to be a figment of his imagination, despite usually wishing to stay far away from imagination and its figments—that made me laugh. 

Monkey is eleven now, the age the protagonists are when the story starts. I realized, reading it this time, that when I first read the book, I imagined them younger. What I am saying is that I knew they were eleven, but my conception of what an eleven year old is was off. And this time the question my close friend raised some years back about whether Slytherin house and kids entering it are too easily stigmatized was close to my mind as I read.

I tell you all of this to emphasize that this time the reading of this book was a much richer experience for me. I knew the plot, but I was seeing it a little bit anew. Reading in a different language made it more of a 3D experience, if you will—it made the language stand as a bit of its own thing, in addition to the story. Reading this time was an experience joyful in a way that stretching is pleasurable after sitting too still for too long. I felt my brain delighting in the multifaceted work it was doing—the “oh, I remember why I like this” and the “yeah, still got it”-- much like I imagine a runner sidetracked by an injury might feel during the first run back, sensory memory of joy in the doing coming back alongside the here and now sensation of her muscles responding to the familiar challenges.

I was on the reader’s high, if you will. Which high carried me straight into a dark room with an ornate mirror resting on clawed feet.  

The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry's did.

Mirror of Erised. I remember that when I first read the book I liked this mirror as a plot device a lot. I liked that Ron sees what he sees, and how Dumbledore uses the mirror in the end. I even remember being affected by the description of Harry looking at his family, and appreciating the extra punch the mirror packs precisely because Harry has never even seen a photograph of his parents before.

But this time there was something else. This time there was a hard gulp of knowing exactly why Lily Potter in the mirror is smiling, and why she is crying. Lily Potter got to do the one thing many of us have at least once said we would’ve liked to do—she got to trade her life for her child’s. Lily in the mirror is not real, but the mirror shows Harry how she would’ve reacted if she was. Lily in the mirror is not real, but to me she is recognizable.

Because I met my first son only after he was dead, much of what little that I know about him is about what he looked like. I know that my younger son has the same nose as A, for example. But my younger son’s face has changed so much over the years. I have to admit to myself that I have no idea what A would’ve looked like as a six year old.

Once Harry understands what he is looking at, he is searching the faces and figures of his family in the mirror, delighting in recognition. If I got a glimpse of A as a six year old, as an eleven year old… Even if it wasn’t real, I’d drink it in too.

On a related note (it’s related, I promise), if you’ve ever talked about the day your child was born dead or the day your child died as both a happy and a sad day, what reactions did you get? Because I think most people just don’t believe us when we say that. There’s the look of genuine incomprehension that people get. The look may be followed by kind words, the right words. Or it may be followed by a platter of platitudes. Or by nothing at all. And those reactions tell us a great deal about the people who utter them. But the first bit, the incomprehension, I’ve come to see it as a very honest and very human reaction—what people hear in the story is the death, the finality of it, the horror. And they get the sad day part. But I think it takes an extraordinarily wise soul to also get that the very finality of it takes away the luxury of separating the joy from the sorrow—this is the day, and this day is all we get. So we rejoice in the beauty of our children, in the family resemblances, in whatever little things we manage to carve out. Mostly, we rejoice in them having been here, in them being our children.

The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness.

Erised is desire spelled backwards, as if read in a mirror. The mirror shows us the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. Lily and James and the rest of the Potters are in the mirror because Harry desperately wants to know them. The story of The Boy Who Lived inverts our stories. Or maybe I should say it reflects them. Harry doesn’t get to separate the joy from the sorrow either. With the mirror he has more than he’s ever had before—he can see where he came from, he can see that he was loved. And that is a lot, and it brings joy. But these people who loved him, they are still dead. In a weird way, because they are no longer abstract ideas of mom and dad, because now they are this mom with green eyes, and this dad with unruly hair, maybe they are actually a little more dead now.  And no matter how many days or nights in a row Harry might’ve come to the mirror, the glass remains, fragile, but as always, impermeable. And the people who loved him remain dead.

And that recipe for a powerful kind of ache is just too familiar.

Have you ever encountered your grief reflected in an unexpected piece of art—a book, a movie, a play, a painting, a photograph? Or tell us what you think you would see in the Mirror of Erised. 

on the bookshelf

I have one shelf in my library with the books about bulging bellies and chunky babies. Witchy books of herbs for pregnancy and the childbearing years. Academic books about development. Unopened books about sleep training. Bought books about gentleness and discipline. Enlightened books about mindful parenting. Bestseller books about what to freak out about when expecting.

When I came home from birthing my stillborn daughter, my only interest in that shelf and those books was the index and the glossary. Every pregnancy book I opened, I searched the back first, fingers holding the pages of the index that read “Stillbirth,” “Death,” “Grief.” Though I now intimately knew what stillbirth was and what exactly happens medically after your child dies in you, I searched for some nugget of understanding about why Lucy died--the physical and the metaphysical reasons. I dug those meager pages for a prescription for survival. I didn’t want to learn how to deal with my heartburn anymore. I wanted to learn how to deal with my heartbreak. The only question I now had about parenting was “How do I move forward?”

Most of those books start their loss sections with the same obvious sentiment, "Every parent's worst nightmare..." And it was all so pat, so obvious, to someone who has suffered a stillbirth. “Make sure the mother holds the baby. Make sure to take pictures. Make sure to grieve.”

Don’t worry I won’t forget to grieve.

When I realized that every loss from miscarriage to stillbirth to SIDS was wrapped up in a glib two-page section, I started collecting my own books. I have a new shelf now. It started after those pregnancy books failed to offer any solace. And it is no exaggeration that each book on that hulking shelf has given me something. I read a book about how other cultures deal with the death of a child, Sookie Miller’s Finding Hope When a Child Dies, which opened up the universal experience and exposed me to babyloss rituals from around the world. I bought children’s books, like Something Happened, that talked specifically about pregnancy loss and losing a sibling so that I could help explain to my daughter why we were so impossibly sad. Reading Elizabeth McCracken’s memoir Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination made me feel like I walked into my best friend’s home. She made a cup of tea, wrapped me in a quilt and shared my own story, only with more humor, insight and love than I could possibly muster at the time. It was the first time I felt understood intimately by another person. I have spiritual books, like When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön, that gave me Buddhist teachings on fear and loss. It was a book I bought during my grandfather’s death that I rediscovered after my daughter’s. There are books about surviving pregnancy loss, like Empty Cradle, Broken Heart by Deborah Davis, that gave me some reassurance that these feelings were not eternal, that I would find some place of calm eventually. I have collections of poetry about grief and death, like In the Midst of Winter, which were gifts from friends that simply said by dint of their existence, “You are understood.” I eventually added to my collection a book about pregnancy after loss called unsurprisingly, Pregnancy After Loss by Carol Lanham. That shelf held me together some days, reminding me of the universality of my experience. Simply seeing the book titles together in a row, I was reminded that I was not alone.

Some days, honestly, that was enough.

+++

Jessica, librarian and author of Dear Gus, pulled together an incredible collection of books about grief and loss in Glow in the Woods new section, On the Bookshelf. Please visit for a spell, let her know what you think and what books you found helpful in your grief. She will be expanding and adding to this section. We are so appreciative of her insight and librarian superpowers to expand our resources.

Did you turn to books after your loss? What kinds of book were you looking for? What books did you find that resonated with you? What books have been helpful to you in your grief?



Is that Me you're talking about?

"Is she drunk?" and Alicia whispers back, "I think she was drinking in her room before dinner."

::snip::

All through dinner Lucille has been careening wildly from sadness to elation to despair . . . But as we sit down and begin to eat dessert, she breaks down and sobs silently, her shoulders shaking, her head turned away as though she's going to tuck it in under her wing like a sleeping bird.

::snip::

"What's wrong with your mom?" he asks as I carefully arrange myself next to him, trying not to get stabbed by my dress.

"She's manic-depressive."

"Has she always been?"

"She was better when I was little. She had a baby that died, when I was seven, and that was bad. She tried to kill herself. I found her."

-- The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger

I should probably recuse myself here because I am one of the few people on earth who didn't like "The Time Traveler's Wife." But the point remains the same: I was somehow so completely unsurprised to find out that the drunk-by-dinner emotionally vapid and over-reactive mom of the protagonist had a skeleton in her closet: a skeleton of a baby, that is.

What is it with images of mothers who've lost children in popular culture?

I'm sure in my lifetime I've run across this trope a million times between books, the movies, and the television, and yet for the life of me I can't remember many of them that I encountered prior to my own loss. Dead babies were simply a plot device or (as above) character development -- a throw-away line that explained someone's depression or alcoholism or emotional instability. "Ahhh," I can hear myself saying as I read the line, and then moved on to become engrossed by the story's main theme. Now I feel as though I'm a magnet for these storylines, and depending on my mood, and their presentation, my reaction to these literary doppelgangers has been decidedly mixed.

For some fiction, dead babies and children make great plot devices: it's a crime, a mystery, a turning point. A grief-laden springboard from which the rest of the story flows, a sometimes hidden/sometimes overt source of guilt, a crux in a relationship between parents. Recently and notably, there's been "The Rabbit Hole" (an acclaimed play which revolves around parents coming to terms with the death of a 4-year old who ran into traffic) and "Antichrist" (starring Willem Dafoe as half of a grieving couple, whose young child fell out of a window while unattended, apparently because they were next door having a moment, if you catch my drift). (Disclosure: I have not had the wherewithall to watch either of these two productions.) There's at least one recent "Law & Order" depicting a nutty babyloss mom and a few older ones with dead babies as centerpieces; and there's an MI5 from a season ago where a infant-napping goes awry and parents wind up mourning as the mystery unfolds. As many of you are now aware, the first twenty minutes of Pixar's "Up" include a poignant passing reference to either infertility or miscarriage -- a precursor to the balloons uprooting the house and the adventure unravelling as it does. I'm sure there are countless medical dramas that use this riveting ploy, but I stopped watching those two and half years ago. Too close.

Then there's child loss as character development. Think of the quiet, introverted grief-stricken father -- teetering on divorce, by the way -- who spends his life trying to travel and yet not escape the comforting cocoon of his home in "The Accidental Tourist." You just want to hug him, he looks so sad, and eventually Geena Davis does (apparently his grief just needed some fun-time crayzee!). Or another set of parents, in a movie featuring nothing but a relationship, attempting to channel their grief and save their marriage in "Ordinary People." These are "accidents" that happen to "ordinary" parents -- and we're left watching what we assume would be an everyperson, every family type of reaction.  This could happen to me; I hope if it does I find a fun Geena type chick to help me out of it.  Somehow circumscribing these people by grief makes all the sense in world -- or does it?

Sometimes the personality conclusion from babyloss is a real head-scratcher. In the TV series "Damages," Glen Close deliciously plays Patty Hewes, an evil lawer who eventually is revealed to have a violent streak, especially in regards to one of her young, female employees. In the waning minutes of the season one finale, the mystery explaining Patty's personality is finally unveiled: Her baby died. What are they trying to tell me here? Did she miss her dead daughter, who perhaps would now be around the age of her new hiree with whom she has an intense love/hate(/murderous) relationship? Or was she just fucking nuts thanks to grief? The camera passes over a gravestone, backs up to show Glen Close kneeling over it with tears flowing, and then cuts to a flashback in a hospital where things go horribly and vaguely and fuzzily wrong.   We, the viewers, are suddenly meant to understand her -- and an entire season of her icy, bitchy, wild, calculating, sociopathic and homicidal character -- completely. Just like the mom in "Time Traveler's Wife", where with a few throw-away words we're to summarize her identity, her character writ large. And it's not pretty.

What does this all say about me? Where does society (or the literary half) think I'm headed? For divorce? A murderous rampage? The bottle? Hot sex in the woods with Willem Dafoe?

:::

Maybe babyloss is more common than I'm giving it credit for: maybe it really is widespread, hidden beneath the weeds, and all of these authors and television programs are simply stating the obvious, what happens all the time and what everyone knows. Maybe this is the publicity we all need.

Recently In the New York Times Magazine, Gina Bellafante wrote about the novels of Jodi Picoult, and how they all seem to center on children undergoing great peril. Picoult is a best-selling author whose books have spawned movies -- but why? Why does she use this outline, and why on earth are people interested in reading it?

I remarked what a miracle it is that any child survives to the age of 6, given the exposed outlets, tumbling kitchen knives and thousand quotidian threats that are, in a new parent’s mind, colluding toward an entirely opposite outcome. Picoult laughed in sympathy. “You can’t make your kids wear helmets, you just can’t do that,” she told me. The real dangers are, of course, the ones we can’t (or refuse to) anticipate.  

So that's it. Point out the stuff I may not have thought of, expand my horizons. Is that what I am to everyone around me, the one who makes them realize and understand danger? To remind them that bad stuff comes from nowhere and can happen to anyone? And what does the reader take away from countless books highlighting a mother's worst fears?

“Maybe the average reader is not facing the daily challenges of a mom whose child is dying of cancer, for example, but she probably had an argument with her teenager that morning about something inconsequential that left her feeling frustrated and certain there’s no middle ground between them,” she told me. Picoult said she hoped in some sense that her books were the way to that middle ground.

Middle ground? Is that what me and my story represent to the general public? I'm wondering here if Picoult means "perspective" ("Things aren't so bad! We could be treating my kid for cancer!") or "gratefulness" ("At least my child is alive to fight about things like her skirt being too short!"). I would like to think that parents around my neighborhood think about me when they begin yelling at their teenagers, and slowly come to understand some nuance about appreciating life, and taking control of what you can. But frankly, I think Picoult is probably a best-seller because Americans love a car-wreck. They love sitting in fear for a brief moment, and knowing it's a fiction and not happening to them or someone they love. According to some of the anonymous comments on our blogs, some people like absorbing stories of woe and figuring they would handle it differently, or better.

That, I fear, is what I represent to many.  Alcoholics and sociopaths.

:::

I watched last season's "Dollhouse" feeling simultaneously insulted as a woman, and mystified that Joss Whedon could come up with this stuff on a weekly basis. In short, the series follows men but mostly women who are confined in a spa-like building (after signing contracts, though the pressure to sign is questioned) for a period of years during which time their memories and identities are erased. When they're needed for a "job," (usually a callgirl-slash-adventure type gig) an imprint is placed into their heads of the person/-ality they are to be for that particular job. Tension mounts throughout the season as bits and pieces of the Dolls' past flit through their consciousness. In one episode, the Dolls retain their original identities for a a few hours, and with those some of their residual memories. And one Doll -- a female sub-character -- stumbles across a baby carriage and says bewildered, "I had a baby."

"Just watch," I immediately said to my husband on the couch next to me, "her baby's dead."

Sure enough, minutes later, we find her stumbling into a graveyard to recall the death of her child. And this is why, we are left to connect the dots, she agreed so wholeheartedly to signing over her identity and memories for a period of years, never to think of them, the baby, it. To escape the grief, to escape her. To enter a mini coma. To forget (even temporarily) that horrible day or event. To let that ubiquitous Time, pass.

Strangely, that bit of character I got completely. 

Where have you stumbled across babyloss parents in popular culture?  How were they depicted?  Did you find the plot device or character development that ensued to be familiar or unrealistic?  How did it make you feel?

don't hold me and burn me

"What, honey, what did you say?"

"Mom, I don't want you to hold me and burn me."

We were in a thrift store. Me and my two living children. I was sifting through the racks, tired from desperation. I needed to find something I can fit into. Something that could accomodate my flabby post-birth body and my swollen grief. Then I heard my younger daughter, then four, say those words--

"Please do not hold me and burn me."

I had to ask her to repeat a few times because I was not sure what she was talking about.

And then suddenly, under that fluorescent lighting of the store and amidst the smell of pre-owned clothing I suddenly realized what she was talking about.

Of course.

They were with us when we looked at Ferdinand and held him for the last time, before his cremation. She saw me holding him, pressing his hard, frozen body wrapped in a blanket against my chest, saying goodbye. We sang to him together, in that little tiny room without any windows. Then, we drove behind the car of the mortuary guy to the crematorium and they saw him being put in a container and then we said goodbye one more time, and he was cremated.

She was afraid that as my child, I will do the same to her- hold her and then burn her.

I cannot even begin to tell you the feelings that coursed through my body upon the realization. How I held on to the shopping cart to stop myself crumbling to pieces and then leaned over and hugged her and assured her that of course, I would not do that. I told her that we had to cremate her little brother because he was dead.

::

Children and death. It seems they deal with it with grace and ease, and then it seems they get all tangled up in the concept and get confused.

My daughter was four then. Not having witnessed the process of death with her own eyes, death was a very abstract concept to her. While we immediately treated Ferdinand's death in an honest and factual manner, she did not understand it. When they came to the hospital to see him after his birth, his battered body wrapped up in a blanket, with an oversized cap pulled over his head, all to make him appear as "normal" as possible, she asked me to show her his hand, the rest of his head, and she asked if he has a tongue. Since she did not see him alive, ever, she did not understand why he is dead. What makes him dead? Will he still have a tongue, a hand, a head?

Then, I guess as she tried to figure it all out in her head, she asked me, weeks after, to not hold her and burn her.

What keeled me was the thought that she felt that I had the power over her. I could hold her and burn her, if I wish to. Except of course, that was not the case. I was also afraid that she thought that I killed her baby brother. I held him and burned him, reduced him to but a small bag of ashes. I spent the days after telling her over and over again that we did not know why Ferdinand died, but he did, and after a person die, there are different ways of dealing with the body, and cremation was what we chose.

:::

Now, she is a few months shy of becoming six. I think she sort of gets it now. She asks about whether I will bake a cake for Ferdinand this year, as we did last year. She talks about him being dead but still close to us. She no longer asks that I not hold her and burn her. Recently they both had to draw some pictures of our family as they fill in a family tree. She drew her brother just like any other "normal" person she would draw, while her older sister drew him with wings, the way she always envisions him- flying in the sky above us.

::

I wish there is an easier way to explain death to children, but it is really so abstract. And another difficult thing to deal with after our baby has died. We read some books about death after Ferdinand died, but I think the one we liked the most and found the most comfort in was the book Lifetimes. It explains about life, living and death in easily understood terms, and at times I find solace, comfort and strength in these ideas. Not always, but at least, some times.

How about you? Did you have to explain death to younger children, or to children of friends and family? How did you do it? What reactions did you get? What made you keel? Was there anything out of children's mouth that had comforted you? Do you have a book you can recommend for children to talk about death?

From the Gut

I read Deborah Davis’ Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby about 4-6 weeks after Maddy died.  I found it . . . redundant.  I guess it was nice knowing I didn’t exist in a void, but confirming that I’d be feeling . . . exactly what I was feeling?  Thanks?  I guess?

But there was a gem in there that helped me significantly, and rolls around in my head to this day.  I’m sorry I can’t quote it verbatim because I sent off my book to another grieving mom, but it went something like this:  it’s actually a good thing that the major decisions we make during the time from hell are made while we’re sleep deprived and loopy and trying to juggle a million different balls and exhausted from crying because that way, they come from the gut.  Davis suggests that it’s a good thing we don’t over-think the major decisions, and that instead, because of our circumstances, they come from somewhere subconscious rather than based on intellectual reasoning.

If I remember correctly, Davis used this statement in the context of removing life support from a child.  But I really think this sentiment applies to a lot of decisions we made under duress, no matter the specific details around your baby’s death.

We did in fact make the decision to remove Maddy from life support.  But it wasn’t even a decision, really, certainly not one that keeps me up at night.  She didn’t have a nervous system to speak of, her heart was only beating thanks to machines, and she was fed through tubes.  At six days, she was given a prognosis of 48 hours -- on the machines.  And after seeing her almost crash (on the machines), twice, surrounded by strangers, we decided that if nothing else, we wanted her to go peacefully and in our arms.  The decision here was really what kind of death we wanted for her, not whether to grant it for her or not.  And I’m more than positive we made the right choice given our grim options.

But we made some other decisions that week:  we moved her to Children’s Hospital from Delivery hospital, where we were told that they might be able to offer us more in terms of a diagnosis.  This was by no means a life-saving measure, and our only hold-up on this particular decision was whether Children’s would honor our wishes and not take life-saving measures when we didn’t want them.  We were a bit leery of the bright and shiny technology, but they were more than sympathetic and accommodating.  We decided other things too:  to have the nurses take pictures.  Not to have Bella see her.  (It was a bit complicated anyway, since Bella wasn’t feeling well to begin with.  But we didn’t force the issue.)  To name her our first choice of girl’s names even though at that point we finally named her on day two we knew she would die.  To take footprints.  To swaddle her for her death instead of dress her.  To have her cremated.    We didn’t have a service.

I think an outsider might look at these “decisions” and analyze, but wait – if you were that mentally exhausted, don’t you think the doctors and nurses and family were somehow guiding you?  Leading you on?  Making your decisions for you?  Putting words in your mouth?  Last year in group therapy I met a woman who told of a scene when her extremely ill two-year old (he lived to a week shy of his third birthday) crashed at the hospital, with her in the room.  The lights flashed, the bag went on, CPR administered, and the line kept steadily flat.  For a good few minutes.  Her son had been sick since a month after his birth, his prognosis was grim.  The doctor looked at her with his arms in the air and the knowing look, the look that says, “I think this is (finally) it.”  And she said, without hesitating, “Keep trying.  It’s not time.”  And they worked, and a few minutes later, the line started bouncing, and her son zoomed back.  And she bought a few more months with him.

For some reason this story comforted me greatly.  She went with her gut, and she was right.  And when I told her my story of my decision to remove Maddy from life support, she said I was her hero – that she couldn’t imagine being faced with that option and having to make a decision.  But you did, I said, you did.  You did in the face of doctors telling you it probably wasn’t the right one.  We both did.  From our hearts, our guts, and we don’t question them.  We were both right.

I’m not entirely comfortable with all of my decisions, especially not having a memorial service.  I just couldn’t.  I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to do that seemed remotely appropriate, anything to say.  I was so angry and tired and heartbroken it just sounded like salt in a wound and following a script that I didn’t want to be a part of.  It didn’t sound like “closure,” and it didn’t seem like nearly enough for what this poor little girl went through.  And sometimes I regret that we did nothing – that I should have done something to remember, no matter how painful.  Sometimes I wonder if it would’ve made any difference in how some of our family behaves if they had been forced to acknowledge in a public forum that she was here and living and now she was dead and gone.

But, know what?  I really think I made that decision for a reason.  It was my gut talking.  It’s what flew out of my mouth when I was asked, and what I felt in my disoriented, barely vertical state.  And I think my mind was trying to tell me something about my limitations, and what I could handle at the time, and ultimately what was right for me.  For all of us.

I’ve seen women here and elsewhere struggling with the weight of their decisions already made:  to terminate pregnancies in the face of mind-blowing devastation for their babies, or themselves.   To name their dead children, or not.  Whether they held their children long enough, or didn’t hold them at all.  Whether they agreed to autopsies.  Whether they had services.  Whether they should’ve cremated/buried, or vice versa.  And as I told the commenter, I think given the extraordinarily shitty circumstances and the mental capacity we have at those moments, these decisions are made from our guts for a reason.  I don’t like to acknowledge the tiny voices from within because it sounds like I subscribe to teh Crazy, but let’s face it, there are voices that protect and warn:  don’t touch that, it’s hot.  Don’t go that way.  Change lanes, now.  And sometimes, as a parent, that’s the only way to make the tough decisions:  to listen to the tiny voices emitted from the heart, not the mind.  

I recognize fully that some of us were not given decisions to make; that medical personnel or family intruded and made them for us.  And I find that deplorable, and I’m so sorry if that happened to you.  That’s certainly a subject for another post.  But for those of you were given choices, which really weren’t – choices where A was heartbreaking and B was downright shitty – it’s probably best that they were made in the heat of the moment, while you may have been in a hazy drug-induced coma, or on your umpteenth night of no sleep, or after crying your brains out for 12 hours straight.  And now we simply have to breathe through them and recognize that our subconscious was probably trying to tell us something.

Easier said than done, I know.  Easier said than done.