Stirring the pot and singing Kumbaya
Last year, while I was still in the very thick of it, Virginia Tech happened. I didn't watch much TV then at all, and certainly not much in the way of news. I heard of it on the radio, I think. What I did do a lot was read blogs and chat online, mostly with my friend Aite. One day she told me she was watching the coverage of the tragedy, and there was this interview with a father of a student who got killed. One question he was asked was "was he your only child?"
Would it have been any better if he wasn't? Not really. But it would be worse if he was. Facing a life with no surviving children is a separate pain. She is very thoughtful, my friend Aite, isn't she? This is something that stuck with me over the last year, this idea of how some things can't possibly be better, but there are ways in which they can be even worse.
I have been troubled the last few days. Perturbed, bent out of shape, preoccupied. A comment, a couple of lines and a signature, is what left me alternatively dumbfounded and steaming. A comment that seemed to imply that we here have not so much to talk about because we are, none of us, bereft of living children and at the end of that road.
I never claimed or wanted the mantle of the worst case. In fact, somewhat recently, I finally, after thinking about it for a long time, wrote about one of my coping mechanisms-- the it could've been worse. There are so many ways in which my experience with grief could've been a lot worse. For starters, every time I hear a bereaved parent talk about the guilt they carry, my heart breaks. I have none of it. And this still sucks. Adding guilt on top of the grief seems like it would just be too much. I also had the very best, most compassionate medical care. I have friends who didn't run away, who still remember and take care not to step on my toes. And I have a living daughter. Validating her in her grief, acknowledging that she is a separate part of this story, that her loss is her own and must be respected and honored, all of this has been a challenge. But not one I would ever trade.
Yes, it could've been worse. It is worse for many, I believe. For parents losing their first-borns, how can it not be worse-- wondering whether there will ever be a living child in their home, many times a home lovingly picked in preparation for the arrival of that first-born? For parents who years after losing their child and despite trying and trying, and trying some more have not brought another into the world, how can it not be worse? For parents for whom lightening has struck two or more times, how could it not be worse for them?
So see, I have no problem with anyone telling me I am not the worst off. In fact, I'd be the first to say that. What I do have a problem with, a big huge problem, is with conflating me, an individual who grieves, and my son, an individual I grieve. Or any other baby anyone else grieves. I don't think the value of a child, value of each child to the universe and to their family, can or should be relative to what the family does or doesn't have.
We all grieve our children. We may grieve different things about them. For some it may be as simple and all encompassing as the huge void, the absence, and for them there is no need or use in dividing that void into bite size pieces. Others have come to believe that we grieve the potential. We grieve not knowing. Not knowing so many things. It kills me that I don't know what color A's eyes would've been. What he would've looked like when he smiled. What his laugh would've sounded like.
What has been so upsetting to me in thinking about that comment is the implication that these things I grieve should somehow be less important because he wasn't my first or my only. That not getting to know my son is less of a tragedy because I have a daughter. Or because I may yet get to know another son. The implication that seems to me to be trending towards the hated "you can always have another" line that is the very definition, the very embodiment of the cluelessness of the world around us. The implication that, if extended as logic requires, would indicate that first babies who die lose their specialness, their importance, or the amount of grief allotted to them if or when their parents bring home a living sibling.
Had they lived, our children would be seen and counted as individuals, judged, hopefully, on their own merits. Do they not deserve the same in death? To be seen and mourned as individuals? To matter as individuals?
So this is my point, a fine one perhaps, but one that has asserted itself as supremely important to me over the last couple of days. The experience of loss, the human interactions of it, the physicality, the treatment we get from medical professionals, from our families, from our friends, the ripples, all of that can be worse. The situation any given mother or any given family may find themselves in can certainly be worse. Comparing is human nature, and it is ok.
But not when it comes to the babies. I believe that placing differential values on the children based on what else is going on with the family should never be on the menu. Denying me my grief does not speak to who I am or what I have, either in abstract terms or as compared to anyone else. What it does is minimizes my son, makes him less than a person in his own right. And that is just not something I can accept.
What I believe about each of our lost babies, regardless of anything else, is that they were loved, they were wanted, they are missed, and they are grieved. Other things can be worse. But this, the place where we all started this journey, this place can't really be better.
julia
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Julia, I think you have made this distinction very clear. And I, for one, am thankful you have put it into words. Because, like you, I have never been afraid to acknowledge the ways things could have been worse. However, I think I have always been leery of expressing those thoughts out loud because the implication would be that my own situation was somehow "better", and nothing about it felt better to me. Now, you have given me the words. Yes, things could have been, and could be worse- but that doesn't mean that my loss, and my babies deaths, were therefore better.
They've built their nests
in the chimney of my heart
those swallows you lost.
~Tom Robbins.
Thank you for this post.You have changed me, And I thank you for that. beautifully written. Very moving.
a lovely and eloquent post, thank you. ~luna
Julia, you are so beautifully eloquent and thoughtful.
I don't think any of us held this commenter as anything other than simply despairing. I've had days like that where I've said things that are illogical and designed to invalidate others... to momentarily provide relief in the same way that slamming a door or throwing a vase provides relief.
So I want that commenter to know that she's still welcome here. That while we disagree with her extrapolation of it, we understand and accept the rage.
What you explore here so gently is the calmer truth. I think our commenter would know this, but right now is immersed in the blackness that all of us know so intimately, and I'm sorry for that.
Beautiful, fascinating post.
there are so many pieces and parts to grieving a child...and so many other heartbreaks that can surround and compound that loss as well. when my son died, i remember realizing, a few weeks in, in the bleakest days, that i was still grieving the pregnancy and the expected fetus very separately than i was the boy i'd held...and that behind both there was also this sheer, abject terror that this had been my one chance, that our house would never hold living children. all three were different sorrows, and needed their own timeline, their own path of healing.
i was incredibly lucky. i got pregant again just about five months later; delivered (early again) a healthy boy just a year later. and so i did not have to live with the same fear anymore; that shadow of "never" got laid to rest and i am deeply, deeply grateful because it was painful in a way i don't think time would have healed.
but you're right, Julia...resolving that one piece of my grief did not make the other pieces better, and for a period having a living baby pointed out poignantly all the things my still-loved firstborn would never do, leaving my heart a different kind of separated.
this pain, though, offered healing, where the other never would have. it has been a gift, an undeserved grace that some still wait for, or have given up on, or have had to search out other means of achieving. the heartbreak of not knowing is its own world; a hell however long one is in it. and if we are comparing, my life now IS better, actually. but the loss of my child, what he suffered, what he missed? nothing, not ten more kids and the lottery to boot, can make that better.
This is a great post and I couldn't agree with you more. In part,I wonder how it is that people feel they can comment on the right or legitimacy of anyone's grief. Whether you have lost your first child or your fourth, I don't see how it matters. Whether it was an early miscarriage or a full term loss, I don't think anyone has the right to say someone else's grief is less or smaller in any way...
So thank for this. Thanks for getting it out there that there is no room for comparison in the face of the loss of a child.
I have to admit I was bothered by the comment. Angry almost. Because, just as you describe so perfectly, I felt it minimized the worth of my own son. That I have it better in some way.
But it's not about me, and I quickly saw that the commenter was deeply upset with her own circumstances. Hers is a grief I will never know. My son's death, though, broke my heart in the most unimaginable way. Am I grateful for my 2 living children? Absolutely. Can I go on to have more? It's pretty likely. Does it make this any better? Unfortunately, not one tiny, little bit.
Wonderful, thoughtful post, Julia.
This was a beautiful, thought-provoking post - thank you.
At times I've felt the way that commenter felt when it comes to infertility. I've thought that those complaining of secondary infertility had it so much "better"...Before our loss, I probably would have expected to feel that way about loss as well. Now that I am drowning in it, however, I can see that no matter what you have, it doesn't lessen the pain or significance of what was taken away. This post is wonderful.
Perfect, Julia. And Kate, I agree so much with your comment as well. Cry Me a River, if you come back, I'm sorry.
Bon and I have similar stories. I feel almost guilty saying this, but I guess it is part of the experience as well. Having made it past one source of horrible darkness, the fear that not only would I have one, but perhaps multiple graves to visit, with never a living child in my home, I am struck with how unbelievably light I can feel in the presence of my living child. It breaks my heart to know, and to understand, why someone could look at my family now and think I have nothing to be sad over anymore.
My friend Erin died in the Virginia Tech shooting. She was an only child; she was born a few weeks after her father lost his eight year old daughter to cancer.
I am so sorry for your loss.
Lauren, I am so sorry for your loss and that of Erin's family.
Julia, beautiful, elegant, thoughtful post. I heart this post.
Beautifully written, eloquently explained. Thank you.
That is a very useful post, thanks. I realize I do it all the time - tell people "it will be ok if we can't have another, because we have Ada" - because I know that is what people want to hear from me. I tell myself that, because I can't face the alternative, that it won't be okay, that I will survive but it probably won't ever stop hurting to some extent.
I am terrified that something will happen to our son. He is the "only." And we thought he would be the last, it's quite possible he may be. So I feel guilty when I don't pay enough attention to him or something like that. I'm not being the best mother I can be, I've only got one kid to take care of and I can't manage that...
Right after he was born, I kept missing the baby I miscarried - my son's scrapbook is sparse and bare, and likely will be for a very long time, I simply can't get the thing out. I was trying and I kept bursting into tears. I felt guilty then about taking time to grieve. I still do.
Part of that is the anger, it has nowhere to go, so it goes to the "you're better off than I am." I envy mamas who have children in the NICU right now. I don't know how much guilt plays into that, too, in my gut I know it was the right decision to provide only palliative care for Aeryn but at the same time - should we have put her on some life support? Did I kill her by delivering? What if, what if, what if...I suppose I'm just jealous of those who still have choices left to make. It seems that grief makes us both more caring and more self-absorbed.