“THAT” Psycho Family

for parents to outlive their children,” Local Sister said to me on the phone. She had just attended a funeral for Brother’s friend’s 2 1/2 month old baby.

“No, it’s not natural. But it does happen,” I responded.

How I know that it happens. Those that know me in Real Life or from LiveJournal may have heard me briefly touch on my first child - born in August 1991 - a girl. She was born brain dead, and I had to make the decision to take her off of life support. She died when she was 2 days old. It’s been almost 17 years since that day, and while time has lessened the pain I felt, I still to this day can’t go to a funeral for a baby.

Part of me feels selfish for not being able to at least offer my condolences to Brother’s friend for his horrible loss. But I know my limitations. To this day, to see the haunting expression of a parent who has lost a baby transports me back to that dark time of my life. It’s somewhere I pray I never have to go back to.

Maybe that is the reason why I don’t put myself out there and try to reach someone who is grieving their child. I know how hard it is to pick up the pieces of shattered dreams. I may have only been 17 at the time, but I had such dreams for my child. Instead of carrying a new baby out of the hospital, I carried a plant and the only dress that she ever wore in her short life. My arms were empty and aching. My soul was screaming with the injustice of it all. I did everything right during my pregnancy, but I was living proof that sometimes the best laid plans go awry.

I don’t know if there will ever be a time when I can deal with looking someone in the eyes and telling them that I am sorry for the loss of their child. Because I know how painful the road is. Waking up in the middle of the night - thinking that a baby is crying. Meeting a child that has the same exact birthday as your child, and dying a little inside because you look at him or her and say, wow, I could be that child’s parent. (This actually happened to me when I worked at the middle school, it was a girl with the same exact birth date as my daughter. She ended up in my in school suspension class, and we got to know each other. It was a surreal experience. Of course, I didn’t tell her that she shared the same b-day as my dead child.) That eventually you laugh again, and then cry because of the guilt that you feel because for one moment, you forgot that your child will never get to laugh. That if you have another child (or 4), you will have many sleepless nights worrying that something could happen to this child too.

Your life is never the same again when you have a child that dies. You look at the world differently, because you KNOW that children DO die before their parents, and you know what? It’s. Not. Natural.