"Is she your only child?"
I am pretty sure of my reply, but there is always this pause that precedes the reply to this question. In that pause, I am processing if I need to reveal my loss.
My staple answer is:
"She is. But I had a child before her.'
Take and Double Take, when the lady said:
"Me too."
Taking full advantage of the darkness that had fallen, we let our stories out. She cried, I cried. I even associated a bad adjective referring to my family (I am not a bad girl. I do not abuse my family...that darned word spontaneously rolled off on its own. And I have made sheer effort to always cast this episode away from all and everything else that is there, because no one and mostly me would be able to breathe the air of the house anymore.)
Over any thing else, there is a lingering sense of not being allowed a lot of things I deserved to do with the girl.
Her daughter was running all around the place. Mine was tired and cranky and hung in my arms, wailing to be taken home and given some food. We broke it off.
For all that we went through, we lost our first-borns for very different reasons and I had a way easier pregnancy than her. With her current daughter, she was hospitalized from the fifth month onwards, and remained there till she delivered the girl via scheduled C-section.
I do not have enough eloquence, and enough substance or the depth to answer how 'glad' I am to meet baby-lost mums in real life who do process the loss the way the children should be remembered. I am fed up of a few women in my real life who use numbers to either evoke drama or to extract sympathy or one-up me on how their loss as quantitatively more than mine (sadly, I know closely someone in that category)
Ah - it's good to meet someone of like mind. And it's good to let out the resentment that lingers - I think you don't hold it against your family as much as you hate the whole situation with particular areas being most frustrating.
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear about the one upping that you've experienced :( But glad you can connect to some women without that.
ReplyDeleteFinding someone with similar experiences in our busy days can be comforting, even when it's a member of a club no one wants to join. Sorry about those who are trying to one up your experiences rather than simply make a connection.
ReplyDeleteIt was probably rough, but cathartic having that encounter. I'm proud of you for being honest.
ReplyDeleteSee, revealing that detail of having had a daughter before found you in similar company. She probably felt good to be able to talk to someone else about her first child as well. I'm glad you found that and sorry that someone seems to feel the need to one up someone when it's such a tragic, awful, sad situation.
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