My aunt told me and my wife, “At least you can have another one.”
What the hell is wrong with people?
I hereby issue a decree: If you don’t know what to say in the face of grief, shut the hell up.
My friend that I mentioned in post #3 said that several women (all women, no men) told her ex-husband, “I bet you’re really glad he died because now you don’t have to pay child support for him any more.”
:eek: :mad: :rolleyes: :mad: 
:mad: :smack: :mad:
They even knew that the boy literally collapsed and died in his father’s arms.
Correction: What in the holy fucking hell is wrong with people?
I got some weird stuff when I miscarried, but it was more along the lines of ‘‘Here, read this article about why you should be pro-life.’’ Because politics is super important when you’re grieving the loss of a child.
I saw my parents bury a child, and I saw my sister bury a child.
There are times when I feel a pang of regret for not having had children, but I will never have to go through that special hell they experienced. As painful as the death of my sister and nephew were to me, those deaths were exponentially worse for the parents.
I don’t say to the grieving “I understand what you’re going through”, I say “I can see that you are hurting - feel free to talk or not talk about it as you need”. Or I just say “I’m sorry for your loss” and let them take it from there.
So, let me say once more to all the parents in this thread who have gone through that terrible experience: “I am sorry for your loss. Please accept my condolences.”
I’m a good friend of Dawn Breedon, who lost her four year old to a murder/suicide at the hands of his father.
She never got over it, but she was courageous enough to move on with her life.
I recall reading somewhere that it used to be common advice not to get too close to your children until they were at least five, because you would likely lose some of them.
I have a friend who buried both of his children. One was an AP photographer who was murdered by the soldier manning a checkpoint in Sierre Leone, just because he could. The second, a physician in NYC, died of breast cancer. When I tried to give condolences to the father, he kind of brushed me off, so I desisted. I did talk about with the mother (they were divorced) a few years later, but the passage of time had blunted the pain some.
This is probably true of living through any great tragedy, but the feeling of unreality I experienced when my daughter died was unexpected and all-consuming. I slept a lot in the days and weeks following her death, and often I would awake with a start, thinking, “I have lost my child!” She was my first and I went on to have three more.
I think the only horrible thing anyone ever said to me (since we’re on the topic) was the executive director where I work, who praised me for “not playing wounded mother” after I returned back to work. She was/is a rather unfeeling woman who said other obnoxious things to me, for which she later apologized. She had no children, which could have something to do with her not knowing how truly horrible what she said to me was.
People would be so uncomfortable that they would start to blabber and inevitable say something completely clueless or unintentionally hurtful.
You’re not going to solve their grief in 30 seconds so stop throwing out trite expressions. They will be in pain and if you can’t stand that, just stay the hell away.
If suddenly you start to freak out because my kid’s dealth has reminded you that your healthy child may get sick some day, bite your goddam tongue and just leave. Going on and on about not knowing how you could handle it is not helpful.
More frequent were those who were simply visually uncomfortable.
“I don’t know what to say. . .” in obvious discomfort
“It’s OK, we’re fine”
“No, ah it it must ah be hard” with a pained look on their face
“No, I’m fine, Really.”
“Are you sure?” Some sort of confusion
“Yes, thank you. It means so much to me to have friends like you.”
Others have given good advice in this thread, so I will only add that if your not good with theses things, simply saying that you are sorry for the loss and moving on is actually not bad.
I meant to add that I am one of those people who buried herself in work in the weeks and months after her death. I took on an enormous freelance project (an entire special section of a business newspaper!) plus began a lot of smaller freelance projects on top of working full-time. I also read complex novels that took a lot of concentration, like Tom Clancy books full of military details. I felt better when my mind was completely occupied. This was in the pre-internet days!
A lot of well-meaning people gave me self-help books. While I appreciated the gesture, I guess I just didn’t need what they offered.
The title of this thread is a little hard for me. The actual act of burying my child was really, really hard. She was an infant and I had spent every ounce of energy caring for her and basically trying to keep her alive. And to “leave” her there at the cemetery … was rough.
I’m very sorry, Ellen. Truly.
Thank you, sweetheart.
My father wondered why as the youngest he was named after his father but not a junior. It wasn’t until he was an adult that he realized there was an oldest sibling who died in infancy who had been a junior.
Well you know that men can’t possibly have feelings for their children. :rolleyes: I’m not a violent person but I don’t know how I would react to that.
Some old world cultures seem to wallow in grief and expect to make it worse for every one. My older generation Italian relatives were like this. My aunt died in her 40s. At her wake my grandmother’s sister brought a picture of my grandmother’s other daughter who died after being hit by a truck at age 6. Because why should you feel devastated by the death of one child when you can have two?
One thing I see is that when people are making small conversation they say things that are unintentionally hurtful. I don’t blame them since they don’t know and luckily most move on to a new topic based on the reaction when they say things like to my wife, “Aww it’s a shame you never had a daughter.” or when they ask me how many kids I have.
My best friend’s sister lost her daughter at 2 when we were in high school. That was 20 years ago. She went on to have 4 more kids (including a surprise late-in-life baby) and in total my friend and his 4 siblings had 13 kids between them.
Every year since the baby died and the new kids and cousins were old enough, they have had a “kid’s day” where everyone gets to take off school and spend the day together doing something fun and have portraits taken.
I like how they are both celebrating the lives of the kids and family and celebrating the memory of the baby cousin they never knew.
The mom still talks about the lost daughter, 20 years on. It of course never leaves you.
My other friends lost a baby shortly after birth, about 15 years ago. They collect money and walk for March of Dimes every year. They still talk about the baby, even though they only “knew” him a few short days. Beautiful and heartbreaking.
I can’t fathom what it would be like to lose an infant child, so I want to make it clear I’m not trying to draw some kind of equivalency between that and my miscarriage. But when our baby died, I didn’t have the physical miscarriage like would normally happen. We didn’t find out until we went for the 2nd ultrasound and there was no heartbeat. And then I spent a week carrying the dead child before I could get in to have it surgically removed. It was really terrible because it was a rough pregnancy and I had all of the symptoms of being pregnant (morning sickness, etc) but none of the joy.
For some reason making the decision to have the D&C was incredibly difficult, because even though cognitively I knew my child was dead, I felt like I was giving up on my baby, or abandoning her somehow. And even though it hurt to carrying around my dead child, I also felt like I had some kind of responsibility to stay with her as long as I could. When I woke up from OR I just started crying. Like that was the moment of no return in my mind. Then I apologized for crying. The nurse was an absolute angel, she just said, ‘‘It’s okay, sweetie, it’s normal.’’
I’ve read about people who found out their child had a birth defect that was incompatible with life, and that their decision to have the baby, or at least maintain the pregnancy as long as possible, was because they wanted to have their child for as long as possible. This feeling was not related to their stance on abortion, either.
A number of the fathers in our support group reported really angry with strangers over unrelated things and a couple even got into fights. The group leader said it’s not an uncommon reaction, especially from guys.
The closest I got to punching someone out was a guy who decided that a debate over the merits of abortion would be exactly what a father of a newly dead son would want to hear.
Then there was my family. My mother taking it personally when I didn’t want a Mormon funeral and telling me that there were worse things (severely disabled children) than having the baby survive.
And who can forget my mentally ill younger brother who became unglued and wrote tomes about why it was my personal fault my son died, and why Iam’s death affected him so much. I think there was a demand for money in all of that as well.
And there was the doper who thought it would be fun to anonymously email pics of dead babies.
This.
When I had my elder daughter, and was pushing the pram with the new baby in it, people would coo over her, then inevitably ask “Is she your first?”
You’d have a split second to decide whether to lie to this stranger, and thereby deny that my son ever existed, or have a really awkward conversation telling them about how she should have a big brother, but he died of SIDs at 12 days old.
I try not to ask strangers that question now. Or if I do, I’m prepared for any stillbirth/miscarriage talk that’s about to come as the answer.
I’m sorry I’m not the only one who got the ‘‘Ooh! Dead baby is a great opportunity to change someone’s mind about abortion!’’ approach, though I’m somewhat relieved to hear I’m not the only one it pissed off. At least one person accused me of being ungrateful toward people who tried to be ‘helpful’ in this way.
And let’s not forget the favorite, ‘‘It’s all part of God’s plan.’’
God’s plan involves routinely murdering babies but God also really wants me to read this article about abortion. Hmm.
[QUOTE=TokyoBayer]
And there was the doper who thought it would be fun to anonymously email pics of dead babies.
[/QUOTE]
Only a sociopath would do such a horrific, callous thing.
I’m sure that’s small consolation but I try to remind myself that 4% of the general population is a sociopath and that has to apply to the internet as well.