I was holding another friend’s
year-and-a-half-old daughter following a church service one day when a
seventies-something friend approached me. She leaned in close then whispered
in my ear, “Wouldn’t you just love to
have one of those?” Bull’s eye! I
gasped for breath. My whole body felt skewered, bloody, weak. Physically sick.
I’m certain—God, I hope—it was a mere
slip of the brain and lips; that she never would have uttered those words had
she remembered. Aftershocks reverberated like knife pricks to my heart’s core as
I smiled weakly, lowered the toddler to the floor, shrugged indifferently and
replied, “Oh…I don’t know.” It was a defensive tactic, a fake ambivalent
demeanor I resorted to when I teetered dangerously close to losing control.
Otherwise I risked dissolving before her eyes into a heap of sobbing, quivering
flesh.
Ten months after our loss, a friend
brought her beautiful two-week-old baby girl to Sunday service. Naturally the
baby drew the attention of everyone in our small congregation, from children to
seniors. I briefly admired her soft, delicate beauty from a relatively safe
distance and congratulated my friend.
Then she stunned me. “Do you want to
hold her?” she asked. I momentarily gaped at her. Retreating quickly, I waved
my hand and choked on my words, “I can’t…I
just can’t.” Then I pivoted to flee the throng of happy onlookers. My feet
didn’t stop moving until my slumping against our car stopped them.
Nowhere could I retreat to hide from
it. Within days of our loss, my favorite television anchorwoman beamed radiantly
through the airwaves from her hospital bed—holding her newborn infant daughter.
My mind flooded with questions—jealous, accusative thoughts—about whether she
knew how precious that miraculous gift was lying in her lap. Disgust rattled me
as I envisioned her taking a standard six weeks maternity leave then returning
to work, leaving someone else to raise her precious infant. Don’t you know what you’ve been given? I
wanted to yell at the screen. How can you
just pass off that beautiful miracle into someone else’s arms so soon after
birth, especially by choice? I wanted to pound the couch and holler, You don’t deserve her! (Your thoughts and
heart can get pretty ugly when mired in despondency.)
To further complicate my grief and
stall my healing, four friends expected children around the time of Victoria’s
original, August due date. My anxiety elevated as the date neared, then passed,
and one-by-one, announcements arrived in my mail. As they each celebrated safe
deliveries and new additions, envy and disabling sadness pried open my still-healing
wound. Two out of three had boys, giving them their “perfect” families: one of
each—a boy and a girl. A complete set.
One friend, however, didn’t mail us
an announcement of her daughter’s birth. I really did want to know how everything went, and when the baby arrived,
but my heart was secretly thankful it had escaped another assault. It was
almost a full year before I gathered enough mental strength to shop for baby
gifts.
Would
it ever be my turn again…?
________________________________________________
NEXT WEEK: Stupid Comments That Make a Grieving
Parent’s Heart Bleed
________________________________________________
Until next week.
Thanks for
joining me!
Blessings,
Andrea
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