This is a repost of a blog musing from 2008… something I think could rouse thoughts and opinions for anyone in this community.
How it is possible to be up to your neck in self-pity and still have compassion for the relative heartbreak of anyone else?
Sometimes here I start to feel like a traitor, an imposter, a cruel, wretch of a person hiding in the skin of an empathetic, supportive, listening ear. Truth be told, I just can’t think of anything worse than a dead baby. So when somebody is starting in on their own worst day, it can be so hard not to let the caustic, dripping words leak out of the corner my mouth, unintentionally.
A good friend was sharing with me, a month or so back, about a friend whose baby suffered an injury during the birth that required her arm to be amputated after the birth. “Can you imagine?” she said to me, “Your beautiful baby, losing an arm?” I could not imagine. I did try to imagine the awful pain for those parents, pictured my Liam or Aoife, seemingly perfect, off to the operating room to become un-perfect. Truly, truly, in my heart of hearts, I felt an enormous surge of pity for them, imagining the horror of the experience, the aftermath, the pain of having a child with one arm when everyone else’s child has two. But still, as I was imagining this, and feeling their pain, I also thought these words, “Can you imagine giving birth and the baby ends up being dead?” Ummm… yeah. This is where I feel like a jerk. Because I do think those people drew a short straw, too. It’s just that to me, it doesn’t seem short relative to mine. If I could have Charlotte back, minus the left arm, I’d take her.
But I’ve worked, truly hard, to really understand that each person’s worst day is truly their worst day. I believe this, truly. But it’s THEIR worst day, not mine. And if their worst day happened to me, after having had MY worst day? It’s possible it might roll off my back. Kate’s post was in reference to birth trauma, and people mourning the loss of the birth they’d imagined. True, and valid. I can see myself in those shoes, had I been given those shoes to walk in. But here’s what it’s like for me. I was having lunch with an old friend the other day, and told her of Liam’s flip between 8 and 10 cm, and the cesarean that ensued.
“I’m sorry,” she said. I looked at her pretty hard. “Don’t be,” I said. Truly, I meant this, it almost seemed comical to me that she was pitying me for having had a cesarean. But this is true for so many people, that they really do need a condolance, because they’ve lost an opportunity they felt was theirs to have had. What I had was not a loss, but a gain: I had a breathing, living child. The way he came out literally (and there truly is no exaggeration or denial here) did not faze me. If anything, it was a dream come true. For that year before, I had spent so many hours daydreaming about how they might have saved Charlotte if only they had been there to save her. Now here they were, performing the heroic rescue I had imagined. The birth cry was all I needed. I did not care how I got there.
And then there are my childless friends, still working through love crises of their own, who have related the loss of a lover to the loss of a child. For this, I must really bite into a leather strap, because love does not equal love, and I just can’t say anything more on this, except to try to remember that this is what they know.
So I’m working on this. I feel as if I’ve come 150% in this field, because I don’t resent people anymore for grieving things that I myself would not grieve. But I do, without apologies, often feel that my worst day was, well, worse than their worst day.
(and that’s me, 4 years out. Does it feel different? Yeah, I think now I’ve probably come about 300%, but I still sometimes feel like a jerk)