Last week, we were at my parents' house as we usually are on Thursday nights. We were talking about boring adult things in the living room, and it was getting late. Lainey came in, crawled up behind me sitting on the couch, and fell asleep.
She was almost completely upside down--Her head sank slowly as she fell deeper into sleep, and she started wedging herself between my back and the couch cushion, so I moved over to let her breathe.
And I looked at her face. Jeff did too. And we both saw Luke.
I don't think there's anything that really ever prepares you for that moment when, as a parent of a dead baby, you see your dead baby in your very-much-alive child. But that's how siblings go, right? There's been so many times in my life I've been confused for my sister. And it's normally a SUPER annoying thing as a young kid, but then it turns into sort of an endearing thing as you realize your siblings are kind of your best friends as you trudge through life together.
But this? When the face you're actually seeing is an alive 5-year-old, and the one you accidentally see is a dead newborn who you said goodbye to almost 4 years before the 5-year-old was born? It's that typical mindfuck that comes with being in this shitty club. Most parents see their kids grow--their features change and develop over time--but they usually stay similar, even as you age. How do you ever reconcile seeing your dead newborn's smooshed cheeks and lips in your Kindergartener?
I guess this is the sort of shitty math and reconciling you find yourself still noticing, 9 years after your first child is born still.
Something that's really...struck me...this past year and a half of living through a pandemic is that most people don't understand the gravity of surviving the unnatural order of real, life-altering loss. Being the person left here, still alive, left to keep moving forward is usually soul-crushing. Guilt inducing. Isolating.
Yes. All of these things get less heavy over time. But then again, I'm still over here seeing my dead baby's face in the places I least expect it. Trauma does that to you. And I guess in some ways, I feel lucky--To have seen his face and remembered it so well at all, nine years after the last time I saw it for the first and last time.
Recognizing the unnatural order...of having to say goodbye to your own child while you still have tons of life to live? It's a difficult future to face and build around.
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Nine years later, what I know, is that if there was anything I could have done? To avoid all of this heartache? To have maybe changed what happened to Luke? I would have done it. No matter how far of a fetch it was. No matter how crazy I thought doctors were. Because it would have maybe meant saving me, us, from the lifetime of mindfucking grief that comes with the death of your own child.
So I guess lately, I'm not understanding how there are people in this world that wouldn't do anything they could to stay here...to keep their loved ones safe, to see the ones they love grow up or get old. If I'd had some sort of vaccine to take that would have saved Luke, or at the very least have given us better chances? I would've done it. It's literally crazy-making watching people decide they'll just take their chances with a completely unknown disease.
You know what other thing had incredibly low odds? Stillbirth. Your baby dying full-term. It's like, 0.1% odds, I think? I learned that somebody is always that 0.1%. It was us.
Maybe for some, taking that chance only comes around out of desperation, or when it's too late. I don't know. But I know that witnessing so much grief swirling around in the world right now hurts. And I think it might strike me a little bit deeper because I've understood grief and odds like 0.1% at a visceral level for nine years.
If you're lucky, you can brush off devastating things that happen to other people because they don't happen to you. That's luck. But the thing is, you don't get to call your luck. No one asks for shitty things to happen to them. They just do.
I can promise that when they do happen for you, you'd most likely do anything to change your circumstances. Bargaining--I think that's called the Bargaining stage of grief (even though those stages of grief are bullshit because they usually all just happen concurrently or in weird orders). It's real. And I've seen so many stories lately about people who are/were full of regret.
I can't say that I have tons of regret about Luke...Because what happened to him was such a freak accident. I wish I'd gone in sooner. Maybe that would've given us a chance. I don't know.
But...I guess all that to say, we all think we're invincible. Until we're not. And we're desperate to change the outcome.
I wish I had a chance to change our outcome, Luke.
I can't believe it's been 9 years since I've seen your face and yet I can remember what it looks like like it was yesterday.
I hope you and Finn are celebrating together in the stars, tonight.
