I was sitting here listening to Lilli sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" to herself over the baby monitor while she waited to fall asleep, and was alternately thinking how shockingly cute she is (and how sometimes my heart just wants to explode with love for her), and about all these babies that keep dying. Yesterday when I watched in the rear view mirror of my car while Elizabeth sang "Happy Birthday" to her daddy over the phone, because she just couldn't wait until we met him at the restaurant to sing it in person, the expression of joy and love on her face almost physically hurt me. I adore them both both so much, and the thought of something happening to either one of them almost incapacitates me.
It seems like April was a bad month for babies, and May doesn't seem to be that good so far either.
At some point in the last month and a half, on almost every blog I read, the writers have either gone through a personal tragedy of such magnitude that I have to hold my breath just to keep from crying so hard I can't read, or are expressing sympathy, with a link, to someone who lost their child. And most of these babies are little girls. And even though I know what it does to me, I, like a glutton for punishment, click over to the site and find myself sobbing over babies that I don't know, as I read my way through the archives of that child's life. And let me tell you, I am way too emotional to handle it well.
It is tough enough to handle the passing of what essentially is a stranger's child, no matter how well I feel I know them through their posts, and not feel comfortable leaving a comment saying "Hi, I've been lurking on your blog for the last year and have never commented, because I am by nature a bit shy and more comfortable lurking, but I had to come out of the woodwork to tell you how sorry I am about this because everything you wrote made me love your child more than you can possibly comprehend." But at least I feel that I've "known" the child and am entitled to mourn to some degree.
But these precious babies lying in wait for me in link traps set in blogs that I've innocently gone to, maybe hoping to read the latest hilarious thing that the blogger's dog did, are killing me. It is not the time in a parent's life to have a random person virtually come up to you more or less at the wake of your child and say "Hi, I came over from X's blog, and even though I had never heard of you before tonight, I have just spent the last 3 hours reading the entire life of your child, and no, I can't understand what you are going through, I barely know you, but I have two babies myself and I have very good imagination and I am now grieving for your child in a way that I have no right to." It's not the time, but its what I want to say. I feel like clicking on these links and mourning these children is the only thing I can do to honor their short lives and their parents' suffering, even though I hurt myself with empathy.
Gack. It's too much, that's all.
Kind of a downer post, I get that, sorry, but why have April and May been so bad for babies?
1 comment:
I completely understand. It especially hits hard because you feel you kinda know the blogger being hit by this tragedy and it hurts even worse.
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