"Have You Recovered?"

    I was pretty sure I would never sit in our pediatrician's office again. With Ricki dead, and all the other "kids" being at an age above the 18-year-old cut off age for pediatricians, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that unless I would run into her doctor on the street, I wouldn't see her pediatrician. After Ricki's death I wondered what he would say if he saw me, but knew that it would be awkward for him, at best.  I am sure every doctor queries himself what could have been done different to prevent a death.

   Well, this afternoon found me sitting in his office, doing a favor for my daughter, whose son goes to the same doctor. Both He and his secretary asked me straight away "Have you recovered?"

   I answered "Yes", but thought to myself that it was a pretty stupid question. Ask how I am, how I am faring, yes. Recovered?!? Sorry, you never recover from the death of a child.

Seeing Someone Over the Threshold

You know, as a childbirth educator, I get to meet a lot of young couples. And on the whole they appear confident. Of course they have fears. The birth. Will the baby be OK? The responsibility. But underneath it all is the feeling that things will be OK. Which is probably good for our psyches. To live in constant fear is only good for ulcers and the like. But, as we all know, there are no guarantees. Not in childbirth, and not in life. When we send our children off to school in the morning, we assume that they will return by evening, and hopefully in one piece. And we hope.
Our love for our children starts well before birth, and will continue to the day we die. We wish that we could protect them, shield them, stop all hurt and pain. But as fierce as our love is, it isn’t powerful enough to make us G-d.
And sometimes parents end up watching as their child walks over that threshold into a different existence. And there is little that the rest of us can do to help, as the parents bitterly face the fact that all the love in the world can not protect their offspring.
But that love is there. It doesn’t go lost. It affects the parents, and those around them. And please never ever tell a parent that something was for the “best”, or that this little infant is something they can “forget”. For that love is the biggest piece of their connection to the child that they have left. Yes. Love makes us vulnerable. But without love, what is life worth?