Special Topics: Death Positivity

She was probably the most innocent person in the room. And that’s funny, I guess, because she was so incredibly book smart.

In the black-and-white photos, he looks like he’s sleeping. Photos are difficult; they don’t tell the whole story.

Death has never been my friend. The necessity of her existence is no more comfort than my own. I don’t hate her, but I look at her the way she looks at Disease. We are all harbingers. We all bring Pain.

Because I think love includes talking about hard things. Because I think love includes telling someone, “When you fall on hard times, I am here for you. When things go terribly wrong, I won’t run away.”

I remember every moment of my pregnancy. I remember every moment of my son’s short life. I remember conception and ultrasounds and morning sickness. I remember every tiny kick and movement. I treasure these things. I treasure these memories. 

I know what you want to talk about. I know how it pains you when others try to chase your words away. It isn’t a question of guilt. It’s fact — if you had chosen to listen, I would be alive.

After he died, after that scream, I shattered. It wasn’t that time flowed differently. It was a completely different life.

Money is a difficult subject in general. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that money matters associated with death are doubly hard. I never thought I would be reading about the financial “benefits” of losing a child. I never thought anything like that would be relevant to me.

There really never is an appropriate time to talk about tragedy. There really never is a time when the innocent are ready to listen. And that’s sad, and it’s also wrong. Because death isn’t the thing that only happens to other people. Tragedy isn’t the thing you can ignore and it won’t hurt you.

One day, someday, I will die. I don’t know what will happen then, and that’s okay with me. I don’t need confirmation or thoughts of reunification. I don’t want to be told my son waits for me in the afterlife.

After my son was born, the nurses asked if I wanted a chaplain to bless him. I thought about this for many hours. I knew it wasn’t something I could change if I chose not to do. But in the end, it didn’t resonate with me. I didn’t feel a loss for not doing this for my son.

Miscarriage is only what happened to my body. Stillbirth is only what happened to yours. Your death is what happened to my soul. Your death changed my whole world.

Child Care is expensive. Pretty much everything involved in raising a child is expensive. I’m not complaining, though. It’s all better than the alternative.

After my son died at the end of a term pregnancy in 2017, I created this list of things I would like to see done differently in prenatal care, both before & after loss. These are things that would have made a difference in my pregnancy. These things might have kept my son alive.

This past year has been different. You’d think the biggest part would be your sister, and of course she’s part of it. There’s also me. I’ve been developing. I’ve been learning and hiding in equal measures.

Most days I feel “fine.” I live life and I care for your sister, and when the subject comes up, I talk about you. I love talking about you. And sometimes I feel bad, even though I know better, that I hardly cry anymore.

Our children are not shameful. They are beautiful, real people. In my opinion, the only shame comes from the perception that they should hidden away.

June is an intense month for me, because each June, I relive these memories. Each June, I remember what it’s like to go into the hospital for a routine examination and be told my child has no heartbeat.

People get excited when they find out you’re pregnant. It is a constant topic of conversation…Until your child dies. And one of the things that hurts me most in the After is when people don’t want to hear about or see photos of my child. This story is part of my effort to make it more normalized.

For the most part, I love Daniel Tiger. It’s a cute show with some deeper elements, and some generally great life lessons. There are two areas, though, in which the show gets it wrong, and unfortunately these are big ones for me.

The death of my child is an event that lives with me; his absence is palpable; his presence is missing. And this is when I truly began to understand this monster called grief. You ask how one gets past losing a baby, and my answer is still—no. You don’t.