Making sense of it.

When you lose a baby, you get a lot of comments that are meant to be comforting.  And I take them the way they were intended, and I appreciate that people are trying to make things feel better.  Really, I do.  But the truth is, if I really think about what they mean, it’s hard to find any comfort in some of them.

“This was meant to be.”  Was it?  Then what was the point?  Why didn’t we conceive someone else, who was meant to be?  Why did we conceive her, and gestate her, and love her and anticipate her for nine whole months if the entire time, it was predetermined that she would not live to make it into the world outside my womb?

No.  No.  That makes no sense.  I cannot accept that.

I find more comfort in the belief that this event was just random, shit, meaningless bad luck.  I cannot assign some kind of bigger meaning to her death.  She didn’t do anything wrong; she wasn’t “weak”; we did everything right given the information and technology that we had.  It could have easily turned out differently, but it didn’t, and that’s what we have to live with.

“Move on; you can still have more kids.”  Actually, it does help to know I can have more kids, because I still do want a family.  But wanting a family and wanting Mila are two related, but different, things.

The fact that she died as a baby does not diminish her personhood.  There is no replacement for Mila.  Just as there is no replacement for D, for my parents, for his parents, for each and every one of our friends and relatives, for any children I might have in the future.  We are all individual and irreplaceable.  And so it is for Mila.

I’ve met, read about, and heard about bereaved mothers who are 5 years out, 20 years out, 60 years out from the loss of their babies; and while they continued on to have full lives and families, they are still forever changed.  They remember their lost children; and every once in a while, they will see something, hear something, or smell something that will bring back the sadness of that loss in full force, even if just for a minute.

You cannot erase this shit.  I will miss her forever.  And I am justified in missing her forever.