Something I think is missing in this essay is the fact that grieving a sudden death is very different from grieving an expected death. It actually made me angry when Mr. Campbell insisted that all grief is the same, because it isn't.
We lost our oldest daughter at four and half months. She had a heart defect that we knew about before she …
Something I think is missing in this essay is the fact that grieving a sudden death is very different from grieving an expected death. It actually made me angry when Mr. Campbell insisted that all grief is the same, because it isn't.
We lost our oldest daughter at four and half months. She had a heart defect that we knew about before she was born and a liver defect that was discovered after. She had multiple surgeries, and she never got to come home. We knew from when I was 5 months pregnant that her chances of survival were very slim, but we chose to give her that chance.
We had never been parents before, and the whole bonding process was disrupted by the fact that she was trapped in a hospital nearly two hours from our home, and no one helped us to be there for her as much as we wanted to be. Even Ronald McDonald House--which was at the hospital on the other side of the city--largely failed us. About a month before she died, one blessed nurse allowed me to have one precious night with Jair in a parent room, taking care of her almost entirely by myself.
I didn't cry after her death, even though it hurt. I had been expecting it too long. It was only as our oldest son grew from infant to toddler that I truly bonded with Jair, as if reaching back through time. The first moment when I truly grieved was when our next son had grown to about the same weight that Jair had been when she died. Our older son didn't look at all like his sister, but our younger son was very clearly her brother. I looked down into the bassinet and suddenly began crying uncontrollably.
Jair would have turned 33 this summer, had she lived. Talking about her still hurts, but it's a good pain. That was the one thing I agreed with Mr. Campbell about. I would rather feel the pain of talking about her than the horror of forgetting her.
Something I think is missing in this essay is the fact that grieving a sudden death is very different from grieving an expected death. It actually made me angry when Mr. Campbell insisted that all grief is the same, because it isn't.
We lost our oldest daughter at four and half months. She had a heart defect that we knew about before she was born and a liver defect that was discovered after. She had multiple surgeries, and she never got to come home. We knew from when I was 5 months pregnant that her chances of survival were very slim, but we chose to give her that chance.
We had never been parents before, and the whole bonding process was disrupted by the fact that she was trapped in a hospital nearly two hours from our home, and no one helped us to be there for her as much as we wanted to be. Even Ronald McDonald House--which was at the hospital on the other side of the city--largely failed us. About a month before she died, one blessed nurse allowed me to have one precious night with Jair in a parent room, taking care of her almost entirely by myself.
I didn't cry after her death, even though it hurt. I had been expecting it too long. It was only as our oldest son grew from infant to toddler that I truly bonded with Jair, as if reaching back through time. The first moment when I truly grieved was when our next son had grown to about the same weight that Jair had been when she died. Our older son didn't look at all like his sister, but our younger son was very clearly her brother. I looked down into the bassinet and suddenly began crying uncontrollably.
Jair would have turned 33 this summer, had she lived. Talking about her still hurts, but it's a good pain. That was the one thing I agreed with Mr. Campbell about. I would rather feel the pain of talking about her than the horror of forgetting her.