Talking Big

One thing annoyed me about the news coverage I saw for the "Baby Bowen" CHD story. I am minding my own business, watching my news podcast and here comes a story about a baby that almost didn't survive his heart defect. (They never said what it was) He apparently coded in the hospital, the parents got "that phone call" and were expecting the baby to die when--SUDDENLY!--he started breathing and his heart started beating again.

All this was undercut with the song the father had written about the experience, while I sit there willing myself not to think or bawl terribly.

The piece concluded with an interview with the parents, overjoyed. But here's the part that pisses me off. They decided to rattle on about how they're just going to be so much better for this bad experience and it was so terrible and it would be so bad to give in to sadness and bitterness, and they're going to make it MEAN SOMETHING.

I guess that's pretty easy to make sure you touch people when you have the national news covering you.

I guess it's pretty easy to talk big about not feeling sadness and bitterness when you get to declare a miracle and take your living child home.


But it's pretty fucking insulting to the average joe with the dead baby, who struggles with the sadness and bitterness that you can only imagine the depth of, and only felt the first cut of. You sit there so pleased with yourself that you "overcame" these bad feelings. You didn't overcome them because you're some amazing person that still stayed amazing despite tragedy. You don't have those feelings anymore because the reason for them--sick kid--went away. You sit there on T.V. holding your living child and basically imply that I am not as good a person as you because I can't be happy and make lemonade as well as you can.


Don't talk to me about sadness, or about bitterness, or about how I should feel.


YOUR. KID. LIVED.


And I hope to God that you will NEVER understand what it is like to actually lose a child, and the gasping chasm in differences in our experiences, in the feelings and fears and loss we will have the rest of our lives.