Ladies and gentleman we have a winner.

I have a fiend who is going through this same ordeal. Her loss is far more recent than mine and yet she has been a great support for me as I reached this aniversary of sorts. When my wife and I first lost our baby I shut down. Not visibly but emotionally. I mean, people around me thought that I was dealing with it well when in fact I wasn't dealing with it at all. I fealt like I was always playing a part when I was around other people and eventually that became exhausting. So eventually I just stopped hanging around other people. It's easy to look around and say that noone was there for me but that wouldn't be true. I wasn't there. My wife pushed me to get on facebook to connect with people because she was concerned that I spent too much time alone. I didn't see a problem so immediately I was offended. In my mind this was just her picking at faults that she saw in me and some sort of evidence that she didn't like me as much as I thought she did. I never said it was rational. Eventually I took her advice if for any reason but to avoid any future conversations on the subject, or at least that's easier to admit than the possibility that she might be right. I set a profile and immediately I got a friend request from my best friend in high school whom I hadn't spoken to in years. I still haven't. After I sent him a message I got no response. This is connecting with people? Soon I got a message from an acquaintance from school. After a couple of messages she told me that she had lost a baby and we've been e-mailing each other ever since. In fact she's the one who encouraged me to start this blog. It's inspiring to me how much she's facing her grief head on. It's a rough road that I wish I wouldn't have avoided so much in the beginning. It hurts me to know how much she's hurting but I know she'll come out OK.

Wow I've gotten way off the subject of what I was going to say. In a couple of those early emails we were talking about the stupid things people say to someone who is grieving. For example, "God has a plan." Translation: God wanted your baby to die. Or there's, "I know what your're going through." Ummnnn...... No you don't. You have had a loss, sure, and it hurt; but that doesn't mean you know what I'm going through. The worst I ever got was when both of my grandfathers passed a few weeks apart. One of my employees said to me, "They say bad things happen in threes." HELLO? I'm only up to two you idiot. That one was so dumn that I just walked away. Well now we have a winner. My wife waitresses at night and last night one of her coworkers wanted her to go out after work. She of course said no because the significance of the date lead her to want to be home with me. After her friend kept pushing she told her why she didn't want to go. It was something to the effect of, "Today is one year from the day we lost the baby." Her friend said, "I know what you mean. I still get sad on the date that my bird died." Feal free to go back over that line to make sure you read it right. That's right, I said BIRD. It's universally stupid to follow a child story with a pet story but a dead bird compared to a dead baby.