It has been over 7 weeks since he died. I say died because terms like 'passed on' or 'he left us' tend to hide the magnitude of what really happened. People do not like to hear about dead babies, it is a taboo subject when death in general is frowned upon in our society in general. Our country spends billions on healthcare for the elderly. Now before you call me a genocidal maniac and Dr. Kevorkian's right hand man, listen to what I mean. We are so concerned about prolonging life in this country. The goal is not the quality but the length. My grandmother was in a nursing home due to a degenerative disease, she was total care. Absolutely could not do a thing for herself. What kind of life was that? I have seen others in nursing home forgotten by their family just being cared for by overworked nursing aides. These people are kept alive basically as a symbol for their families, to escape the inevitable. Say there were no nursing homes, just acute care like hospitals and we cared for our elderly parents in our own home without all the intrusive medical treatments. What if these people who were in the home and not the nursing home died because they did not have all the care they provide. Is that a bad thing? To die at home while you can still perform some of your own acts of daily living and surrounded by family in a safe environment? Or would you rather sit in a nursing home for 5 years wallowing in your own diaper because they are too busy to change you. Me I prefer to die at home, with my family. I want them all to be surrounding my bed as I grip the hand of my grandson and whisper in his ear where I buried my treasure. I do not want to die in a nursing home. I told Marcellus I would though, for him. I told him the day he died that I would trade places with him, that he could live and I would wallow in a nursing home for years as he looked over me. But he did not live. He did not trade places with me, I could not take him away from that.
So I had to watch my baby die. And plunge myself in a world full of dead babies. A secret society of sorts, parents who lost children. A such taboo subject that people do not know what to say to you about it. I dont want to be in this society, I do not want to know what is comforting and what is not comforting to say to people in grief. A couple weeks before Marcellus was born we went to a pig pickin hosted by some of my brewing buddies. One of my brewing buddies lost his 2 year old unexpectedly and this was their first public function. I avoided them, I had no idea how to approach them. Her death affected me, I felt very sad to hear about it. I felt like I needed to go to the funeral for some reason. I saw the mother walking by the cars, visibly lost in thought. I thought about walking up to her and trying to give her sympathetic words. I am so glad I did not now. Nothing I could have said would have made it any better to her. She wanted to be alone, and me approaching her would have voided that want and made her upset. Now I know what to say to them because I know what they are going through. It sucks. It is no longer taboo to me.
I told my best friend who I finally talked to last night about what I am going through. He admitted it is hard to know what to say and he has never been exposed to something like this. I told him straight up what I wanted him to do. I told him that never to worry about bringing it up to us because we are always lost in thought about it. People say things like they do not want to upset you by bringing it up. Like we are going through our day happy as two bees in a sunflower field until you brought up our dead baby. We are constantly upset about it. Its the first thing that we wake up to and the last thing that we fall asleep to. Marcellus is always in my thoughts because he is always in my heart. I told him I would carry him with me. If I could not raise him I would live for him.
Marcellus is not taboo, he is not forgotten, he is not passed on. He is dead. His body is lying in a box buried in the cold ground. Sometimes I lay in bed and put my hands over my eyes to see total darkness so I could know a little what it is like in there where he is. When I do that I slowly let a little light in and imagine what it would be like to be called home with Jesus. I hope he is smiling down on us, giving our hearts a hug. I miss my son so terribly much it hurts, it hurts right below my heart in a knot. Last night I sobbed uncontrollably because I missed him so much. No words could have made me feel better, I just needed to cry. I will cry my tears for him. He deserves that from me. I love him so much.
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