A couple of days passed as we tried to deal with the depth of our loss. Just doing normal things was almost impossible. It was hard to just get out of bed. When we did go out, we often ran into people who were trying to be nice and comfort us and we had to deal with the comments that they made to us. The worst comment, and one that we heard over and over, was "everything happens for a reason." That almost made us homicidal! What possible reason could there be to lose a child??!! What possible reason could there be to have your heart torn out and your life changed by pain forever? Often those well meaning people would go home and be able to hug THEIR children. We could not deal with the comments at all. We were angry, ANGRY!! We did NOT want to live.
We called our life insurance company, since we had coverage that automatically covered any children born to us and quickly found out that our son was not covered. The fine print ... he had to live at least three days. I do not know how someone came up with that! It costs the same to bury your child whether he is minutes old or days, or even if he is born sleeping. Just one more stab to our hearts. To them our child did not even exist!
We did call a counsellor, and after a brief phone call she wanted to see us right away. By this time I did not even know a person could physically cry as many tears as I had. I just could not stop. I would finally come out to the living room and then just be sobbing again. I read all the brochures on grief that the hospital sent home to us but it did not help me at all. I wish I could tell you how hard it is to lose your child. It is the most intense emotional and even physical pain you could ever feel. I think chopping your limbs off would be easier than dealing with it. I felt as if I were drowning and just would not die. It was and is a feeling of suffocation and suddenly you are not the person you were, and can never be that person again.
The day of our meeting with the therapist came and we went with some hope that we might find a reason to live on without Robert. Our therapist was a nice lady but the questions she asked us all seemed stupid, and mostly I just cried. Truthfully I only went because I did not want my husband to kill himself. The therapist made us sign a contract to not kill ourselves. How stupid. If we are going to do it, we certainly would never care about a stupid piece of paper we signed with someone we did not even know. I wonder if this really works...
After the meeting we left feeling lost and alone and not helped at all. I guess I thought she would have some magic formula for making the loss bearable. I guess that is where a commitment to the therapy comes in. We never went back, in fact it made us even more angry. I am not against therapy. I think I just was not ready to let go and let it into my head and heart.
Will gave his pistol to his brother so he would not do anything stupid and we pretty much just started withdrawing from life. I stopped going anywhere unless it was absolutely necessary. We spent all of our spare time at the cemetery. My husband started stopping there on his way home from work and we stopped talking about our pain much because we could plainly see it. We just held eachother alot.
I stayed up all night when Will was as work reading about infant loss and my condition until my tear stung eyes ached and I could barely see anymore. I do not know why this comforted me, but I guess when I read about other women's losses, I guess I did not feel so alone. I even went to an online baby loss chat room and just sat there reading the women's chat. It did not help, they were laughing and joking with eachother and I was just NOT there yet. That is when I saw another lady posting about the loss of her son. She lost her son a few days after I lost mine. I messaged her and we started talking. She became my lifeline. She UNDERSTOOD how angry we were. Her son was almost full term and was stillborn. We became linked in our sorrow. We emailed often, and that seemed to be the only time I felt that someone other than my husband REALLY understood.
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