This is kind of a continuation of my post yesterday (at least the end of it). I couldn't stop thinking about the whole sibling thing that I wrote about last night. It made me quite emotional and I spent some time over the last day trying to sort out my feelings. I came to the conclusion that I am not only upsets that my future children will never get to meet Naya (and vice versa) but that she will also never be real to them.
Its not like Dan and I are not going to tell our rainbows about Naya. There is no way in hell that we are ever not going to have her as part of our lives. We are always going to do our best to make sure that no one ever forgets about her (most likely to the point where people get sick of us). She is our child and will be forever. My problem is that to our future children, she will never be a real, live person. She will always only be a story to them represented by a group of pictures that they will see over and over again because that is all we have.
I am scared they will view her as we all do of family members who passed before we were born. We might feel some reverence toward them because they are family but we are not capable of missing them. How can you miss someone that you never met and was gone before you existed? It makes me so sad that she will never be real to my future my children.
I also have mixed feelings about the fact that that our kids will never really know the pain that our family went through and will always hold because of losing Naya. In one aspect, they are lucky. They have avoided some of the most intense pain that a human can experience. On the other hand, it worries me that because they don't know what it feels like so does that mean that they aren't going to relate to us? Are they going to resent us for missing a sibling that they have never known? I know I have lots of time before I really have to focus on things like this but I can't help it. That's how my brain works.
With Landyn, although he was only with us for two month, we keep photos of him around the house. He's in everything that Emma's in, although her photos get changed out. We also do christmas ornaments and such...if it has an E initial, then we get a matching one with a L for him. We wrote about him in Emma's baby book. We too, keep his memory alive and have every intention on telling Emma about her strong, brave big brother.
ReplyDeleteMy best friend is a rainbow baby (well he's a rainbow adult, he's 23 anda firefighter) his parents loss two infants one just so months old and one almost two years old before he was born. You're right in that in many ways there is a distancing from these sisters he never met, but because of it he always holds a deep connection and reverence for what his parents, particularly his mother, went through. We've been friends once childhood and his sisters were always a part of that family, even I as a friend visited the graves on their birthdays. They are never forgotten, but rest assured that if you keep her in your family, your children will always have a connection to her and you because of it
ReplyDeleteMary Elizabeth was stillborn, 60 years ago. I was only 3 & my brother just 1. We did not grow up knowing about her. But she gradually became a real person to me through the years as Mom talked about her during quiet mother-daughter conversations. She had long black hair just like I had at birth. She was named for our two grandmothers. I was going to name a daughter for her if I'd had one. Mom went into labor two weeks early while visiting family in Long Beach & sensed immediately something was wrong. Now we know about Rh negative, but didn't then. Mom got to hold her, but in her grief, let Dad take care of details. She never knew where she went & stillborns were not recognized as people then, so can't even go there. I think she was buried with her greatgrandmother & uncle nearby, where our grandparents were buried in the next few years. Doing genealogy, I've tried to find her, unsuccessfully, because of the lack of stillborn records available. My Dad was too far gone in his alzheimer's to tell us when Mom started asking. In the days before my Mom died in 2006, Mary Elizabeth visited her, with pink flowers in her hands. She was waiting to welcome our Mom & that was so comforting. She is real to me because I know Mom's stories & have written them down. The "crazy" fanily historian does their work to keep the ones who have passed alive & their lives meaningful. These people become very real to us as we search for them & learn about them. No, I will never know Mary Elizabeth's personality or my family's grief at the time. But she was my sister, she existed & my Mom kept her in her heart forever. No pictures exist but Mom's loving voice in talking about her are in my head. I will meet Mary Elizabeth one day, but now she is with my parents & brother.
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