Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Did they know or forget?

A few days ago I ran into someone I hadn't seen since before Toby's death. To put it more accurately, I hadn't seen this person since before Toby's birth. We spent a few minutes talking, pleasantly surprised to see one another, and they commented on Sam and Iris who were with me. No mention was made of Toby at all, which I'm kind of used to at this point, but I was curious this time. Did they forget that I'd had another child and that child had died? Or had they even known to begin with? While it was highly possible that they had not known of his birth and subsequent death, it was highly unlikely. We hadn't seen each other in a few years but we had mutual friends who had attended his funeral.

So, I asked. "Did you know I'd had another child between the two?"

They hesitated. "Yes, I did know that you had one that had passed away," they answered at last.

Huh.

Well, that was interesting.

In the past it might have hurt my feelings that this person had known and not only had they not contacted me but they didn't bring it up when they saw me. This time, however, it didn't bother me. I thought it was kind of funny, really, like the big white elephant in the room. I knew that my child had died and they knew that I'd had a child that died but nothing had been done by either one of us in regards to this fact toward one another in the past few years.

So, I just shrugged. Oh well. I changed the subject and we carried on.

3 comments:

Abby Leviss said...

Something similar happened to me recently. Someone I had been very close to contacted me out of the blue to ask me a favor. He said he was sorry we had lost touch. I wondered- did he know about Max? So, I asked him - did you hear about my Max? "I did hear", he said. "Really sad". Um...ok. I told him about my blog, no pressure, just wanted him to know. Then he wrote back and said he couldn't read it because it was too sad. Hmmmmm....what was that favor you wanted (schmuck). The whole interaction left me feeling like people are incredibly shallow....wondering how I'd managed to waste so much time with narcissists before losing Maxie.

Unknown said...

Yeah, it is really weird. A few months after Toby died our house was on our town's Christmas Tour. I opened up Toby's room and put a tree in there. A woman came down to our kitchen where we had refreshments and I was talking to her and told her that the small room had been my son's who passed away. She said, "Yeah, I heard about that. Really sad, isn't it?" Like I was just a stranger and we were having idle chit chat and I hadn't been his mother.

The blog thing doesn't bother me. None of my friends or family read my blog. They know about it, but they don't read it. I have friends who have blogs, too, and I rarely keep up with them.

New Mom said...

I'm quite surprised about the stories shared.. it erks me to hear of ones actions in regards to the death of a child. Like I've mentioned before I lost a nephew to SIDS and I've been scared out of my mind since. Just yesterday I was asked "Does your daughter sleep with you?" I was hesitant but I replied 'yes' and gave my reason- that concluded with "I not confident with myself with checking in the bassinet as often; the persons response was "forget about it, don't think about SIDS" now it ticked me off because they knew about my situation.. long story short I know every one knows of our situations but I must assume that they are all wrapped up in their world that don't think before speaking of it or they just don't know what else to say to not be offensive...