Crazy

Dear Ross,

Am I crazy? I know I ask you that several times a day. I feel crazy sometimes. I feel like maybe my grief is a little too hysterical, a little too raw, a little too.... silly? I feel pressure (and I don't know where it's coming from) to get over this quickly. You keep saying that it has only been a couple of months. I know. And yet. And yet, why do people ask me why when I say I'm sad? Why do people think it's wierd that we gave our daughter a name?

It baffles me that no one thought of us on Mother's Day and on Father's Day. And I felt our loss so keenly on those days, thinking the whole time that I should be showing now, that if she hadn't died that we would be getting all of those cute Mother- and Father-to-Be cards, and now what we get is silence. I am still counting the weeks and months of our pregnancy. I can't get October 31st out of my mind. We had a date to meet her then, and she died before we could get there.

I feel like we are the only ones still thinking of this. I don't mean thinking about having a baby one day - many people have asked me if we are trying again. I mean, thinking about our daughter. I'm not "over" her. I'm not past this.

And then I think, "Am I crazy?" Does the rest of the world handle miscarriage by managing the physical aspect of healing and then going through the usual 2-3 months of quite secret grieving and then getting on with things? Do they stop thinking about their lost children? Do they think of them as children at all? Or are they all just like you and me? And are we just a crazy subset of adults - people who have children that have died before they were ever born - people who will never forget them, people who will never stop counting them among their children? And will the rest of the world - those lucky ones who have never lost a child - just never understand?

I feel frustrated. I feel outside of normal life. I want to cry almost every minute but I don't want to seem strange. I feel instinctively that my grief is not as legitimate as that of those who have lost a parent or a friend or a five year old. I was given condolences for my "medical situation". I was screamed at for missing a rehearsal because I was miscarrying, as though I just had a bad cold. The words "abortion" and "products of conception" and "tissue" were used in relation to our daughter.

Was she of less value because she wasn't old enough yet? I don't get it.If I'm not crazy then this world is making me crazy. No one would question it if I was still weeping two months after the death of our one year old. I need it to be the same for the death of our EDD -6 1/2 month old. Is that crazy?

Love,

Jenny