7 weeks and 1 day - "A Childless Mother"

I have recently been reading the book A Broken Heart Still Beats: After Your Child Dies.  It is a collection of poetry, short passages, and fiction by or about those who have lost children.  There is a passage that I read this weekend by W.E.B. Du Bois after he lost his two-year-old son, and was looking at his wife in the room where his child was:

"Only in the chamber of death writhed the world's most piteous thing - a childless mother..."

Wow.  That hits home on so many levels.  It first speaks to how the greatest pain in the world is being a mother without her child to hold, to love, to care for.  This is the worst pain I've ever faced.  I can handle the cancer.  I can handle things done to me.  I don't know how to handle all of my hope and dreams being gone, for my baby to not have a chance.  I wish it had been me.

The word "piteous," though, strikes home.  I can see it in people's eyes.  I'm grateful for the concern and compassion, and I want to know that they care - the pity is healing and hard, all at the same time.  There's also something else there, though, that they try to hide.  There's relief.  "I'm so glad that didn't happen to me."  I can see it there.  And I absolutely cannot blame them.  I am glad it didn't happen to them, either - although I sure as heck wish it hadn't happened to me.  People tend to stop talking about her - it's too hard for them, and I understand that.  Babies aren't supposed to die - especially not when there was so much struggle to have her, four years of trying.  This is our baby, our journey.  I don't expect anyone else to walk it with us - our friends and family are so amazingly supportive, and have poured out their affection, but this isn't their pain.  The only thing that I want is to hear people say her name every once in a while, to acknowledge that she was here.  JTD can barely bear to talk about her, but I just can't think about anything else.