I know it's silly but

[mamajoan]

I had a dream last night that is still upsetting me a bit. In the dream, to make a long story short, Isaac and I were taking a bus and it stopped at our street and Isaac got off but I couldn't because there were too many people in the way. So I had to wait until the next stop, freaking out the whole time about Isaac roaming the streets by himself. And when I did get off the bus, way in the distance I saw a little blue shape (Isaac's winter coat is blue) and I yelled Isaac's name and he came running over and I dropped to my knees in the middle of the street to hug him in relief.

Anyway, it's a fairly transparent parental-anxiety dream, but still, you know, it upset me. And there's been a certain amount of losing-a-child anxiety going on lately anyway, what with plaidder posting about a couple she knows whose baby was born prematurely and died, and the story about the Korean Olympic skiier guy, and all that.

Also, just now meglett posted about being a preemie and mentioned that one of her elderly relatives refused to visit her in the hospital because she didn't want to get "attached" and then have the baby die. Sensible in some ways, horrible in others, right? People deal with this stuff so differently. It reminded me of a Groucho Marx story, which I read about in his biography and have probably posted here before, but I shall post it again because it's on my mind now.

Basically, the story goes that Groucho's son's wife had a baby and Groucho didn't come to visit her in the hospital. Keep in mind, this was the era when a woman would stay in the hospital for several weeks after having a baby. So after a week or two she asked her husband why his father hadn't come to see the baby (and her), and he explained that since Groucho's father had died in a hospital, Groucho had vowed never to set foot in one again. And sure enough, the very day she got home, Groucho came to visit immediately.

Then a couple of years later she had another baby, and he died shortly after birth. And Groucho came to visit her in the hospital to offer his condolences. That story makes me tear up every time.

Possibly I'm just hormonal. ;) I've been teary a lot lately. Could be stress. Could be lack of sleep. Could be the longest PMS ever. I haven't actually menstruated in 21 months (not that I'm counting or anything ;) ) but I sure have been feeling PMSy lately.

Anyway, my basic point is ... uh ... what was my point again? ... that losing a child is terrible. </StateTheObvious> Also, that sometimes you love your child so much it hurts.

Comments

[mogwar.livejournal.com]

When kidlet was a little younger than Isaac is now, I had a dream that we were going somewhere and the car broke down. And because it was a dream and my subconscious makes no sense, I left him in the car while I wandered off for miles to find help. And by the time I found help, I'd forgotten about him, and made it all the way home alone. Until a little later when he showed up at the door, having walked there all alone. I woke up feeling like the crappiest mother imaginable, even though it was only a dream. Kidlet is now nine and that dream still bugs me.

[meglett.livejournal.com]

*hugs* i'll add another (obvious) point that becoming a parent really does/can shift your perspective (duh) on losing a child, etc., but that i was less prepared for my own responses to bad things happening to a child not my own. and sometimes they are fictional children! a story about a child being abused/kidnapped/missing/dying makes me embarrassingly emotional because now i have (potentially) something personal at stake.

i don't think i was cold and unfeeling about these issues pre-quinn, but it's very different now, you know?

[mamajoan.livejournal.com]

yeah, I definitely know what you mean -- I always got upset by those things but they definitely feel more personal now. It's just so much easier to imagine yourself in that other parent's shoes once you have an actual child of your own to attach to the mental image.

That's probably why the story about the Korean skier hits me so hard -- because he was THREE years old when he got lost in a market, and then he was put up for adoption, and meanwhile his father was going from orphanage to orphanage looking for him and never finding him. And Isaac is three. And I can so easily imagine losing track of him in a crowded marketplace. And it's bad enough to think of never seeing him again, but then to think of him being given to someone else to raise! and coming to call her "mama"! I can hardly even think about it.

[ima-omi.livejournal.com]

It's the same for me. I used to read those types of stories and think, how sad. Now I read them and *feel* it. I am ten times more likely to cry over strangers' misfortunes than I used to be, whether they are stories of the loss of a child or of a parent's premature death, leaving a child all alone.

My capacity for empathy has really shifted, for better and worse. Sometimes I'm a basket case over stuff that's just none of my business, and sometimes I worry too much about fairly unlikely scenarios. As if the worrying is an inoculation against its happening.

I keep having kidnap dreams...

[lightningrose.livejournal.com]

the worst one was I was in this dorm/apartment complex, and I could hear him crying, so I knew he was still in the building, and I was running from floor to floor trying to find him and couldn't.

I don't think I really got why my mom drove herself so crazy with the Jewish mamma anxiety thing until now....

Re: I keep having kidnap dreams...

[lightningrose.livejournal.com]

some of it I think also being reading the news. Even reading the Oberlin alumni magazine was making me weepy -- granted, because the guy in Oregon who was in the news after he froze to death trying to save his family (wife breastfed both baby & 7 year old and was able to survive until rescue) turned out to be class of '93 and seeing the actual details of his life made the story more poignant than the AP story... I think there is something true about it being hormones, but I think more it's coming to love your kids so much that the idea of losing them -- or them losing you -- becomes intense.