Losing a child

When you lose a child you enter and exist in a strange world. People develop amnesia as far as your child is concerned. No one seems to remember that you even had a child, much less that she was a part of the family. She's removed from the family calendar that one of the relatives gives out for a Christmas present each year. Your nieces no longer come visit. When you go to the graveyard there are never any flowers on her grave. There are plenty on her grandparents' grave just 4 spaces over. On the holidays no one mentions her name at family gatherings. Her father has never been to her grave. 

Friends are just as bad. They disappear from your life as though your child's death may be contagious. They don't want to take a chance or see what happens when a child dies. It frightens them because it could just have easily been their child. Once the funeral is over the last contact you have with them is the Thank You card that you send for the flowers. 

Her fiancé's new fiancé was upset a couple years later that I wouldn't hire her. Well gee freaking whiz, did she think that seeing her everyday as my daughter's replacement would just be ducky? Was I supposed to see her and Spencer together every day, living the life that was supposed to be my daughter's? I was glad that Spencer had someone special to love again, but wasn't ready to have it rubbed in my face that their family wouldn't be my grandchildren. That the Christmases that they had wouldn't be at our home, that the little ones wouldn't ever open presents in front of me, that they would never hug me and call me Grandma. Unfair of me? Perhaps.

My daughter's so called friends were even worse. One of them stole her clothes and the jewelry she'd been given from Great Grandma. She stole the beautiful wedding dress that I had taken my daughter shopping for and purchased shortly before her death. Even her wedding rings that we had just bought were stolen by her friends. Some of her friends stole pictures of her from her funeral. I'd have happily made them copies of the pictures.  

It's truly a nightmare world to exist in. You can make new friends, but watch them get weird when they discover your child has died. Unless they too have lost a child, and then there is understanding. 

2 of my sister-in-laws still talk about her, she adored them as much as they adored her. My Mom still talks about her. Grandma still cries every time I talk to her more than 6 years after Nicole died. It hurts, but she still needs to cry, and I let her. I cried the day that my child died and couldn't again for almost 4 years.

I keep photos of Nicole up all over the house, as many as there are of her brothers, her step-brothers, nieces, nephews, cousins, etc. 

I refuse to hide my child's existence in a box. She was and is part of the family. She lived, she laughed, she loved, she cared, she worked, she studied, she learned, she grew, she shared, she enjoyed, she loved her life. She was....................