The baby shower. It wasn't that bad. I ate a lot. There were two kids there other than Abby, both boys, one about 1 and a half and the other 4 years old. She kept them entertained. It didn't bother me to see her playing with the little toddler boy. The only ouch moment I had with the kids was the older boy was wearing a sweater vest. That sounds silly but when I picture Blaine I always picture him in a sweater vest. I worked really hard at balancing what to say and what not to say. I wanted to be sensitive enough to the expecting mom not to mention Blaine but didn't want to deny his existence either. I found myself answering questions about my family and this pregnancy in stealth mode. I picked out the parts of the questions that had nothing to do with him and just answered them. I felt a little bad for doing that but a baby shower for a first time mom is not the place to drop the dead baby bomb. So, when I was asked if Abby was our only child I just pointed out "I'm four months pregnant." And when told that we waited a good amount of time to have another child I just answered "Abby is old enough to do a lot of things on her own now." Omitting without denying. It was tough and because I was consciously doing that I found myself focused on him most of the night, which wasn't such a sad thing. My husband was talking to someone and I could hear him asking them if they were going to just have the one child or start trying soon for another and I thought to myself he shouldn't ask those questions. What if they are BLP? I don't think they were but you never know and questions like that are loaded ones. I don't think I'll ever ask stuff like that again. So, it wasn't that bad of an evening. We all had a good time and weren't out that late.
I realized that for now I can't read any new BLM stories. The ones I already know are ingrained in me but I can't read any new ones. I start to worry that what happened to them is going to happen to me. Yesterday I had a pain in my side and I had just read a new story the day before so for like an hour yesterday I was convinced that what happened to that mom was happening to me. I'm a bit too much of a hypochondriac.
1 comment:
I find myself doing that a lot more now, omitting without denying, rather than feeling obligated to her memory to tell everyone the story, it's just easier sometimes. And now I feel that she KNOWS how much she is loved and I don't need to validate that anymore like I once felt.
I also find it hard to read new BLM stories (and I'm not expecting). Sometimes I feel like my heart is only big enough for so much grief right now and I do feel that grief when I read those new stories.
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