Grief and Marriage: Do You Care This Much?

Post by Still Standing Contributor Cheli Blasco 

They say men grieve differently, they just do.

No one knows why. The men don’t know either.

After losing your child, life is different. Priorities change, the rhythm of day-to-day changes. You, the mom, are changed from the very core, on through every layer of who you are. There is not one moment that somehow, in some way, that child you lost is not present in your mind, present in your soul, if not your words.

In a way, we didn’t just lose our baby, our beloved and irreplaceable child, but we also lost a whole lifetime. Like a “Choose your own adventure” book, we missed out on a whole story, the possibility of a beautiful ending because of one blip, one mishap, one event that was not supposed to happen: our child’s death.

Related: It’s Not Supposed To Be This Way

From there, somehow, every day we find the resilience and the courage to make up a life for ourselves again. Even on the days we don’t want to, we figure out how to, at the very least, breath in and out all day long, how to get out of bed, how to cook food and work in a world that doesn’t necessarily know of our child because, frankly, they can’t see her.

Being the mom of a dead child is sad and brave. It’s as if your heart beats just the tiniest bit off the expected pattern, because, the truth is, all that love with nowhere to go changes everything that is supposed to be normal about you.

I’m sure technically, scientifically, in biological terms, grieving hearts beat just the same as non-grieving hearts. But it sure does feel like something important is just a slight bit off its rails. As if that love that has no child to kiss was making all the expected human functions slightly off kilter.

It’s a lot of work to be a grief mom, to go through the world with an off-kilter heart.

And then there’s our marriage. Our partners. The other parent, the one that didn’t feel this sweet child grow inside, that didn’t have the honor, the immense pleasure of having his own body forever change because that child formed and grew inside. The parent who did not get the luxury of giving birth to your beautiful child.

There’s the parent that didn’t carry.

Maybe it is because the dads didn’t carry their babies inside their own bodies, didn’t bask in the glory of pregnancy.

Or maybe it’s just because they’re men.

But we, the moms, we have our ways. Our little ways, every day, the things we do, that we need to do, to parent our child. I do it loudly, boldly.

I need to write and speak, I need to be in bereavement circles and hang photographs around the house. I need to wear special jewelry and blow kisses at nature. I need to “capture my grief”.

The men, they don’t. For the most part, they don’t. Not so much.

Related: Men Too, Men Grieve Too

Grief, it’s polarizing. It can feel like he is not involved, like he cares less. And because he didn’t make a prayer flag, when all he had to do was hang it up but even then he had to be asked five times and then he did but only because you asked five times – then it feels like he doesn’t care. Like his life goes on pretty much the same it did before.

And it seems like he can get up in the morning and go about his day and he can see a gentle butterfly that seems to linger just for you, and he doesn’t need to cry because maybe that butterfly didn’t mean more than any insect does and I bet every mom reading this knows that butterfly was a sweet kiss, a gift, a loving connection between my baby and I.

But the men, they don’t seem to paint too many watercolor hearts. They don’t collect seashells or press flowers or write their names, the way they should have looked scribbled on a messy to do list next to “dentist appointment” or something so mundane and incredibly unattainable.

So then, for us, that’s when the fighting starts. The accusations of Why don’t you ever say her name, unless I say it first? Why don’t you care? Why don’t you write her letters or a song? Why can’t you do crafts with me?

Crying, most times, follows the yelling.

And the men, mine at least, he cries too.

Because it turns out, he does think about her. All.the.time. For him, it’s just more private. He doesn’t need to tell me about it. (But why? Why can’t you tell me about it!? Why?)

Sometimes, he just doesn’t need to. But so many things in his day, apparently, are about his baby, too. They are just quiet and private.

And I have to accept that.

I have to accept that his papa heart and my mama heart work differently.

And even though anniversaries don’t roll over him and press on his chest until he can’t breathe, and the tears don’t sting, don’t burn in his eyes – he mourns in his way.

And it is a good way to mourn, because it’s his and it is full of love. Because his daughter died.

Even if he doesn’t paint one single watercolor heart.