One of the strangest games I’ve ever unknowingly played in is the grief game. It began when I talked to people who told me, when my daughter died in an overdue stillbirth, “at least . . .”
At least you got to hold her.
At least you got to see her face.
At least you have a beautiful photo of her.
At least your children got to see her.
At least you had a funeral for her, and a headstone.
At least you had a casket.
At least you were able to dress her in a handmade dress.
At least you were able to put things in the casket.
At least you were allowed to weep for her.
At least you got to name her.
At least you got a birth certificate for her.
Not one of these sentences made me feel less sad about the loss of my daughter. But when I heard mothers who had lost children far earlier than I had, women who had lost babies to miscarriage, who were often treated as though they weren’t allowed to grieve their children at all, I began to understand why they were jealous of me. It was so strange, to think that they wanted the things that I couldn’t imagine wanting. The trappings of death, a funeral, a gravestone in a cemetery, a photo of a dead child with…
