Sundays at Grandma's - An Uncle's Perspective

Sunday at Grandma's - Family Posts

Child loss affects every member of the family.  Parents definitely suffer from a special kind of pain, created from love, that most of us hopefully will never have to understand.  But other family members are grieving too.  Their pain is just as important, and often times there is not as much support or places for them to air their grief.  

So every Sunday we will post writings from a family member's perspective. Here you will hear from my husband, sister, mother, grandmother, brother-in law, and hopefully more extend family along the way.  I need to understand their grief, to know that my child touched their lives, and they need a place to let the world know that this is true.

Growing up, every Sunday my sister, parents, and I would head over to Grandpa and Grandma's house for dinner to spend time with them as well as my aunts, uncles, cousins, and sometime friends.  I no longer live by my parents or my grandma's house, but my family still gathers each Sunday there to come together and share their stories.  Grandpa has passed away so it's just grandma's house now, but in honor of this family tradition, we will call our family submissions "Sundays at Grandma's", because it is a time and place where we all come together to include everyone and their view of the journey.

Today we will hear from my brother-in-law, and Nora's Uncle.  His words moved my husband and I to tears when we read them.  Knowing that he loved Nora before she was born warms my heart and makes me realize how lucky I am to to call him my brother.         

Nora's Uncle Talks about Grief from Child Loss:

I am currently struggling with what to write and where to fit into the entire situation.  In all truthfulness, I don’t plan on bringing a whole lot to the table.   The thought and work being put in by Lindsey is inspiring.  The platform she has created is a place for her to talk and grieve.  I just hope to add the different perspective of an Uncle, walking along the front-lines with a grieving family.

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I didn’t really know how to react when hearing the news.  There was a lot of screaming and I was pretty sure Kristi had seen a spider.  Nick and Lindsey were in Hawaii and while we were watching Georgie, Lindsey broke the news to Kristi over the phone that she was pregnant.  She was ecstatic.  I had never seen anyone so excited for news that technically had nothing to do with him or her.  Kristi was born to be an Aunt.  I’m not saying she doesn’t want children of her own, but she wanted Lindsey to be a Mom.

As for myself, I am more of the variety that kids can get back to me when they are 2 or 3.  Babies do nothing for me.  They are boring and can’t even play back at you.  I was way more excited for five-year old Nora when she could run around and play in the backyard and be shown the wonders of Toy Story.  The cool part would be playing with dolls and going to her kindergarten plays.  Watching Nora grow up and eventually play with her cousins.  Those were the things that had me excited for Nick and Lindsey.

I never doubted that we would see those moments.  Getting to that portion of life was a formality.  But, if I have learned anything in the past 10 weeks, it’s that life doesn’t have any formalities.  If anything, there are more sad events than happy events.  And unfortunately, I am writing because we will never get to that point.  And that is hard to understand, let alone accept. 

I do know of one thing that she did allow me to accept in our brief time together on December 30^th:  It was pure joy when we met her.  And for now, that is all I need to understand.

-Uncle Zach

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There is a great blog called Unspoken Grief, that shares all family members stories that have been affected by miscarriage, stillbirth, or neonatal loss.  We are starting to realize that all family members grieve the loss of the child they anticipated, but never had the opportunity to know in the world outside of the womb.