here we go

one of my co-workers came by to see me and started by saying, "you don't have to answer this if you don't want to, but...," and i flinched a little. then she told me her next door neighbor's daughter was stillborn last saturday and she didn't know what to say to her. whew. big exhale. i could handle that one.

i encouraged her to just express how she felt (sorry, sad, etc) and to avoid cliches like, she's in a better place, or, i know it happened for a reason, or, you're young - you can try again; the former was really meaningful to me and the latter pissed me off. my co-worker talked to her neighbor once since it happened, but then the next time she saw her she avoided her because she didn't want to upset her. i told her what meant most to me was when people didn't try to dance around the subject and just talked to me or asked me about hans.

i gave her my home number to give to her neighbor; justin and i have agreed that we want to be open to other parents like us who could use support, so it just seemed like the right thing to do. the thing that helped me the most in the first couple of weeks after we lost hans was talking to david, even if the first time he called was awkward for me; i mean, here is this strange floating voice coming out of my phone asking me how i'm dealing with hans's death - wtf? everything was so surreal at that point. but talking with david was the beginning of hope for me, that i would live to tell about it. i hope i can offer one ounce of that kind of hope to someone else.

because we've been so open about hans's death with everyone, and we continue to talk about him, i wonder if we will be a magnet for people who want to talk about the death of other babies. i don't know. we'll see.