I previously mentioned that I had started 2 books, one of them being An Exact Replica Of A Figment Of My Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken. I finished this book a little over a week ago, but haven't had time to write about it. She experienced a stillbirth of her 1st son at 41 weeks and wrote a memoir about that pregnancy and the transition to her next pregnancy. I wasn't completely astonished by the book, as some others that told me about it. I did think it was interesting and overall a good read because of the honesty of her feelings and thoughts. I felt for her as I was reading and strangely have done some of the same things. Lauren wasn't stillborn, but I obviously related to the fact of loosing my child. There was a few things I wasn't fond of, or I couldn't see myself acting in that matter - like not taking any pictures of my child. I do not want to give too many details because I do not want to give away the whole story. I did put a few sicky notes next to several quotes that described my feelings to the T. I am going to share them below:
"Babies born to mothers who'd been pregnant at the same time as me hurt a little. I didn't mind hearing about them, but I didn't want to meet them. That puzzled me since it wasn't logical, and even in mourning I liked to think I was logical, but it was an unhappiness that rose up in me....
Even now I have a hard time with the babies born to friends around Pudding's birth. It is not logical, and yet there it is: this one is one month older, this one is three weeks younger. But mostly I just missed my own child."
"That is one of the strangest side effects of the whole story. I am that thing worse than a cautionary tale: I am a horror story, an example of something terrible going wrong when you least expect it, and for no good reason, a story to be kept from pregnant women, a story so grim and lessonless it's better not to think about it at all."
"I don't even know what I would have wanted someone to say. Not: It will be better. Not: You don't think you'll live through this, but you will. Maybe: Tomorrow you will spontaneously combust. Tomorrow, finally, your misery will turn to wax and heat and you will burn and melt till nothing is left in your chair but a greasy, childless smudge. That might have comforted me."
"After most deaths, I imagine, the awfulness lies in how everything's changed: you no longer recognize the form of your days. There's a hole. It's person-shaped and it follows you everywhere, to bed, to the dinner table, in the car.
For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We'd been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life."
"All I can say is, it's a sort of kinship, as though there is a family tree of grief. On this branch the lost children, in this the suicided parents, here the beloved mentally ill siblings. When something terrible happens, you discover all of a sudden that you have a new set of relatives, people with whom you can speak in the shorthand of cousins.
Twice now I have heard the story of someone who knows someone who's had a stillborn child since Pudding has died, and it's all I can do no to book a flight immediately, to show up somewhere I'm not wanted, just sothat I can say, It happened to me, too, because it meant so much to me to hear it. It happened to me, too, meant: It's not your fault. And You are not a freak of nature. And This does not have to be a secret.
That's how it works. When a baby dies, other dead children become suddenly visable: Daughters and sons. First cousins. The neighbor kid. The first child. The last child. Your older brother. Some of their names have been forgoten; some never had names in the first place. They disappered under heaps of advice. Don't dwell. Have another child, a makeup baby. Life is for the living. But then another baby dies, and here they are again, in stories, and you will love them all, and-if you are a mother of a dead child yourself-they will keep coming to you. A couple I know just lost their baby. And you will know that your lost child has appeared somewhere else in the world. I know a couple..."
That last one seems like I quoted the whole book :) anyways, I would recommend it.
Till next time. <3
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