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Death and the Mothers
Jan. 7th, 2013 02:27 amIt's a coincidence that in the last couple of days, three different friends of mine (who are mothers of young children and don't know each other) have put up "you must read this and act immediately!" facebook links to different blog entries (not by them) which follow this structure:
1. This is the anniversary of the death of my age-3-or-younger child.
2. Here is the detailed narrative of how that went, which was agonizing.
3. But I have learned something, which is that it is my mission to make sure that no child dies in this specific way again. Therefore you must do this onerous thing, and if it seems onerous to you, think back on my narrative and think how bad you would feel if your kid died. I wish somebody had said that to me, because then my kid wouldn't be dead.
If you've listened to "Birthday Song," you have some idea how I feel about death. I think it's everywhere. I think it's amazing that any of us are alive or ever have been. Not only do the odds bear me out, but even the most careful and most lucky person eventually winds up dying. Every. Time.
Everyone I love will die. Some of them much earlier than I expect. I tell jokes about it, because that is all one can do when facing such an absurd fact. I would rather laugh than be afraid. It is my version of bravery. It's what allows me to do things like read a detailed narrative of a toddler's death and feel the grief as if it happened to me. Humor is a back door; knowing I have that escape route frees me to love people I have never met and will never meet.
Although I laugh about death, I am, as it happens, quite serious when it comes to magical thinking. So I read these narratives, which my friends have told me are important, and when I get to part 3 in the structure above, I don't feel a stirring call to action. I see a mother pretending she can go back in time and save her own kid from something that was extremely unlikely.
To take one example, fewer than 30 kids a year are killed by falling pieces of furniture; meanwhile, World Health Organization figures put child malnutrition deaths each year at 15 million. That's more than half the kids who die. Their mothers are probably not writing blog posts about it or going on the local news, and it's probably harder to imagine it happening to your kid. You feed your kid. You've got that danger taken care of. But those kids are out there, dying, and for their mothers, it causes just as much guilt and is just as much a case of bad luck.
I'm not saying that to convince you to go out and donate to food aid (although incidentally I think it's a good idea), or to make you feel helpless. I'm saying that to make a point about magical thinking. These crusades are not about saving kids. They're about saving a kid, and that kid is already dead. Which hurts terribly.
As a result, the effect of these posts on me goes beyond grief without resolution; they attempt to make me terrified of the world, obsessed by the hidden dangers in my extremely safe community, where child mortality rates are the lowest they have been at any time or place in history. Since it's easy to lose perspective when kids are involved, I try to imagine someone phoning me every day the first year I was married to say "Ciro could die today. He could be hit by a bus." Or "Ciro could die today. He could be eating lunch alone and could choke." Or "Ciro could die today; the logo on his favorite mug could be made of a toxic metal that has been leeching into his coffee every morning, and this morning his heart could fail."
It's true there's no such thing as "safe enough" when it comes to children. But it's not because there's no "enough." If trying to be safe becomes your life, your life and your children's lives will not only end, like everyone's, but your life will be defined by failure.
I'm sure it's a coincidence that three of my friends have told me in the past few days that I need to read this stuff. But they are asking me not only to grieve, but to be afraid instead of brave. And that is making me terribly, terribly angry.
1. This is the anniversary of the death of my age-3-or-younger child.
2. Here is the detailed narrative of how that went, which was agonizing.
3. But I have learned something, which is that it is my mission to make sure that no child dies in this specific way again. Therefore you must do this onerous thing, and if it seems onerous to you, think back on my narrative and think how bad you would feel if your kid died. I wish somebody had said that to me, because then my kid wouldn't be dead.
If you've listened to "Birthday Song," you have some idea how I feel about death. I think it's everywhere. I think it's amazing that any of us are alive or ever have been. Not only do the odds bear me out, but even the most careful and most lucky person eventually winds up dying. Every. Time.
Everyone I love will die. Some of them much earlier than I expect. I tell jokes about it, because that is all one can do when facing such an absurd fact. I would rather laugh than be afraid. It is my version of bravery. It's what allows me to do things like read a detailed narrative of a toddler's death and feel the grief as if it happened to me. Humor is a back door; knowing I have that escape route frees me to love people I have never met and will never meet.
Although I laugh about death, I am, as it happens, quite serious when it comes to magical thinking. So I read these narratives, which my friends have told me are important, and when I get to part 3 in the structure above, I don't feel a stirring call to action. I see a mother pretending she can go back in time and save her own kid from something that was extremely unlikely.
To take one example, fewer than 30 kids a year are killed by falling pieces of furniture; meanwhile, World Health Organization figures put child malnutrition deaths each year at 15 million. That's more than half the kids who die. Their mothers are probably not writing blog posts about it or going on the local news, and it's probably harder to imagine it happening to your kid. You feed your kid. You've got that danger taken care of. But those kids are out there, dying, and for their mothers, it causes just as much guilt and is just as much a case of bad luck.
I'm not saying that to convince you to go out and donate to food aid (although incidentally I think it's a good idea), or to make you feel helpless. I'm saying that to make a point about magical thinking. These crusades are not about saving kids. They're about saving a kid, and that kid is already dead. Which hurts terribly.
As a result, the effect of these posts on me goes beyond grief without resolution; they attempt to make me terrified of the world, obsessed by the hidden dangers in my extremely safe community, where child mortality rates are the lowest they have been at any time or place in history. Since it's easy to lose perspective when kids are involved, I try to imagine someone phoning me every day the first year I was married to say "Ciro could die today. He could be hit by a bus." Or "Ciro could die today. He could be eating lunch alone and could choke." Or "Ciro could die today; the logo on his favorite mug could be made of a toxic metal that has been leeching into his coffee every morning, and this morning his heart could fail."
It's true there's no such thing as "safe enough" when it comes to children. But it's not because there's no "enough." If trying to be safe becomes your life, your life and your children's lives will not only end, like everyone's, but your life will be defined by failure.
I'm sure it's a coincidence that three of my friends have told me in the past few days that I need to read this stuff. But they are asking me not only to grieve, but to be afraid instead of brave. And that is making me terribly, terribly angry.
