My Son Is No Angel
"What a sweet little angel!"
"He's an angel!"
"Look at that sleeping angel!"
"Your angel is just beautiful."
No. No. He is not. He is my baby. His big sister is an angel. He is my living, breathing, pink skinned, warm, moving, crying baby.
Such a kind, well intended comment can cause so much hurt to a loss mother. It is easy to make this mistake if you have never actually lost a child.
Never given birth to an angel itself, never held an angel in your arms. Never been in the delivery room or OR and experienced the deafening silence that happens when an angel enters the world without ever taking a breath. Never held your child as they took their last breath, or maybe their first and last at the same time in your arms. Never had to watch them remove all the tubes and wires from your precious child so you could hold them for the first time. Never watch them lower a tiny casket into the ground or never stared at the tiny little urn that houses your beautiful child's precious ashes. Never visited a grave with your own surname, with the name you thought about for so long chiseled in stone. Never said your last goodbye at the same time you said your first hello and never handed over your sweet baby for the last time to a stranger so they could take them away. Never felt the cool skin of your baby who passed too soon. Never kissed the pale cheeks and the blue lips of your sweet child before they were taken away. Never wished so hard in your life that their chest would rise and fall rhythmically and their little hand would wrap around your thumb. Never listened so hard in the chest of your baby for their heart to beat just one time, just one lub-dub. Never prayed so hard to have been able to be kept up all night, awoken at all hours by a crying baby or an inquisitive toddler.
I am writing this at a request of some fellow angel mothers, some friends, some confidants that I thank the Heavens above for. And at the request of my own heart.
Seeing someone call their child their "angel" grates at my nerves so hard. I know they are just thinking that the fact they are so innocent, pure, and precious, that they are like "an angel" is all it is. But when you truly are in the possession of a child that really is an angel, it hurts, and it is a trigger, its scary, to see someone say that. If only they knew what having an angel is really like, they'd never call their child one. And for someone to refer to a loss parents' living child as an angel is the same concept of punching us in the throat. Well, it feels the same.
Seeing people take pictures of their newborns with angel wings hurts, because our babies really do have wings, and its [painful] to see that visualized.
Again, this is something that is relative to experience. I'm almost certain I called my own child an angel before I birthed one.
Use your words wisely, in loss and grief, almost anything if not carefully derived in forethought, can be misconstrued. The fact is, my son is no angel. He may be angelic in nature. But he is no angel. He has a big sister who is. HE is my rainbow. While not widely understood, (the term "rainbow baby") the main thing is, refer to him whatever you wish, except for an angel. Because he is not. My daughter is an angel. She was born without ever taking a breath. She went straight to Heaven before she ever got a glimpse of this world with her own eyes.
This blog may seem rant-y, and may be misconstrued but believe me when I say I am not ungrateful for any compliments I may receive on my beautiful rainbow baby. Its not that I don't appreciate comments. It is just that as a loss mom, and I know I speak for every other loss mom out there when I say it, that I truly wish people would put more thought into what they say before they say it. This is only one phrase that I can think of that grates the damaged soul.
Rewind a couple years ago and it would be hard to fathom why this would even be a subject of talk or even really matter, I may have even rolled my eyes at someone for being 'too sensitive'. But now, its different. I want to advocate for those of us who feel this way. If I can advocate, raise awareness, and do these things in remembrance of her, she will never truly leave me or this world.
Call him what you may, but my son is no angel.
xoxo
Special Credit: Jessica Weischedel for the title of this blog.
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