So there is another case on my desk at the funeral home. Normally that doesn't bother me, as I get most of the cases from the week on my desk at one time or another for various reasons, but the case on my desk, the one that had me almost in tears yesterday and kept me tossing and turning last night was another baby death. The first one of the year. Baby deaths are nothing new to me. I've been exposed to them before. And after every exposure, I feel like crap. I have sleepless nights, and headaches, my heart feels like its a thousand pounds and I'm moody. For a week, the death of an infant screws with me. Sleepless nights have me repeating the line "The Lord is Kind and Merciful" over and over for hours each night, hoping that I can finally make some sense of the meaning behind that statement. I listen to siblings who work with me in the business tell me I should be grateful that the baby I'm helping care for isn't mine. My mother tells me to suck it up and get over it or get out of the funeral business because if I can't keep it together, I can't do the job properly. Normally that all lasts until I've had just about enough and blow up like a bomb and tell them all to shut the hell up before I storm out of my house, get into my Explorer and blaring the radio, find the first highway where I can do 70 plus until I calm down and can come back home like a normal person. If that doesn't work, than a trip to the cemetery where my former mentor is buried normally does the trick. Sitting in the grass and the mud, crying normally and screaming at him like a manic works...usually. But this time, so far none of that has worked. Tears I want to cry don't come. They threaten to fall, but in the end, they don't. Journaling hasn't helped either. Picking up a pen to write only works when you know what to say and how. Blaring a radio in the past forty eight hours hasn't helped either. My head has been pounding now for days with either a cold or sinuses, so after a few minutes, I'd rather punch out the radio then listen to it. So I've been trying to figure this out....figure out what to do this time to save what little sanity I still have left, but there's nothing left. So what do I do? How do I move forward? This is the question I ask.
In the funeral profession, we're expected to show no emotion. We're portrayed as cold, hard people. Always in black, lurking in the shadows. But we're not. We're human. We have emotions. And most of the time, we're good about keeping them under control. Keeping them in check. But for me, the deaths of babies have always played mind games on me. Perhaps it is the maternal instincts that it has been said every woman has. Or perhaps it is because with this case, I see a bit of myself. The fact that the woman is a few years younger than me, and the same age (as the child's father) of my younger brothers. Or the fact that she's aborted several babies before having a miscarriage while I sit on the sidelines and watch all of my friends my high school having children like it's nothing, while my own doctor tries to determine if I have a disease that may prevent me from having the two little boys and the daughter I hope to one day have. It's selfish, I know, but in the end, is it really? Or is it natural instincts kicking in again? As I type this, the walls around my computer are covered with photos; photos of my parents, grandparents, siblings and their "significant others", friends, the basketball team I coached this year with a coworker, and of my girl friend's little boy. Photos from when he was first born till a few weeks ago. From nights when she needed me to babysit and I had to do so at the funeral home because I was so busy at work that I couldn't break away for a few hours to watch him at home. On a push pin along one side of the bookcase/shelf hangs a pacifier that got left behind from babysitting that I mean to get back to her. I find I am surrounded by reminders of my own "biological mortality" as I refer to it. Consistent reminders that I may always be on the sidelines when it comes to the baby game if my worst fears happen to come true.
And then there's this case...prying at me now for just over a day.
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