Budding Emotions

A couple weeks ago, I wrote about our tentative agenda to visit the funeral home that handled Andrew's cremation and urn. Wow, happy Tuesday, everyone. What a downer of a post this is already. The days leading up to his birthday seem to keep me in a funk of gloom. Thursday's post will be about my mom-blogger Chicago event, but today and tomorrow? They are about Andrew.

I'll explain the details of that visit in another post, but this one is specific to our grief affecting Benjamin. For the very first time, Benjamin expressed concern for our emotions. It was heartbreaking and beautiful. I read in child development books and observed other children for years now to know that by 9 months, children most assuredly can read certain emotions, especially from people they spend the most time with.

In Benjamin's case, that would be Ray and myself. I just never thought much of it, because I have a hard time reading B's reactions to us when it comes to emotional understanding. When I'm happy, clapping, and praising him, he smiles. Big. When I redirect him and tell him the cord in the corner that he insists on putting in his mouth every single day is dangerous and that, no, he is not allowed to chew on it, he doesn't react. He turns away and proceeds to chew. Stubborn? Maybe. I also question whether he understands that my reaction is one that is negative and that I am asking him to change his behavior.

I know he's learning, but it's just a matter of seeing the fruit. We don't always see it, so we tend to forget that he can and does understand emotion.

Back to the funeral home.

I spent the majority of our time in that trigger-filled place crying, because I was just there two years prior in the very same room, dealing with the very same thing. Benjamin was a happy clam and wanted to touch everything and crawl around... that wasn't going to happen. Something about it being a place of mourning... something about it being a place we picked up Andrew's ashes... something about the respect of loved ones. And I won't deny the ick-factor of those places. 

When we left, I stood in the parking lot, holding B and bawling. Then we put him in his carseat and sat in the front seats bawling some more. Got home, cried some more tears. Par for the course, obviously. That's why we'd put this off for so long. 

It was about Benjamin's naptime and he was showing all the signs of exhaustion. Rubbing his eyes, yawning, sucking his thumb, and cuddling close to our chests. It's what he does. We're familiar and he's a pretty good napper, so we walked upstairs and placed him in his crib. This usually goes off without a hitch these days, especially when he seems really tired. But...

Crying. We picked him up after a few minutes and he couldn't take his eyes off us. He didn't want to crawl or touch anything, but to be held. More yawning, and another attempt at the crib. More crying.

This went on 4 more times before we determined he was genuinely concerned about us. He was extremely clingy and wouldn't let us leave his eyesight. Through our tears, we turned on music and began dancing. We wanted to cheer him up and find a way to let him know we were okay and we would be okay. That it was okay to take a nap and be away from us for awhile. He smiled, giggled and finally went down for a nap.

I have plenty of babyloss friends out there that had older siblings when they lost their babies. These siblings watched their parents in despair and without a question, understood this sadness. This was B's first real experience in dealing with us crying in front of him. We had no idea it would affect him, but we make no apologies about it. So this is what it's like parenting a child after losing your first.

Seeing the concern on the face of a 9-month old was the most beautiful and heartbreaking thing we've experienced in parenting Benjamin thus far. Ray and I reflected aloud about seeing our own parents cry. While we feel it's important to show vulnerability in parenting, it's also hard to watch your heroes (essentially) crying. They are meant to be strong and impenetrable. They can fix everything and handle it with ease. At least from a child's perspective. But there's also a fine line to draw that we want Benjamin to see in us as parents, in using Andrew's life and death as an example.

We want him to know compassion. We want him to know his brother and to know he had a brother that now lives in heaven. It's important that the death of his brother not be a little-known topic to him. While we don't want sadness to overshadow his life, we do want him to celebrate the life of a brother that came before him. Every year we will celebrate Andrew. As unfortunate and sad as the circumstances may be, we want him to love others and love them in their sadness. As a child and as an adult, we want him to be bold, act in courage, love others, and show compassion. Maybe Andrew is gifting him some of that. A bit earlier than we ever thought these life lessons would be taught, but important nonetheless.

Andrew's birthday is tomorrow. The tears are welling.