I'd give anything to have him back, but I appreciate the experience it gave me in understanding grief.
What nobody tells you is how darkly awful and funny grief can be.
I remember sitting in a funeral home only hours after my father died and the funeral home giving us a TV sales pitch for more lighthearted funeral options. One of the vignettes was a man known for his BBQ sauce being celebrated with everyone getting a bottle of specially packaged sauce at the funeral. As I watched this absurdity pass by, all I could think of was a slogan for the sauce, "There's a little bit of Fred in every bottle."
What I learned in the days, months, and years following his death was that no two people grieve the same. Some of us move on quickly, comforted by faith, a life well lived, and perhaps the knowledge our loved one is no longer suffering.
Others take longer, processing a life without our loved one. Perhaps we ponder things unsaid, the hole in our lives without them, or simply the emotions that blindside us out of the blue.
Or maybe we never fully get over it.
Each of us handles grief in our own way based on our past, our beliefs, our mindset, the reactions of people in our lives, and the emotional and physical aspects of no longer having that person in our lives.
Grief packages up the absurd, the mundane, and often the best and worst in people who the grieving person knows and interacts with.
The best is on view in the people who show up that you never expect to see. The people who you barely know that show up to offer you kindness. The friends you haven't seen in years who drive long distances to spend five minutes to give you a hug. The friends of your loved ones who give their own small and touching tributes. They're the people who are there for your needs, not their own.
Then there are the people who don't really know what to do, so they offer you empty platitudes that sound like comfort but really aren't. "He's in a better place" may sound great, but the reality is that my dad is in an urn 1/30th the size he was when he was alive. Both we and he would much rather he be here with us in the form we all loved and cherished. Trust me when I say that no slogan or phrase on a plaque you buy online expresses sentiments deep enough to impact those who are grieving.
And then there are the truly thoughtless. The people who make your grief about them. They are the ones who judge your grief and how you go about it. They're the ones who assume that if you don't respond as they think you should then there must be something wrong with you. They're the ones who come to you at your lowest point and manage to make you feel even lower. We had a few of those, including a family friend of many years who turned a simple misunderstanding about a facebook post on my dad's death and turned it into a reason to berate my mom for my "unfriending" her. (I'd never been her facebook friend to begin with.).
Those are the people I think of when I look at Kentucky House members Nancy Tate, Kimberly Poore Moser, and Right to Life lobbyist Addia Wuchner when they bring forth legislation like House Bill 467, the ridiculously named "Love Them Both Act Part II Act".
These individuals love to pretend that they're benevolent martyrs who only care about the lives of the unborn and their families. But instead, they have a twisted devotion to the idea that every pregnancy is more sacred than the lives of everyone surrounding that pregnancy, even if the pregnancy is doomed to result in a child who does not survive birth.
The Love Them Both Act Part II Act is meant to encourage parents of non-viable pregnancies to do what Nancy Tate and Addia Wuchner want them to do, which is carry those pregnancies to term.
I am the proud father of a beautiful young daughter. My wife and I were fortunate to have had a relatively smooth pregnancy and delivery and did not have to face the heartache and heartbreak of a non-viable pregnancy. But I can tell you that the last thing I or my wife would have wanted if we'd faced that tragic outcome is someone like Nancy Tate or Addia Wuchner telling us the "best" way to deal with our grief would be to follow the path that makes THEM feel best. If we'd have decided the best thing to do was to terminate the pregnancy immediately, a legislative mandate to try and dissuade us would do nothing but hurt us more.
I completely agree that pregnant women and their families should receive every bit of support possible in that pregnancy, including mental health support should the pregnancy fail or turn out to be non-viable. But the creators of this legislation are some of the most radical among anti-abortion forces, who feel that the mother's life and emotional well-being should NEVER be put first. The primary sponsor, Nancy Tate, called a victim of sexual abuse "broken" for speaking out in support of the right of a rape victim to abort a pregnancy caused by that rape. The sponsors and supporters of this bill believe there is no pregnancy at any stage that should be aborted, even if the child or mother will not survive. These people are not above using shame, guilt, and pressure to force those who are hurting or grieving to do what THEY want, and not what best meets the individual needs of the mother and her family.
Consider the comments of Kentucky Representative Ryan Dotson, who, in voting for this bill in committee, had this to say about his colleagues who walked out in protest of the intent of the bill.
"I'd just like everyone to take notice. My colleagues on the Democratic side all got up and left. And that's an atrocity, because when it comes to these types of issues, this is very important, and I want folk to understand we're just protecting the life and health of these children."
Ryan's so busy grandstanding his "pro-life" bonafides that he doesn't seem to realize the bill deals with pregnancies where the health and life of children is already doomed. Is that the type of person you want "helping" women and their families through their grief?
Being there for grieving people requires both sympathy and empathy, something Kentucky's Republican legislators are too often lacking. Placing their own selfish belief that the fate of a nonviable fetus is more important than the complex feelings of the families wrestling with grief shows just how ghoulish they truly are. In their desire to be "pro-life", they've abandoned their own humanity. An act that says to "love them both" shows love for nobody but themselves and special interest groups.
