My Facebook feed and our family WhatsApp group were flooded with birthday wishes for this young man over the weekend. We're not very close to this cousin & his family, but we see them at family gatherings once or twice a year, and he's in my social media feeds. I've watched this boy grow up — he's a nice kid, has a good job and a condo in the city, and his parents are justly proud of him.
But — I could not bring myself to join the others and wish him a happy birthday. It's such a simple, perfunctory gesture -- but I just couldn't do it. I'm sure no one noticed my absence from the flood of birthday greetings -- but I still felt kind of small and petty, just the same.
Anyone else have a "shadow child" in their life who's the same age yours would have been (or close)?
You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.
Oh, that's hard. I love how you out that, "shadow child." Perfect. I have my friend's twins that she was pregnant with when I had my ectopic, who are now 9th graders (!!!), but they didn't hurt quite as much as the little girl who was born literally at the same time as the baby who would have been had I not miscarried. We had positive pregnancy tests within a day of each other but very different outcomes. I had to snooze my fertility friend on Facebook because I couldn't bear to see what could have been, so close to when our lives became so different. Sending hugs to you, reminders are so so hard.
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