#MicroblogMondays: Shadow child

I feel lucky that none of my CLOSE friends were pregnant at the same time as I was back in 1998… but several of dh's cousins or their wives were pregnant at the same time I was, and had babies at some point that year or the next. For example, there were three other pregnant women present at one cousin's engagement party that summer, including another cousin's wife. My baby was due in mid-November but stillborn in early August. This cousin's wife had hers in late September — 28 years ago this past weekend, in fact. (I'm thankful that the other babies in my life that year were all boys… that was hard enough to deal with. I'm not sure how I would have handled a girl the same age as my daughter would have been!)

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.