Grief Math ✍🏻

In our “parents of dead babies” group there was a woman who birthed twins and only one survived. She showed up at the group about a month after her loss and she still hadn’t told anyone other than close family that one of the babies died. Her matter of factness with the group was at odds with her inability to speak the truth to friends and coworkers, who would ask her about the babies, and she’d say “they’re fine.” 

There was a defeat in her that I recognized — not wanting to deal with the emotional reactions that I or others had when I spoke about my tragedy. Even so, I wanted to say to her, “You know you’re setting yourself up to be the crazy one? The one who can’t do simple math?” But none of us said anything. That wasn’t the point of the group; we were there to share our common grief and listen — no commentary. 

Of course I know it’s not about math. But that’s the thing with grief, we want it to be concrete and logical, but it’s not. Two minus one = one is not an obvious concept whe…