Michael 🏴‍☠️ Fleet @f1337@librem.one

These experiences, immediately after we buried our daughter, made it clear to me that I was not allowed to grieve. I was/am the sole income earner (my wife wanted to home school, we're hippies). I couldn't drop the ball to grieve. I had to keep us housed, clothed, insured.

I stormed out, got coffee, went to our own home to grieve a bit. My wife's childhood friend calls to chew me out for leaving, as if I were abandoning/divorcing her "leaving", because that's what my in-laws were accusing me of, since I stormed out that morning. 🙄

We were too spent to take care of ourselves, so that night, we slept at my mother-in-law's. The next morning I got up, wife asleep, kid watching TV, and my mother-in-law, and *her* mother, immediately start telling me all the things I need to do to help my wife grieve & heal.

The hearse did eventually arrive, as did my wife & our oldest. We drove to the graveyard. When the burial blessing was over, our oldest grabbed a handful of dirt, threw it on her sister's coffin, and declared "it is done".

😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

A few days later, we had the funeral & burial. I remember after the funeral, standing alone outside the church, holding her casket. All alone. Waiting for a seeming eternity for the hearse to come. My heart ached so much more than my arms. The memory still wounds me today.

Our Irish Wake was hosted at my mother-in-law's home. We had 4 rooms:

- 1 for alcohol (and it was supposed to stay there) & loud convo
- 1 room for food & loud convo
- 1 room with quiet music and library voices
- 1 room for viewing & keening

…plus the garage for blazing one's eyes red. 🍁

It was the best viewing/showing like experience I've ever been part of. I hate all our death rituals. But that Irish Wake was truly helpful. Not enough on its own, but helpful.

I had learned, from losing my mom & grandfather, that I needed to grieve differently. I always related more to those cultures who keen when grieving, than the icy Anglo-German stoicism of my culture.

So we researched grieving rituals and decided upon an Irish Wake.

In the 33rd week, during the night, the baby stopped moving.

We rushed to the hospital, and my wife birthed our dead daughter. We held her, had some photographs taken (thanks to a charity called Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep).

And then they took her away. We left the hospital, me pushing my wife in a wheelchair, her holding a box, instead of a baby. Walking past expectant parents as we left. 💔

By the way, through all of this, our firstborn is absolutely processing these events in her own way, at 3 years old. I can't even imagine. I still don't know how to talk to her about her sister. 💔

We moved "home" to Ohio (though I grew up here, it has never felt like home to me). We settled into our new home, and prepared for a tough medical battle, followed by grief.

We prayed. So many fucking prayers. So much pleading with God.

A couple of weeks later we learned that the baby has a terminal genetic, but not inherited, defect. At best we should expect days with her, but most don't survive hours.

We buy thin ceramic plates at a thrift store, write "Trisomy 18" on them, and smash the plates in helpless rage.

We lived in Phoenix at the time. We had moved to AZ because we love the desert. But our new community there was not ready to carry us through this. So we moved back to Ohio.

Then the doc starts to talk termination. My wife says no. So they separate us, as if I'm a threat or coercion. Once they have her alone, they try to hard sell her to terminate. (Arizona had a 19-week limit for abortion, and we were right at it).

We eventually leave, and are crushed and angry and helpless. But there is a sliver of hope, that maybe she'll be born and survive after some surgeries. Which is why my wife felt attacked by their hard sell to terminate.

About 2 years later, we were getting the 19 week ultrasound for our second child. It was all routine at first, then the tech started being weird & evasive, and called for the doctor. The doctor came and started talkingin medical-ese about how our baby wasn't "compatible with life".

I feel 🤢. My wife's grip on my hand is excruciating, almost bone breaking. (they were bruised badly after).

They survived! But the trauma of nearly losing them was mine alone to process. My wife was drugged during the worst of it. She doesn't remember the terror at all. I still do, viscerally, tears streaming, heart racing, short breath as I type this.

I was depressed for a year or more.

In the midst of which, I nearly lost my partner & oldest child in failed home birth that ended in an emergency C-section. I was in the fetal position on the "bed" for dads in the birthing room, balling silently, terrified I was gonna lose them.

This story is gonna meander. Because grief. Here goes.

Prelude:
I lost my maternal grandfather, who was more like a father to me than my actual dad, when I was 19.

I couldn't leave my bed for days. I couldn't eat. I got physically ill from the stress, and lack of self care.

My mother died 8 years later. She was my favorite person in the whole world. I still feel like part of me is buried with her. An important part of me. A part I miss almost as much as I miss her.

I am one of the two.🧵 about how #ActuallyAutistic folk process grief:

🐦 https://twitter.com/mykola/status/1516057830310256642

(this is a re-post of the most important Twitter thread I wrote)