So the Baptism was a bit of a disaster for me. For one thing I am not Christian, and that specific church is a little bit… special. Think sing-song chanting bible verses. Very weird, very over the top for us. The priest’s words while sending the children to children’s church didn’t really put me in a great mood to start with: “Let us give thanks, children are G*d’s gift!”<\/p>\n
And of course the service was all about how important being Baptised is to G*d and, my favorite line, “Those of you here who haven’t been Baptised may wonder why your life is so chaotic.” That just felt way too personal to me. I had far too much time during the service to just feel angry, thinking about Devin. By the time the children were all brought back in to watch the Baptism I wasn’t in a very stable mood and as the service wound to a close I found myself gripping the pew in front of mine, tears rolling down my cheeks as a little boy walked up and down the aisle beside me during the Eucharist (which, of course, we did not partake in). Den held my hand and passed me a tissue, which I used to dab at my eyes. I fought the urge to run out of the church during the final prayer. I held on, focussed on breathing. Wound too tight.<\/p>\n
Everyone filed out slowly and I walked into the small foyer to find it crowded with parents and children stopping to chat. I (somewhat rudely) shoved through, banged out the front door, and ran into the parking lot sobbing. I just totally lost it. Den ran out behind me and held me for a few minutes while I cried. My son was supposed to be there. We were not supposed to be sitting alone today.<\/p>\n
I settled down after that. It helped that SIL’s mom and grandmother both came over to give me a hug and tell me that it’s okay to feel sad and mourn our loss whenever the grief hits. They are really so very kind.<\/p>\n
Afterwards we ate, I photographed (too bad I can’t post any), and the athiest side of the family marvelled at how they could be related to BIL.<\/p>\n
It ended on a fine note. But boy I did not expect that kind of reaction from myself during the service. I thought I was just going to doodle in my notebook, roll my eyes at some of the G*d comments, and take photos of BabyH being Baptised. But I forgot about the children, and I didn’t account for what kind of toll having to hold myself still and stately for such a long period of time with nothing to do but think about those children. Fucking sucks, man.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So the Baptism was a bit of a disaster for me. For one thing I am not Christian, and that specific church is a little bit… special. Think sing-song chanting bible verses. Very weird, very over the top for us. The priest’s words while sending the children to children’s church didn’t really put me in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[76,69],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ivf-3","tag-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}