I'm starting back to work next Thursday.  Every time I think about it, I am gripped by anxiety that is nearly crippling.  It's not so much the work part that I'm concerned about; that will be fine.  It's the dealing with everyone I encounter part that is troubling.

When you go through a loss, there are a few key phrases that people say to you.  "I'm so sorry."  "You're in my thoughts and prayers."  Those are standard for any sort of death.  Stillbirth is its own kind of terrible, in that it's not something that is spoken about much, so it makes people very uncomfortable when they have to come up with a comforting platitude.  This leads to a lot of comments that are generally inappropriate, albeit completely unintentionally.

I've heard it all, but the one that I have a hard time dealing with is this:

"It's better that it happened this way than if you'd taken her home and she'd died there."

I'm sure it is.  It's better that it happened that way than if a lion had escaped from the zoo and attacked us in the hospital at the same time.  It's better that it happened on planet Earth than on Mars.  I don't need to be reminded of the ways in which my terrible, shitty situation could have been worse.  I get it.  I still think what happened was PRETTY terrible and shitty, though, so I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish.

I know that it's not an intentional hurtful comment, it's really meant to be helpful.  Please stop trying to help me.  The hardest part is that I can't say anything back.  I have to smile and say, "Yep, you're right, that would have been worse," because this person isn't trying to make me feel bad.  They're genuinely trying to help, and I don't want to make them feel worse.  Telling me about someone you know who had a stillbirth and then died in the process doesn't make me feel any better about the child I lost, it just makes me feel bad for the husband who lost his child AND his wife.

Which brings me back to Thursday.  I'm going to deal with those comments, and the people who don't mention it at all because they don't want to make me (or themselves) uncomfortable, and the people who give me the sympathetic head tilt and say, "How ARE you?"  And then there are going to be the people who don't know what happened and ask me how maternity leave was and how the baby is, and then I'm going to have to tell them and make them feel bad.  I just want to fast-forward a few weeks and get past all of this.  But I can't, and it's one more aspect of my life that I never saw coming.