Absent Friends

....I guess that is what my husband and I now are...or are our friends the Absent Friends? Friends that once filled every day of our lives and now they are gone.  It's not through their choice, it's all our doing...well my doing if I am perfectly honest. You see, there are just some friends I can't see. Not won't. Can't. It's too hard. Too painful. I'm finding it hard enough to stay standing as it is, to withstand the storm of grief which still whirls around me. If I add anything else to the mix I'll topple over. I'm not strong enough to stay upright. I haven't been able to ground feet back into the earth just yet.

It's not an easy situation. I have seen some friends and I usually have a lovely time when I do. But the friends I have seen are the ones without babies, or ones that have older babies. I can cope with that. It's the other friends that are the problem. The ones with the new babies or the ones who are pregnant. They don't symbolise friendship anymore, to me they are just a giant flashing beacon of everything we had and have lost.

I honestly don't know what to do about it. This can't go on indefinitely or we'll lose them from our lives forever.  Out of everyone I am most worried about our best friends (if they would even call us that now). I've written about them before in previous posts - they had a baby boy five weeks after we lost William. It's not their fault. They've done nothing wrong. But their little boy and their family life is what we'd dreamed of, hoped and prayed for, and it's what was taken away from us.

I've tried to keep in touch with the wife over email, to share what has been going on in my life and ask after hers, but it has been hard. I feel I have to ask after her little boy but in reality I don't want to hear anything about him. I know he will be utterly gorgeous but to hear any real details about him would be like sticking a knife in my heart. I think my friend senses that and so she hardly ever mentions him, even when I ask, but it must be hard - after all, he is the most important person in her life now and she can't share that with me anymore.

In recent weeks the emails have subsided. She suggested meeting, without the baby, but I was just not ready. I said I wasn't sure and that I needed to build up to it and she suggested that sometimes things are worse in our minds than they turn out to be in reality. She asked how it has been when I've seen other friends. I didn't know what to say and I felt like she was pushing me. I couldn't be honest, couldn't say that it has been ok seeing some other friends....ok because they don't have a baby boy who is five weeks younger than mine should be. So instead  I just turned and legged it in the other way.  I haven't emailed her since.

I feel like I am losing her and it makes me very sad. She is such a lovely person and I know her little boy will be wonderful. But it's hard. Things have changed. I have changed. It will never be the same again. She has what I have lost and I don't know if I can spend my life watching her little boy grow up when I had to leave mine in the hospital.  I wonder if she thinks I have had long enough - it's been 7 months - does she think I should be over this by now? Does she think I should be capable of seeing her or her little boy by now? Does she think I have had enough time to grieve? 

I don't know the answer. All I know is I haven't had long enough. I am not ready. It is too painful. And whilst I hope I will get there one day, my biggest fear is that she might not wait for me and I will have lost her forever.