Free Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss by Jessica Watson Page A

January 2013—written at the request of the film’s director, and my best friend, Sean Hanish—was something of an exception in that I am one of the few posters who had not experienced the loss of a child. I wrote of my experiences of knowing Sean and his wife, Kiley; of attending the memorial service for their son, Norbert; and of visiting the movie set. My purpose in writing was simply to encourage others like me—friends and family of those who have experienced a loss—to be present and available, and to listen when our loved ones want or need to talk about what they are going through. Given the content of the other entries, I expected mine to pass with little or no notice. However, after it was posted, it actually garnered a few comments on the blog page and on Facebook. Beyond the fact that it caught anyone’s attention at all, I was surprised by the content of several of the comments, which said, in effect, “Thanks for sticking by Sean. I lost a lot of friends when I lost my child.”
    I was incredulous. Who would turn away a friend at a time when support was needed the most? I figured the behavior described inthose few comments had to anomalous. But a little further reading and research, along with some anecdotal evidence, revealed that abandonment by friends is a fairly common occurrence under these circumstances.
    I couldn’t get my head around that at first. After all, isn’t this what friends suit up for? Let’s face it: most of a good friendship is pretty easy. It’s hanging out laughing. It’s grabbing a pizza at 1 a.m. It’s going to that movie/concert/game that you both want to see. Those shared experiences are supposed to be the foundation for something, aren’t they? And if it’s not being there for each other when things get tough, then what is it? Friends are supposed to be the family that you get to choose.
    But then I remembered something that I thought about during the aftermath of Norbert’s death, when I reflected on the conversations I had with Sean, and with mutual friends after Norbert’s memorial service. I found that I heard the same phrase over and over again. I said it myself, I heard others say it to Sean and Kiley, and I heard the guests say it to each other. We used the phrase so often, I didn’t stop to question its veracity until later. But when I really thought about it, I realized we were all telling The Big Lie. The Big Lie can take many forms, but it almost always starts with the same three words:
    “I can’t imagine…”
    I think I first told a version of The Big Lie to Sean on the phone when he told me they had lost Norbert: “I can’t imagine what you’re going through.” I know I heard several versions of The Big Lie during or at the memorial service: “I can’t imagine how they feel” or “I can’t imagine what this is like.” Often, the three words stand by themselves, and the sentence remains incomplete, but we all understand what it is that the speaker ostensibly can’t imagine.
    But it’s a lie. Can those of us who haven’t lost a child really know or experience the pain of parents who have? Of course not. But can we imagine it? Absolutely. The truth is that it’s not that we
can’t
imagine it, but rather that we
don’t want to
. As you would expect, most of the guests at Norbert’s memorial, myself included, were contemporariesof Sean and Kiley, which meant that many of us were parents of young children. What would it take for us to imagine ourselves in their position? All it really takes is to sit down and try to conjure up an image of losing one of your children—to try to convince yourself, even momentarily, that a child that you love more than life itself was taken from you before it ever got a chance to breathe or eat or laugh.
    The human imagination is a limitless resource, and one could easily tap into it to better sympathize with the parents of a stillborn child. Understandably, though, most parents would never let their minds