Every year, 26,000 babies are stillborn in America. In 2003, one of them was my son.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

At 81, He Still Blames Himself

I came across this article several weeks ago, "Hibakusha writes to his dead child," about an 81-year-old man in Japan, a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. In it, he speaks, through a letter written to his second child, a daughter who was stillborn, of his anguish that he may be responsible for her death.

"Is some bad blood flowing within me?" he writes.  "Or, is this the payback for having survived?"

I already knew, and this only reaffirms, the guilt and sorrow never go away. But at least there will be others out there who feel just the same way.

1 comment:

Catherine W said...

Heartbreaking.

I don't they ever go away.