The Blame Game

When something tragic happens, you really want to blame someone. It does not matter how many doctors look you in the eye and make you promise that you understand it's not anything you did or did not do. The first person you blame is yourself.

Terrible thoughts were taking over my consciousness. How could Brad love me any longer when I couldn't bear two healthy children for him? I wondered how he even looked me in the eyes. This feeling lasted a few dark days even though he was showing me nothing but support, compassion, and absolute true love.

I was running through everything that I had done since I became pregnant. I had drank a few beers before I knew, I was taking antidepressants, I had even eaten lunchmeat! But, the scientist in me knew that none of those things caused our baby's condition.

So then I blamed Karma. I have had my share of transgressions in the past 30 years. Was one of them bad enough to warrant such punishment? I didn't think so, but even if one was, why would Karma be so evil to Brad and the rest of our family when they were completely innocent?

Interestingly, for as much as I tried to push the blame on myself, I never once considered blaming Brad.

Finally, there is the easiest scapegoat of them all - G-d*. I wanted to blame Him, but how do you blame someone that you've more often than not excluded from your daily life? Many people have told me that He works in mysterious ways, He always has a plan, or He needs my baby in Heaven. Even the ancient Jewish scriptures were speaking to me about G-d's power over life and death. Days after we got our news, I attended Yom Kippur services at my dad's temple. The main idea of the service is: on Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed, who shall live and who shall die.

This talk of G-d making the decision to take my baby confuses and sometimes frustrates me. I prefer to go back to a story my friend Jen told me instead. When she lost her son, she asked her aunt, a Catholic nun, if she believed that G-d chose to take him from her. Her aunt said "I think G-d was as sad as you the day Ryan died." I want to believe that He is crying right along with me.

So where does that leave us? Who deserves the fault for what's happening? Truly it is the replicating ribonucleic acid that royal screwed up when copying one little strand of DNA when either an egg or a sperm was formed. How do you hold a molecule accountable?

You don't. In the words of scholarly lyricist Michael Stipe, "stop laying blame." Once I made an effort to accept what was happening as a biological anomaly, I actually began to heal a bit. "Stop laying blame."



*In the Jewish religion,we do not write out the full "G" word. His name is not to be destroyed by throwing away a book, recycling a paper, or now using the delete button.