My parents skipped my baby’s funeral for my brother’s BBQ and said, it’s just a baby, you’ll have another. I buried my daughter alone, and they had no idea what I would do next.
The funeral was four days later.
I called my parents myself. Not because I wanted to, but because some part of me still believed blood should matter when everything else had fallen apart. My father answered first, distracted, then passed the phone to my mother. I told her the service was at eleven. I told her I needed them there. I told her I didn’t think I could do it alone.
There was a pause, then laughter and voices in the background.
“Today?” she asked.
“Yes, today.”
Another pause. Then, in the same tone she might have used to talk about the weather, she said, “Your brother already invited people over for the barbecue. We bought all the food. We can’t just cancel on everybody.”
I thought I had heard her wrong.
“Mom,” I said, “I’m burying my daughter.”
She exhaled sharply. “Madeline, I know you’re emotional, but it’s just a baby. You’ll have another. Your brother’s event has forty people coming.”
Forty people.
I looked through the glass doors of the funeral home and saw a tiny white casket waiting at the front of the chapel. My knees actually weakened. Not just from grief—from realization. Grief tells you what you’ve lost. Betrayal tells you what you never truly had.
My father came back on the line, muttered something about traffic, obligations, trying to “keep peace,” and then the call ended.
So I walked into that room alone.
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