You don't know what's inside until you take a closer look

Therapy is interesting.

Granted, there are things I'd rather be doing than sitting in a little office with a stranger discussing how my life has shattered into 47 billion tiny pieces; and God knows I wish I had no reason to be in therapy in the first place, but it does serve a purpose.

Last week I found myself weighing out the pros and cons of Thomas having been born brain dead.

I know, How can there possibly be pros?!, you're asking.

The thing is, it has always been so utterly devastating to me that Thomas never "knew" us - that he never felt us hold him or kiss him or touch him. He was stillborn and revived, but never truly fully alive.

And this has tormented me endlessly.

I was discussing this with my therapist, telling her how much I sometimes wish that he had been able to see me, respond to the sound of my voice, feel me there, loving him.

She just listened, kind of wide-eyed.

As I talked (and talked, and talked, and talked), I came to the conclusion that if he had to die, it happened the best way it could have. For us to have known him in the way I have so often wished we could have, he would have had to have suffered so much more than he already did.

To wish for that knowing what it would have meant for him is unfathomable.

It's better, I have concluded, that we were the ones to have suffered instead.

But the thing is, I know he felt our love while he was safe inside me. And I know he feels it now. And in the end, that's all that matters.

See? Therapy is interesting. Depressing, yes, but interesting. You never know what little bit of pain all knotted up in there is going to finally work its way out.