Today’s word is insensitivity. Something happened yesterday that made today’s I-word easy to come up with.
Sometimes to wake up I grab my phone and check e-mail and/or Facebook before I get out of bed. I had a rude awakening when I came across this meme in my newsfeed:
Ugh. It hit me like a slap in the face. My breath caught involuntarily. My cheeks got hot. I couldn’t look away for a moment. What was I reading? And on my friend’s newsfeed who has been a support to me after losing Kade? And who has already “liked” it, but another friend who has supported me?
I typed a comment: a bitter, “Ouch.”
Then I immediately removed my comment, and privately messaged my friend instead. I told her how it made me feel to see, and that I know she didn’t mean it to be hurtful. But could she please remove it? She apologized and deleted it.
I contacted the Facebook page from where she shared the meme. I explained my situation, who might see it, how it could hit them as it did me, and asked them to remove it. I got a kind response back saying that they would.
I looked up SomeECards.com, the company name on the meme and e-mailed them the same request. I got a very terse reply, but they did supposedly remove it from their stock.
This incident made me think of another similar situation.
My friend, Paula, a bereaved mom who has a company called Crazy Good Grief, and I took our little boys to the Morrison Natural History Museum. On a little walking tour of fossilized sites we were behind a mom with a few kids. She yelled to them to catch up. Then said, “No big deal–if we lose one we got extras!…” something like that. She thought she was pretty hilarious because she repeated it.
No…neither Paula nor I said anything to her. We were both dumbstruck with how that happened right in front of us, given our situations, and just had words between us like, “If they only had a clue.”
he wore flannel 
I’m so sorry that you had to go through this. People can be jerks at times
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Thank you for sharing Kade and your journey with us. As I read your posts, I feel like I’m getting to know him.
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Great word for ‘I’! And so true. I only hope that the mom you overheard who joked about having extras never finds out what the other side of the coin is like. She may be blissful in her ignorance, but I’d never wish it on anyone to truly find out what it’s like to lose a child.
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It must’ve been really hard to read that 😕 I’m glad you took the private route and that contacting the other pages was successful, too. It just shows that ignorance can be just as hurtful as deliberate wrongdoing.
Andrea
Volunteer in Damyanti’s D Company of the #atozchallenge
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I have to think about my own lack of sensitivity, while trying to be humorous. We all need to think a bit more before we speak!
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Ouch. That really must have stung,as I cringed just seeing the cartoon here on your post.
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Oh, gosh, Jenny! I just read through the alphabet to date. I can’t imagine, truly I cannot imagine, losing one of my sons. Your palpable grief stirs me. Hugs.
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Wow, not a clue. You are so right to have let your friend know, and the sources of the cartoon. Even though I grieve losing Kade, I have to wonder how I have unknowingly hurt someone with saying or posting something. That cartoon is just plain stupid besides being hurtful. There are too many jokes about what a mom would do to her kids when they rile her–not funny.
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