Losing a child would cause unimaginable pain. Not everybody does get over it. But, when you know they have a terminal illness-and especially if they are futureless potatoes-a normal mother would have a sense of mourning them before they died.
It shouldn’t be a shock, nor was it ever something that could change. Just a decline until death. As sad as that is, people can put it in perspective. They grieve while the child is alive-watching missed milestones, understanding that there won’t be crushes and boyfriends and college, careers, and weddings. They can appreciate the moment but know it’s fleepting. There is only sameness and maybe suffering until the end. So a parent can love them and miss them, but the sharpness of grief as if it was the death of a healthy child should not be there or at least, last long. They should have been prepared.
Many of these parents won’t be honest due to guilt (which they shouldn’t feel) but many of them have done their grieving and are left with a sense of sadness rather than acute, agonizing pain and loss of a future. And there also has to be some relief that years of sleepless nights and decades of diaper changes are over, and now you can vacation and sleep until noon if you want.
But Gwen displaced all her anger, disappointment and rage on the doctor who told her that her kid might not live long. She lived in delusion that they’d prove him wrong and live 50 years, and so she probably isn’t accepting like a normal mother would be.
And poor Cal-he’s old enough to finally understand how off his mom was about those girls. If she’s still talking about them all the time and isn’t looking to the future-at his career, kids and life, then it wouldn’t surprise me if he finally backed off and left her to her fantasies of perfection.
