i know people have strong feelings about peppa pig; it seems to be a love-it or hate-it kind of show. but of all of my kids' shows, peppa pig is probably my favorite. i love it because the show doesn't pull any punches. there are so many real human moments that it captures perfectly.
in one of my favorite episodes, peppa pig wants to learn how to whistle, and she just can't figure it out. everyone else - her father, her mother, even her younger brother (the indignity!) - can whistle without even thinking about it. but peppa tries and tries and nothing works.
her mother tries to cheer her up with cookies, but peppa is too sad for cookies. lonely and disappointed, she calls up her best friend, suzy sheep, and tells her how hard learning to whistle has been. "it's impossible," she says. "can you whistle?"
"no," says suzy.
peppa brightens momentarily. "oh good!" she says. then, realizing this is perhaps not the most socially acceptable response to that admission, she adds hastily, "i mean, that's sad if you can't whistle, but good because i can't whistle, either."
"what is whistling, anyway?" asks suzy.
"you put your lips together and blow," says peppa.
"like this?" asks suzy, and whistles perfectly.
peppa hangs up without another word, leaving a bewildered suzy on the line.
peppa pig is my spirit animal.
what i love about this exchange is the honesty of peppa's first reaction: "oh good!"
it's the kind of unflattering, totally real response i think many of us have when we meet someone else grappling with the same problem we are. oh good, we think. it's not just me. i'm not the only one who can't do this. i'm not the only one who doesn't have this. maybe this person won't just be one more person that i have to watch enjoying that thing i can't have, that i have to pretend to have it together for. it's the classic "misery loves company" line.
if you haven't been there recently, you might be taken aback by the ugliness of this response. what kind of person is happy that another person is suffering? what kind of person want everybody else to feel terrible just because they do? what a spiteful, selfish, small-minded way to view the world!
that's why we can never admit, to anyone, that we think these thoughts. it's why peppa has to immediately change her answer: "oh, i mean, that's sad if you can't whistle." that is the proper way to respond to another person's bad news. that is what we are supposed to feel and say; not "oh good! it's not just me!"
but here's the thing about the "oh good!" reaction: of course we aren't happy that another person is suffering. our knee-jerk gratitude doesn't come from a place of vindictiveness or sadism.
it comes from loneliness. deep, deep loneliness.
the "oh good!" in our heads isn't glee; it's relief.
it's relief that we no longer have to be on our own, isolated from the rest of the world by the bleakness of a pain no one else seems to understand because no one else seems to have experienced it. it's about feeling understood, about existing in the same place, at the same time as someone else, at long last.
finally, someone who can truly appreciate why we are sad. someone who gets how hard it is. someone who also longs for things that feel so out of reach to us, but fall with inexplicable ease into the hands of - seemingly - everyone else.
at the end of the day, i think there is little comfort human beings can offer one another in the face of horrific tragedy and trauma. no one living has the answers to my questions. no one has the power to reverse time, to save my baby. but for me, one of the most important, most sacred things anyone has been able to give me is that feeling of fellowship: the feeling that my pain is understood, that i am not the only one who wakes up every day to the impossible, nonsensical task of living without my child, forever.
oh good. it's sad if you can't whistle, but good because i can't whistle either. and now i don't have to feel so alone with my anxiety and desperation and darkness anymore, because you are here. we are here together, in the same place, at the same time, walking the same road. and what i have needed, more than anything, is a friend: a friend who can understand and navigate this terrifying, unspeakable new side of me. a friend who can walk this nightmarish path with me.
but there is another side to this relief, too: the fear of being left behind.
because...what if you learn to whistle first?
what if you are able to find peace sooner than i can? what if you have a baby first, or get married first, or land your dream job first? what if you find happiness again, and i don't?
will you forget about me? will you forget what it was like, in this place and this time where i'm still stuck, when you've moved on?
will i lose you, too?
i think that is why the violence of peppa's reaction when she learns that suzy actually can whistle resonates so strongly for me. it is almost worse than if she had never called suzy at all, isn't it? for a moment, peppa has the hope and validation of thinking that she isn't the only person in the world for whom whistling just doesn't seem to happen, that there is someone else who knows what it's like to want something so badly and have it elude you...and then that too is taken away from peppa. suzy can whistle. suzy gets to be just like everyone else again, living that normal, easy life. and peppa feels more alone than ever, on her that-wasn't-in-the-playbook path. the revelation is so painful that peppa doesn't have words for it; she just hangs up as quickly as she can.
i struggle with this feeling of being left behind or abandoned, too.
intellectually i know, of course, that this isn't how friendship works. people don't forget what it was like to suffer just because eventually they suffer less. having another baby after a loss doesn't erase the pain of mothering a dead child. there is no race to the finish line; there are no winners, there are no losers. you will not think less of me if it takes me longer to walk upright again after my baby's death than it did for you to put the pieces back together after losing yours. we are all in it together. i know, i know.
i have made many new friends since my stillbirth who are, right now, in the same place, at the same time as me. we have all lost babies in horrible, horrible ways that no person on earth should have to live through. we struggle every day to keep going through the motions of our lives, hoping to find meaning, to find purpose, to find hope. some days we find it. some days we can whistle.
some days it seems impossible.
but i know, i hope, that as the months and years go on, i will watch these women embrace joy again. i pray that i will watch them experience so many simchas, and begin to feel a little more whole. i know that we will find our way through this, and i know that those further along on this road than i am now will be looking over their shoulders for me, encouraging me to keep walking when i feel i can't take another step. i believe this to my core.
and yet, sometimes, it's still hard for me to hear someone else whistle, when i just can't figure it out.
Comments