Someone just found out that her yet to see the sun baby is going to have Down's syndrome. She is shattered, so is the family. It especially hurts when it's a baby after a long wait.
Just like my musings on dying, I have meditated and pondered on the Down's child. I have to caveat, it's easy to pontificate in the comfort of the air conditioned living room. (And my responses are currently theoretical....artificial and utopian. When the actuals frost bites, I might also have a ruptured vein.....)
If I ever tried to be a father, and if I did get successful....then my heart tells me that I shall own the Down's child. The way I look at it - the child with the 47th chromosome probably chose me because it thought I would really understand its difference and I would still embrace it just like any of my own flesh.
Would my partner choose to similarly own the kid? I know the answer and probably she would not. Does that view bother me? Not really, I don't judge. Given our difference in this matter, who would win? Lowest common denominator....yes we would throttle the unborn child.
Would I be proud of it? Absolutely not. I would probably hate myself forever for having done that. In my own little contrived philosophy - the purpose of life is to live....what that means is every one from the E Coli strain in your stomach to Obama to the child who lost his parents in MH370 - all of us are hard wired for only one goal...survive.
The Downer is similarly hard wired, the 47th worm notwithstanding.....would I rather help it fight that battle or would I remove life support ? Similarly.....Would I drop my partner if she tomorrow suffered a stroke and turned into a turtle of a vegetable ? Would I drop my mother, if she tomorrow is terminally dying of cancer ? Would I give up on my myself if my liver just crashed ? Would I feel my world collapsed if my child came under one of those alcohol influenced trucks ?
Is going off the script worthy of death ? Is life supposed to be only for those on the happy path ?
Another reason I probably am not wary of an anomaly - I have had to see the life of a rouge chromosome from a personal lens and I have come to learn to love the positive side of a gene run amok.
Do I judge the world for inventing the triple marker test ? Yes. Do I judge my friend who took the step to say an early goodbye ? Absolutely not. The world does not hold prisoners, and neither do I.
I sometimes wake up well past midnight, in the deathly silence of the darkness. I hear nothing for the first few moments, but for the white listless noise of the humming air conditioning.
As seconds go by and the mind awakens, and I realise that I am still very much alive....I begun to start hearing murmurs...and soon the drumming begins to give way to the meek but clear enough sound of a voice, which once foolishly hoped to inherit the earth.......Stillborn my child, she talks to me !!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment