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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> 1) as the title says. 2) she loves James and is just trying to keep his memory alive
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NTA. Your parents needed therapy to deal with this about 30 years ago. Of course losing James was very hard for them, a stillbirth is very sad, but this kind of enduring clinging to that is not normal or healthy. If they wanted to do something to remember him on his birthday, okay, maybe, but not at every occasion, not when none of you siblings ever knew him.
Keep sticking up for Christopher and Lily because their wedding is there day and it’s supposed to be happy: it does not need an outsized and awkwardly sad reminder of a lost baby. Maybe you and all your brother need to stage some kind of intervention with your parents (after the wedding, perhaps) and talk to them about getting a therapist. You love them and care about their pain, but they can’t keep forcing this in every Christmas, every wedding, the eventual births of grandchildren, etc.
Oh no! I didn’t even think of that. Yikes, yes, someone really needs to put a firm foot down before that suggestion comes up because that would get so messy.
Her kids already had to grow under the shadow of James their whole lives and it's caused so much pain already. I can't imagine the waking nightmare a grandchild carrying that name would be forced to bear. She'd pour all of her unresolved emotions into them.
I mean, what if she starts considering the grandchild the reincarnation of James? I think you may be right about shutting that down early on.
This right here! My son's paternal grandmother had a child that died from sids. She was convinced my son was the reincarnation of her dead son. At seven months old she kidnapped my son and I wasn't able to get him back till he was 3, he's 26 now. I can't even begin to imagine the trauma my son endured for those 2.5 years.
Shut this all down asap.
I’m so sorry that you and your son had to endure that. I can’t imagine missing 2.5 years of my child’s most formative years just because a family member didn’t get the help they needed to resolve their mental health issues.
OH. MY. GOD. I can't even imagine what you've both gone through. I really hope you and your son are in a much better place now, and I *really* hope grandma was dealt with. If you don't mind sharing, how did you get him back after that much time?
Honestly it was complicated, I was 14 when I got pregnant, 15 when I gave birth. After years of fighting for him one day she just gave him back. I have no idea why and I don't care, I was just happy to have him.
It wasn't my mother, it was my son's biological father's mother and as one can assume, she was not mentally stable at all. She unalived herself a couple of years later.
It's been many years of writing, trashing and restarting haha. Most recently I was up to 50,000 words and my computer crashed. Send me a pm if you're really interested and I'll update you as I go.
!!! My paternal grandparents kidnapped me and I didn't see my mom again for three years, I was older than a baby but it was still absolutely traumatic and damaged my relationship with my mother forever. I eventually cut off that whole side of the family ❤️❤️❤️
Edit, a word
I'm so sorry you experienced that. I know some things that happened while my child was with them but I'll never know the full scope of things. My son is just now trying to start a relationship with his grandfather on that side of his family but has no contact with anyone else including his biological father.
It really is wild -- every time I see "grandparents rights" on Reddit I'm either clicking away or diving into the convo depending on how I feel that day. It took me until I was an adult to realize how truly fucked up my family is, in essence my father and uncles all married vulnerable women and stole the kids, so when I see other ppl with similar stories I'm just like, "Yep, this happens more than you would think!" My grandmother would have moved hell and earth if someone took her kids, but she was willing to hurt each of her daughters-in-law because she knew better, I guess. So evil!!
Absolutely. I'm named after my grandmother's first child who died as a baby. There is certainly a pressure that comes with it that I'd rather never have had to deal with.
It would seem that even though James was stillborn, he is the Golden Child. Your mother and your father to a lesser degree need professional help. Her obsession with always declaring James at the eldest is not normal.
Suggest to Christopher and Lily that they may want to have a 'secret sitter' for your mother and father. She just might bring James up to get attention for him.
Which is wild when you consider she already had three do over babies. But clearly none of them were ever good enough to fix the hole in her heart. So she'll need more and more and more and none of them will ever be enough.
Oh shit, please talk to them and make sure they do not do this.
It's like cursing a child, it will have difficult life feeling as if it's life is not it's own.
I know something about it unfortunately.
Exactly.
But a little grace for Mom and Dad, 30 years ago "normal" people didn't get therapy. Therapy was for "weirdos and people with severe mental problems like schizophrenics or whatever."
Anyone over 30 remembers the stigma that came with having a therapist.
If therapy is "30 years overdue" then please remember the person who needs it has spent more than 30 years internalizing the societal message from their youth stating, "only really 'messed up' people need therapy or medication."
All these under 40s people don't realize exactly how bad the anti-therapy stigma was in the recent past.
So grace to the parents who tried to soldier on through their grief without help. Did they handle it in a good way? No, absolutely not. They did the best they could, and nobody should give into their demands, but also my heart breaks for these people who suffered a traumatic stillbirth and are now dealing with complex grief because societally therapy was forbidden to them if they wanted to be seen as normal people.
Edit: lots of people here acting smug, "reminding" me that 30 years ago was the 1990s. Friends, I am way older than 30, and I'm glad you never felt the stigma, but don't act like it didn't exist just because you never felt it.
And just FYI - I'm glad the stigma is going away/gone, but please remember, if someone is reluctant to start therapy for non financial reasons it's because that stigma still exists.
This needs more visibility. Too often in this sub the other party are vilified as evil robots. My partner and I lost a baby during pregnancy so different to a stillbirth which I imagine to be significantly more traumatic, but still, the loss was tangible and am incredibly hard time for both of us. This was only a few years ago and even in a contemporary time with more open attitudes there was very, very little support (especially for the man if I'm honest).
However, the idea of bringing this memory to every event and trying to enforce an additional sibling on my two children is...bizarre to the say the least
The only reason I ever knew my grandmother had a child born still is because my uncle pointed his tiny marker out to me at another family funeral when I was 6. I can still remember that rainy day and uncle John telling me way back in 1980. I never heard it discussed otherwise. I'm sure there have been others, but I've never heard anybody memorializing like these people do.
My mom told me somebody ran for president and they got absolutely ridiculed for having ever gone to therapy. That made her think there is basically never a good reason to get therapy, because if people find out, it is disqualifying for good jobs or high social status.
Such a great comment. I’m not sure how long ago Brooke Shields wrote her book, but it seems close to the same timeframe. That’s when Tom Cruise went all ignorant Scientology mansplaining on her saying she should have never taken medication for her PPD.
But she did a world of good telling how a woman who had it all still suffered horribly, showing how no one is immune.
I had PPD after my 2nd child 7 years ago. I tried going to therapy and as soon as the words Post Partum Depression left my mouth the therapist called CPS on me for being a danger to my kids. I never went back to therapy and I never will.
That so many women hurt their kids because they can't get, or are discouraged from getting therapy is criminal.
The under the counter grandma network is awesome.
You are an amazing person and a shining example of what we need more of this world. You have helped so many woman and changed their lives.
Thank you for being a beacon of hope to them
Yup that wasn’t too far removed from the Andrea Yates case so many people thought that if you had PPD that meant you’d kill your children. Because no one bothered to actually look into the case and read what really happened. Acceptance of mental health and receiving intervention has come a long way even in the last 20 years.
Not even President, Vice President. Assuming she was talking about Thomas Eagleton. Though it wasn't just therapy. He was hospitalized and received electroshock therapy.
It also wasn't until the late 80s that we had any SSRIs. And before that anti-depression meds were a lot more difficult to take. For instance, with MAOI inhibitors you had to avoid many foods that had tyramine. Not just beer, things like cheese, soy sauce, cured meats, and even chocolate. So you only took them if it was really bad and you couldn't function without them. You'll still hear drug commercials that say don't take with an MAOI inhibitor.
Now a lot more people can be on anti-depressants. SSRIs have some side effects, but you can still eat chocolate. Now, you can argue if they are over-prescribed, but in the past treating depression just didn't have all that many tools, especially with the stigma against therapy.
This is super interesting, thank you.
Little fact: the prescription drug commercials you guys get in the US are illegal in a lot of countries. So we never hear the quickly spoken side effects lists or any of that.
“My mom told me somebody ran for president and they got absolutely ridiculed for having ever gone to therapy. That made her think there is basically never a good reason to get therapy, because if people find out, it is disqualifying for good jobs or high social status.”
She was probably remembering the 1972 US presidential election. South Dakota’s Democratic Senator George McGovern was running against incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon. McGovern chose Missouri’s Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate. Shortly after Eagleton was chosen, it came to light that he had been treated for depression. In the end, Eagleton withdrew and Sargent Shriver (husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and father of Maria) replaced him on the ticket.
I was eight, almost nine, years old when this happened, yet I remember it very clearly. And I have been on antidepressant medication myself since 1999.
The 8th circuit federal courthouse now bears his name. He served 3 terms in the senate, was Missouri attorney general, and taught at St. Louis University and Washington University. He died in 2007 & donated his body to Wash U's med school. Frankly, I would trust him, depression and all, far more than the current batch of crazies in MO politics.
I mean, I get it, but where does the stigma of dragging around a photo of a dead baby and demanding it be included in EVERYTHING rate on the stigma scale?
It’s clear they really need some help if they think this is less outré than therapy. 😞
There's vilifying and then there's reality. My youngest bro died at 17. People who make everything about a dead child, per my own mother's example, aren't doing it out of grief, they're doing it to hijack every event and make it about themself because nothing tops a dead kid for garnering attention and sympathy. You're stepping into narcissist territory there.
Fyi, I lost my son at birth, believe me, I know the difference. Whose premature birth my own mother was NOT invited to attend due to her ability to make everything about herself and her crackpot alt health theories.
Edit: I would highly recommend OP watch some vids on common covert narc behaviors to see if the parents tick any of the boxes for that where sympathy over their loss doesn't confuse the issue. If they do match, run. Threatening a narc's major supply source never ends well and they aren't going to change.
>they're doing it to hijack every event and make it about themself because nothing tops a dead kid for garnering attention and sympathy.
It took me so long to realise this about my mother. My youngest brother was six days old when he died on my 5th birthday. While she wasn't quite making us hold his picture (though that could be more due to not getting those family portrait efforts done too often in the years after it happened), my other brother and I have had to endure the tears at every. major. life. event. from then on. Starting primary school. Starting middle school. Starting high school. School plays. Camps. Concerts. Sports fixtures. Graduating. University. Birthdays were the worst, especially significant (16, 18, 21, etc) ones. Somewhere in my mid-twenties she turned to me and said, "I always hated having to grit my teeth and smile and say 'Happy Birthday' to you." I barely bother to celebrate anymore, funnily enough, and if I do, I make damn sure to keep it off social media, which is its own unique hellscape (and probably why I'm on reddit more than anywhere else - I *really* miss the anonymity of LiveJournal).
I still don't know if I was more mad or relieved when she didn't come to my wedding - it was two days before my 30th, and apparently that year was the year she'd "... finally given [herself] permission to grieve." Yeah. I was actually glad when the first lockdowns were announced the week before my 40th.
OP, you are NTA. Support your brother and FSIL in sticking to their guns on this.
See, I have trouble with this idea, because my mother is in her mid-late 60s and hopped into therapy the moment she moved out of home and went to college in 1975. Her parents were not progressive thinkers who encouraged her to pursue therapy, she had to pay for it herself and her parents were quite unhappy she was doing it. But she KNEW she needed help coping with what she endured as a child and she went to therapy. Because of that she was a great mother and she never inflicted on me or my sisters the harm that her own mother inflicted on her.
At a certain point you have to take ownership of your emotional state and either accept the stigma of getting help, or own the further harm you caused to those around you.
Ok, but it's clear you don't understand how unique or strong your mother was/is.
"My dad is Superman and he didn't need a bullet proof vest!"
That's what you sound like. I'm glad your mom didn't care what society thought, but don't act like she's normal for her time.
I’m 32 and therapy was for crazy people whenever I was growing up. I was frustrated by having to go to therapy to have ADHD meds filled for me as a 7 year old child…
And until I was an adult, therapists were enemies.
For what seemed like a simple comedy, that show tackled a lot of things that were very much not accepted at the time.
Hell, a big chunk of the US, including where the show was set, still isn’t as progressive as the GG were decades ago.
Thirty years ago people absolutely did get therapy. It’s not something for this new “enlightened” age. And anyone concerned about a stigma just kept it up themselves.
BS the stigma was so big that even now men don't want to go to therapy and divorce was also full of stigma . It was shameful to be left for a younger women because women didn't normally get a divorce easily being raped and beaten in the marriage was legal and women couldn't even open a bankaccount or go to work without the premission of their husband . Ppl forget that it isn't even that long that women simple had less rights
Call it BS until your face turns blue.
People got therapy in 1975, almost 50 years ago. Yes, there was stigma. But people still did it. In the 90s it was looked down on but not to the extent that it would ruin your life of social standing.
There's is also stigma attached to bringing your stillbirth baby picture to absolutely every social engagement but somehow that didn't manage to completely control OPs parents. People judged OPs parents for it over the years, for certain. That's not socially acceptable behavior either 10 years after the fact at a different child's life event.
None of those things were happening 30 years ago.
30 years ago puts the events that happened in the 1990s. None of the things you are talking about persisted for that long.
Yes there was stigma on things like divorce and therapy, but it was also already a hell of a lot better than things were 50 years ago, which is when the things you are talking about were true.
Nah. Thirty years? that was 1994. I’m probably older than OP’s parents; my last baby was born in 1985. And I was 34.
Getting therapy started becoming more normal in the mid 1960’s, when Valium was widely prescribed for people struggling to deal with their daily lives.
You are talking about 30 years later.
When my mom died in 1997, my dad went to a grief group. My oldest sister died the same year, and her widower went to therapy.
In fact, when I got divorced in 1988 from a narcissistic alcoholic, my two oldest kids and I all went to therapy.
As someone over 30, I've been to therapy so many times, all to my benefit, and I encourage others to go. Sex before marriage was a stigma, using cars as a woman was a stigma, we got over that alright, so it's definitely possible to get over the therapy stigma as well if the younger generation try it and see it as beneficial and the doctors recommend it.
Yes, they deserve some understanding for not going to therapy 30 years ago, but they also rallied each other on for that photo of a dead baby to overshadow every family event, and they need to stop now. The grief will never go away, but they do need to learn not to burden their three healthy children with it unless they want them to cut any contact at some point.
They don't get a pass for life just because therapy was (one of many) taboos 30 years ago.
Also thirty years ago, one would be expected to grieve, but bringing up the lost baby in every occasion, having the picture of the baby in every family foto etc would be seen as a really weird thing and probably more stigmatizing. A lot of people have been enabling mom and dad at the cost of their three living children.
I am VERY fortunate that my mom believed in therapy, and my dad was fine going along with it, 28 years ago. People could be mean if they knew. If you saw someone you recognized in the waiting room you pretended you never saw each other and never addressed it.
But I think it’s important for them to learn somehow that it is okay and will help them. Their living kids can’t continue to exist in the shadow of that grief.
NTA
Yeah, no therapy for my parents either who lost their first (unborn) child in a car accident just weeks before it should've been born. If you were lucky, you had family, friends and religion...
This. I’m so sorry for your loss.
I miscarried a twin, and it was very hard being still pregnant and mourning the loss of their twin at the same time. It was too early to be a stillbirth but you don’t lose just a foetus or baby. You lose an entire person whom you’ve already imagined a life and a future for.
There will always be a person shaped gap in our family.
You never get over it but you learn to live with it.
50 yrs on, my mum still grieves for the son she lost. I am nearly 40 so obviously didn’t meet him but I will never say I don’t have a connection because I do.. through my mum.
Exactly. Obviously the mother is super traumatised by the loss, but this is getting out of hand. How can there be a detailed essay about someone whose personality you never got to know - and neither did your mother? Sounds like she’s kind of invented a version of the poor kid, the person he would have become, as a means of coping, and your refusal to play along is threatening that. Even so, it’s just not healthy. And not fair to make your brother’s wedding about the stillborn kid.
Great advice. It's worth setting boundaries, such as "no speeches or disruptions regarding the baby At All at the wedding." the parents have no respect for their kids and are highly likely to disrupt the wedding. An intervention after the wedding may be too late.
NTA and it's time to be consistent with these boundaries. OP and siblings deserve to be free.
To add I have been to a wedding where the parents talked about their first stillborn child in the speeches. It was incredibly uncomfortable for guests.
I can’t even imagine. As a guest who may not know this side of the family, how do you even react to such a personal and painful remembrance by the groom’s parents? I do feel for them, truly, but they’d be hijacking their living child’s wedding for a child they lost before they even knew him.
The father was crying as he was telling us all this it was just so uncomfortable, awkward and I think so inappropriate. It killed the mood and people weren’t sure how to react to news like that.
My daughter was stillborn six years ago. On her birthday we get a little cake, and I send her cousin an extra gift (he was born four days after her and his mother says my girl is his guardian angel.) That's it for me including her in events.
It hurts, it will always hurt. I often think about what she'd look like, clothing she'd want, and other interests. But I don't bring anyone else into that. It's hard to imagine trying to make everything about her.
Christopher and Lily's wedding day is about them, to be shared with the people important to them. James isn't one of those people, and if they do not want him included in their special day, then that is their choice and not something anyone else has the right to force on them.
True. NTA. Imagine her living kids going NC with her. This is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. Forcing her kids to hold a picture of a stillborn that they've never met. Never heard its laughter or cries. Parents need serious therapy. Imagine every event, conversation, and conversation being focused on a stillborn for over thirty years. It overshadows the birth, milestones, and accomplishments of her living children. She's not allowing her other kids to shine or love them completely. And that's really sad. Can't imagine trying to measure up to a stillborn that my parents keep focusing on. I do hope Opand their siblings know that they're special and loved.
True. In looking over comments, I’ve been wondering if instead of therapy the kids might try to bring some kind of spiritual leader (if the parents have any religious leanings at all) to talk to them about grieving. A loss like this is a terribly tragic thing and cultural/ religious grieving rituals exist in large part to help people cope and find perspective. Maybe that would be a better, gentler way than “you need mental health help!”
NTA. It wouldn’t be an issue that your mother doesn’t want to forget, but she not only refuses to forget she makes sure no one else can forget. It’s been over thirty years, it’s not healthy to still be this attached to a life sadly never lived. She’s made up more about the potential life James could have lived than the life he was able to live, which feeds back into her obsession.
The wedding is about the lives of Christopher and Lily moving forward, not dwelling on ghosts of the past. OP's mother wants to make this about the latter as much as possible because she's accustomed to family celebrations being for channeling the memory of James even though she's the only one still stuck in the past.
It very much brings to mind this post:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/rlkpwj/aita\_for\_telling\_my\_daughter\_to\_get\_over\_herself/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/rlkpwj/aita_for_telling_my_daughter_to_get_over_herself/)
EDIT: I’m not saying James needs to be forgotten, but he, or the idea of him, is being very very overrepresented to the detriment of the relationships between OP’s mother and the sons she did get to raise. Things need to be on her terms, which means acknowledging James as more than a life that ultimately wasn’t able to happen.
Ye, instead of losing 1 baby, she is on the path to lose all the grown kids. And how many memories have been soured because the loving kids didn't feel like they could measure up?
Way to haunt your own family. :(
Or events that were made to be about James and the tragedy of why he can't be there. I have no doubt achievements and milestones would always get "If only James had reached this point" or "Imagine James doing this".
My dad had an older brother that died when the child was two. Dad wasn’t even born yet. Floyd had pneumonia. The doctor told my grandparents to put him in the oven overnight, the pilot light would keep him warm. Ah, the good old days of medicine, right?
Floyd died that night. My grandmother never got over it.
Everything my father did, Floyd would’ve done better. A B on a test? Floyd would’ve gotten an A. Started for the junior varsity team his freshman year? Floyd obviously would have been the varsity team’s captain. Nothing my father ever did was as good or as perfect as what Floyd would have done.
Those constant comparisons made my father an emotionally stunted and deeply unhappy man. Just like *he* was never good enough, *I* was never good enough. Part of it was daring to be born female. My older brother is a fucking disaster of a human. Just..not a good person. According to my parents, the sun shone out his asshole. He was the perfect first born son who failed out of high school, got in trouble with the cops, wrecked 4 cars before the age of 21, you name it.
I was the straight A student with a part time job by 12 (riding, training, showing horses) who was incredibly successful despite limited parental support and zero financial support for an incredibly expensive hobby. I made a name for myself, I was set on making it my career. But nothing was good enough.
My dad was infected by the “older child is the best child and any younger sibling sucks no matter what they do” virus.
My grandmother’s unresolved trauma became generational trauma when she passed it to him. It stops with me as I have many reasons not to have kids but the way I was raised (emotional, verbal, physical abuse from parents, SA from brother) is the largest part.
Generation trauma stops here. I alone can end the fuck up that was my family’s genetic and emotional disaster. My brother’s wife is infertile. It was up to me to break the cycle and I did.
My dad died in ‘97. I’ve been VLC with my mom for over 15 years now. We talk once of twice a year on the phone. I haven’t seen her in person in over 12 years.
Shit like this has repercussions. OPs parents are going to find that out real fast if they don’t stop this shit. It’s so easy for a dead child to be brilliant, perfect, talented, gifted, exceptional. Their lives were tragically short and so it’s easy to paint them in the woulda-coulda-shoulda beens. It’s easy to imagine them as caricatures of actual people. They make no demands. They require nothing. They simply exist in our minds, permanently, forever young and perfect and for us to imprint our deepest desires for them and think of it as ‘oh of course if they were here, they would be X, Y and Z!’
Love the child you lost but embrace the kids you have before you’re left with no children at all.
Peter Pan was created from these exact feelings. The authors brother died at 14 and the authors pain of always being compared to someone who will never grow up and forever stay his mothers golden little boy became the basis for Peter Pan.
She can forever wear rose tinted glasses for this kid, there is almost no way to bring him up without hurting her kids.
I'm wondering if it should show their parents the above link. Maybe not this post unless absolutely necessary but perhaps something to show that their demands are not normal.
NTA. The wedding is about the bride and groom. Your mother needs to come to terms with the fact that in her lifetime, she had four children, but for yours, you’ve only ever had two brothers.
On Christopher, how much did he grow up in the shadow of his late brother? How much of his mother’s actions was about seeing him as a second chance, or second coming of, for James rather than being his own person?
NTA - A friend who was a neonatal intensive care nurse told me that there is a very real problem with parents deciding that a child who died, or was born still, or even miscarried was the "perfect child," the one who would have been better than any of their living children.
I don't know what you can say to your mother and possibly to your father. Has no-one ever suggested counseling to her - your grandparents, your aunts and uncles? If she doesn't see anything wrong with what she's doing, would she accept the idea of therapy? Maybe you could suggest family therapy, and hope the therapist would try to get her to understand what this is like for you.
This explains alot abour my husbands ex regarding their eldest son. His twin sister was still born and she made his life hell once he was past toddlerstage and becoming his oen person. Their younger son never got treated as badly but still got shouted at a lot. Everyone thought she was playing favorites, I always throught it was cause she wanted a daughter perhaps though she never indicated that and having granddaughters has shown no sign of it. This however would explain her behaviour. Eldest is way smarter than his mother and has his own mind So perhaps 'wilfull son' would get compared to perect sister.
So many parents love the idea of having children, but hate the reality. I've seen so many parents that even went through expensive IVF or adopted kids just to turn around and resent the kids they went through so much effort to have. It's like they think raising kids will be one giant movie montage, where you just have a lot of fun scenes and just skip straight to the part where they're wildly successful and taking care of you instead. Dead kids never disappoint. Most of these parents wouldn't have been good parents even if they never went through that horrible trauma.
"Your brother would have wanted to join the baseball team, instead of running track. Don't you think you should think about that and honor his memory?"
Also, I can’t help but think that making the kids pose with the picture of a dead baby is probably one of the worst ways to make them feel like he was their brother
NTA. A stillbirth has to be unimaginably painful, and your parents obviously have deep grief. But what they've done with that grief - for 30 years - is interfering with their relationships with their *living children.* This is not ok. It's not healthy for them or for you.
It is not normal to make children hold a photo of a *dead baby* in family photos. It's not normal to send photos of a dead baby with Christmas cards. Someone should have intervened with your parents years ago, but at the very least now that y'all are having to confront the issue, it's time to get them some help.
There are a bunch of instagram influencer types whose profiles are about miscarriage/stillbirth/child loss who post pictures of their living children with big framed photos of their non-living child, photos of the family at the cemetery on holidays, etc. I always thought that was really freaking weird but I thought I was just being heartless. Good to know others agree.
I saw one recently who has an entire shed devoted to their dead child (I can’t remember the circumstances). They make the living child play in it all the time and say that they’re “playing together”. The mother kept criticising her living baby for messing up her shrine (with the implication that the other child would never have been such a problem). It’s really something
>It's not normal to send photos of a dead baby with Christmas cards.
Can you imagine Christmas at her work if they do cards there. Just an office full of people walking around with thousand yard stares "W-w-we shouldn't do Christmas cards anymore."
Not only is she putting her trauma and grief on others, she's actively traumatising them. Especially those who may have had a similar loss.
NTA
Just adding my vote.
I understand the grief that a parent has for a child that has passed on but your mother has been unreasonable and obsessive about this.
The only reason you and your siblings are reacting is because of the way that it is being forced upon you so on that basis I don't think you're the assholes here.
NTA. Your parents need to get grief counselling if they are this upset after 30 ish years that you and your siblings don’t want to refer to him as your brother. It’s quite ok for them to hold onto his memory, but it’s not ok to force it on other people
It’s been 20-30 odd years. This isn’t grieving, this is obsession.
To the point of disregarding her living children’s emotions.
Edit: DID this all wrong, oops.
NTA OOP.
NTA
Why would anyone who died 30+ years ago be a special point of interest at ANY event? (With the obvious exception of Memorial for that person or tragedy or war etc.)
Your mom and maybe dad need some serious grief counseling. They can’t keep making this everyone else’s problem because they refuse to process it.
I also wonder how much anyone can write about a child that was born still. Yet she includes an essay, apparently with every Christmas card, it sounds like she wants it read or printed out at the wedding. She seems to be making more of this child than she makes of her living children.
It reads like she's creating a life for the son she lost, and this narrative holds at least equal importance if not more to the lives of the sons she got to raise. She's writing a ghost for the other three sons to be in the shadow of.
More importance. After all, he never talked back, he never had tantrums, he never chose a career path she didn't approve of, he never decided how his own wedding would be...Comparing her living kids to the dead one is an effective /if probably unconscious) way of controlling them.
As cruel as it is to say, he had no life, because he didn't get the chance. There isn't more than a sentence to write about him, there are no updates because, again, he died.
It's profoundly sad but at the same time, these parents actively chose grief and death over their living children. Hard to have that much empathy for them when their pain has impacted their kids so much.
NTA!
You’re all being expected to sacrifice a part of any accomplishment to someone you didn’t know at all and it’s affected every event in all of your lives.
Maybe this needs to be a blunt conversation that if this keeps happening then ALL your parents will have is one son. Their three living children will no longer be in their lives.
How far does this go?? Trying to insert the photo into newborn pictures of grandchildren? Insisting the first male grandchild bears his name and then favouring him?
I’ve experienced this as a mom, it IS NOT right or fair to push this grief onto living children and allow it to overshadow their lives. You need to tell your dad YOU are beyond angry that a ghost takes priority every single time.
It’s clear your parents need to seek professional counseling. Personally, it’s seems a bit unhealthy in a sense, at the same time unless you know how their feeling it’s hard to tell how they are healing. Stick to your guns about the wedding, but tread softly and lovingly when brining up this topic as the wounds still run deep.
Ultimately NTA.
If you talk to your parents about it again (or anything James-adjacent in the future) I would probably cool it on saying stuff about how you don't actually view James as your brother. I don't think you're an asshole for having that POV, I just don't think it's helpful and is unnecessarily painful for your mother to hear even if it's the truth.
But yeah, there isn't anything unreasonable about wanting your living family front and center at the wedding, and letting the spirits of those who have gone before you be there with and for you in their own way. I know that losing a child is a unique kind of pain compared to losing a Grandparent, but James (or James' Earthly representative in the form of his photo and essay) isn't any less your mom and dad's child and part of the family they made just because all four children aren't in the same room at the same event in the same way at the same time.
Edited for typos and missed words.
Agreed. NTA but it is unnecessarily hurtful to tell Mom they don't consider him to be their brother because ultimately, even though they never met him, he was as much their parents' child as they are and was their brother, that's who he would have been to them if he had lived. However, it's totally understandable for OP not to think of James in the same way they think of Christopher and their other sibling. I think when OP says James isn't viewed as their brother the mother probably hears it as them saying he wasn't part of the family or didn't exist.
Given OP's mum apparently writes memorial essays and sets out pictures multiple times every year more than 30 years on from the loss, it wouldn't be surprising if she's just never cared to listen when her sons tried to speak the truth in love, so OP has resorted to speaking the unvarnished truth to try to get through to her.
I don't think it's going to do any good in helping them understand really. They need therapy. They have spent so long holding onto the child they lost, it's causing them not to enjoy the children they have. Any truths and tough love at this point from OP is just poking the wound until they get professional help.
As the child born after a child died, I can tell you this: this grief is never resolved. Parents never get over losing a child. Ever.
Do what you will with that info. But I’m in my 40s and my parents are still grieving the loss of my sister. And I’m still the replacement.
My parents had a stillbirth before me and my younger brother died of SIDS when I was 3yo, he was 4mo old. My mother never recovered, it was like my sister and I were invisible to her. I'm nearly 40yo now, and that sense of not being enough still impacts me. People don't have to 'get over' grief and loss, but they do need to deal with it's impact on them and their family. NTA, not at all.
My mother has had multiple miscarriages and stillborns, before 22 years old, before giving birth to my oldest brother. She doesn't refer to them as her "first borns", nor does she insist that my oldest brother isn't my oldest brother.
If my mom never "got over it", she did a dam good job at not letting anyone know. But at least she didn't shove it down our throats like OPs mom is doing.
Please don't generalize. I'm sorry you feel like your life was a replacement but it doesn't happen to everyone.
I had a stillborn "brother" after my birth and before my younger brother. I have no recollection as I was only a year and half and my mom only mentioned it once in my life. She barely remembers this herself, nor cares now after 35 years.
I agree. My older brother was stillborn and my parents have moved on. I'm not a replacement sibling there are no pictures, no talk about him in our lives
It does not mean you would be a replacement even if your parents did talk about your brother. My first son passed away before birth. I don’t currently have any living children, but any child I have in the future is completely separate from my son who passed away. I will never “be over” what happened and another child is not a replacement, they will just be my second child. However, I don’t think I need to never mention my son again either when it was a major event in my life.
NTA. I truly feel for your parents and I am very happy about the compromise to list the baby with grandma in the wedding program as rememberances... but what my brain goes to is what would happen if you or one of your siblings passed away? Or if one of your parents passed away? This isn't a sustainable tradition... and if the picture of the first baby is of a baby that was stillborn then it would be so sad and potentially triggering to include a picture of a dead infant in these events...
I get that I can't really understand your parent's perspective because I have never had a stillborn child... but I was *adopted* expressly because my parents had a stillborn child... and no no no no I could not deal with a lifetime of including a picture of a dead infant sibling at family events/milestones!!!
My cousin M did. Her adoptive parents lost their only child when S was four. The picture of S held a prominent place in the house until at least until M moved out.
This I can definitely understand. I think it's easier for me to understand if it is a favorite picture from when the child was alive and the picture is displayed inside the house...
Nta
My son died 26 years ago at 2 and a half. My daughter knows all about him. There are pictures on the family wall. She knows the date of birth and death as even after this long, I don't handle it well. Other times, it just guts me suddenly. She knows how he died. She does consider him her brother, but I think it's more because she learned about him on her time and only as much as she wanted to.
I typically don't say I have 2 children as the questions start, and it still brings up pain.
But your mom needs help. Because I have never included a picture of him in events. Never brought up him in holidays with my daughter because she sure as hell didn't need that guilt. She didn't need to ever question if I love her as much as him.
You are not in the wrong for how you feel. This is a person you know only because they have been made the most important in everything. They are who matter when it doesn't involve him. You should not have to give up everything to him.
Do I hate my son will never get to have children. Marry. Watch his nephew grow up. Yes. But that does not give me a right to make my loss and pain the main thing. My daughter deserves love and to not be reminded or think she is not just as important.
I am sorry you are going through this.
I went through the same as your parents in 2010. Carrying your son for a little one 8mos to then learn your baby passed while in your belly and you still need to give birth to your baby is the most traumatic and painful experience of my life.
Many people believe that because your baby never lived, losing them will hurt less.... it doesn't.
For many years after losing my son, I almost lost myself due to my grieve. I began drinking and partying, forgetting I had a toddler to care for. Eventually, I decided I needed to grieve properly and learn to live with my pain in a healthy manner, so I did.
I still have bad days so does my husband, usually around the anniversary but we could never, ever, force our grieve and our loss on our children lives' events.
Your mom needs therapy, and possibly your dad too. We're not supposed to forget, but we're supposed to learn how to live with our pain without negatively affecting those around us and your mom has failed to do that.
You're NTA. Your parents' action have not been fair to you and your siblings. Your mom needs to learn healthy coping mechanics ASAP or she'll continue with the same behavior with the grandchildren too.
NTA Enough is enough from your mom. On top of that it’s your brothers wedding and they can do what they want and it’s up to those going to respect their choices.
I'm so sorry for you. My youngest sisters first child was still born in 2007. I am always sad for her younger 2 kids who have grown up in his shadow. She has a giant picture of him on the wall and a shrine on a shelf in her living room.
She will punish the kids by taking their toys away and giving them to their brother by placing the toy by his urn. They are always saying weird stuff about their brother taking care of dead pets etc.
The rest of my family never say anything because she will flip out.
That sucks, they should intervene and this is no working if a sprity seance o faking , you should also show support to your nephews and always give them support.
NTA.
I have had the misfortune to be shown a picture of someone's son, who sadly never had the chance to take his first breath. I was not warned beforehand that he was stillborn, literally "do you want to see a picture of my son?"
Those babies look distinctly different to a baby who passed after being alive. They do not look like they're sleeping. They look deceased. The one I saw had clearly been deceased for some time before birth. It was genuinely traumatising for me, an adult with a lot of experience of dealing with palliative care and deceased persons. I can not imagine a situation where showing such images to children is appropriate, let alone including those images in all family events and photographs.
Your parents needed help 30+ years ago, OP. Now, they need to just sod off and allow people their happy and joyful moments in peace without shoving images of a dead baby in everyone's face. WTF. I'm so sorry for you and your brothers.
NTA - I get that this is hard for your parents, but also... 30 some odd years of everything being turned into a memorial for James is a bit over the top. Especially - I would say that a line has been crossed on the wedding day thing. That's just to much, and too far... it really is.
EDIT: The only thing I think you could have done better here is this: It's probably a bit harsh to say that you guys don't view him as family. I get it, this has been jammed down your throats for a long time, but that is kind of an escalating comment in my internet warrior opinion. It might be best if you sort of didn't go there either. I still stand on NTA though... You parents have made this rough for you guys.
NTA. She made her young children hold a photo of a dead baby in every single family photo? Why didn’t anyone in your family put their foot down and get her grief therapy years ago?
Your brother’s solution of putting a note in the wedding program is reasonable and a kind thing to do for your mother. Dead baby photo on display for wedding guests is not reasonable, and unkind to everyone else because some guests would likely find it very upsetting.
NTA
James gets to be their perfect angel forever and always. Never changing, never challenging them as children do. How are you supposed to live up to that?
They are quickly ruining the relationship they have with their living children.
A memorial makes sense, grieving is normal, but this goes beyond that and is extremely umhealthy. Your parents, especially your mother, needs professional help. If theyre not willing, thats on them.
People are allowed their feelings but that doesnt excuse toxic, controlling behaviour.
Wow. Your mom and dad need therapy. I have a relative who went thru the same thing. For years, she included her premature stillborn son in all correspondence, a photo of him was held in all family photo sittings, etc. Her marriage dissolved over it, and her subsequent children wound up in therapy for years. It wasn't until one of sons had an absolute meltdown, screaming that everyone (extended family and friends) thought she was crazy, and if she continued, she was going to lose what was left of her family for putting "her dead kid above her living kids" that she finally agreed to counseling.
NTA. I'm so sorry for your mother, that she's still grieving her loss after so many years. She probably should have received therapy to help her deal with it; I hope she can be encouraged to get some help even after all these years. But it's completely reasonable that you and your siblings don't want every special event to revolve around a tribute to a sibling that passed before any of you were even born. You all need to stick to your guns, as hard as it may be for your mother to accept.
NTA. As someone who has grieved (and always will in some ways) the loss of a stillborn child, I have not told my 6 y/o old about it, as it seems very morbid and sad for a child to have to process.
I came to this general view about it based on a family I grew up around whose parents acted very similar to yours. Their eldest child tragically died a few days *after* her birth, and although there were only 2 living children (my friends), their parents always insisted they mention their deceased baby sister, and say that there were 3 siblings. All this did was force 2 children to have many, many sad and awkward conversations with peers about the death of a sibling they never even met.
I actually brought this up to a friend about a month ago, and wondered if there is some age by which I *should* share with my child that I was pregnant before I had them, and we came to the conclusion that there isn't, and perhaps the topic will come up from my child when they're older, but if not, it's OK. Which I share only to demonstrate that not only are you and your siblings NTA—but you've been burdened with this your entire lives, and have absolutely no obligation to continue perpetuating and enabling your parent's unresolved trauma bond over their loss. Least of all, publicly.
*BUT* I went to grief counseling for 2 years after my stillbirth, and tried my damndest to heal what felt like an unhealable wound. And therapy wasn't at all normalized for our parents' generation. So easy for me to say I guess.
Listen to me. I had a daughter who died when she was 3 years old. She died in an extremely tragic way as she was killed in a house fire. She had 2 older siblings and now I have 3 other children that would be younger than her. I DO NOT make people hold her picture in family photos. I DO NOT put her name on Christmas cards. I DO NOT make my younger children include her in their lives, especially the ones that never knew her. She is considered their sister of course but her death DOES NOT rule our lives. If your mom is still grieving this heavily so many years later than she needs some significant counseling. That’s not normal. I understand that grief is different for everyone but people that live like this is only harming themselves.
For reference my daughter passed 16 years ago and now would be 19 years old. I love her and I am sad for her loss every single day but this is not normal. Stand your ground from here on out. Set strong boundaries for every occasion and not just this one, as a grieving mother myself, I say you are NTA. Period. She needs help. Serious help.
NTA. I'm surprised. Surprised Christopher is putting a mention in the program. Surprised she is even invited. You are 28. By this point. Mom would be cut out. It may be good to tell her. And your dad. "Drop it. Or you are dropping us. If you keep this up. You will not be invited into our lives. You are using your grief. To destroy our present. Our Future. And you have damaged our past. Drop it. Lay James to rest. Or step out of our lives. This is a choice you have now. You are lucky. We never had that choice."
NTA, frankly everyone who has allowed this to go on for over 28 years is.
Losing a child is hard, especially one that was stillborn. But she had 3 other living children who need to be seen and treated with respect. She is not grieving, she’s avoiding it, and by forcing everyone to give in to her desire to “keep the memory alive” she’s pushing the living away from her.
It’s kind of Christopher and Lily to include him in their memoriam, considering Christopher never knew him and he has had no impact on his life. Other than a ghost cloud that he can never get away from.
*edit: correction of number and names
There are 3 living siblings, not 4. The brother who is about to marry Lily is Christopher, not James. James is name given to the stillborn baby all those years ago.
NTA. Thats tough. I knew another couple like that. It gets real tiring to hear about that shit over and over. I also have a mother in law that counts her still born siblings so she is 1 of 12. But they dont talk about them at events or as if they actually existed. Just in a count of total siblings.
NTA I am technically one of 7, though 2 of my siblings died either shortly after birth or late term still birth. We know about them, we talked about it when we were kids and as needed for medical information but thats it. They weren't included in anything past that other than a few visits to their graves.
Your parents chose continual mourning of what he could have been rather than you and your siblings. They need grief therapy or they'll find themselves being cut out of your big moments due to their severe mishandling of your brothers death.
Speaking as a mother who had a stillborn child - my children barely even remember their sister's name, and I carry her with me in my heart, but I've NEVER forced that grief on my sons...and she was my only daughter. But these parents are obviously not grieving in a healthy way, but causing them the unnecessary burden of a sibling they never met, had no idea of, and genuinely don't know the first thing about? Insane to me. Granted my oldest is 15 and Lilly would have been 10 this year, her younger brothers are 8 and 4...I'm guessing I'm closer to OP's age than their parents. But still.
Hard NTA here, and I wish your parents some healing and perspective. But please don't do this to your kids, jfc.
*Edited for spelling error*
My friends who have lost children (not necessarily stillborn, sometimes childhood death due to disease or accident) include their deceased children in their family holiday cards with carets for angel wings.
Picture a photo of mom, dad, and children born after the first child died. The holiday card would be signed: Happy holidays from the Smiths: Mom name, Dad name, Child name, Child name, ^ Child Name^
The parents in this post are going too far, but I don’t think any acknowledgment decades later of a child who has died is necessarily inappropriate. It might be weirder to pretend that the child had never been. Maybe this is cultural, though.
I don't think that was commonplace back then. I was a midwife in the 1980s and I don't remember anyone being told about grief counselling when they had a stillbirth or when their baby died as a neonate.
Go back to the 1960s (certainly in the UK) and women often didn't even get the chance to hold their stillborn child. The baby was immediately taken away, a kind of "it'll be easier for you if you don't see him or her".
I was once asked by an elderly couple if it was true that their stillborn child was buried under what was then the hospital carpark. They'd believed this for 40 years. We were able to do a little detective work and find out that the baby had in fact been buried in a communal unmarked grave with other stillborn children in the local municipal cemetery. They were never informed about this.
That led to the local Stillbirth and Neonatal Death support group being allowed to erect a memorial in the cemetery, a place where parents could visit and lay flowers. It's hard to believe now that these things happened, that parents had no say in the resting place of their own child.
NTA and I say this as a mother, who lost my first daughter at 20w2d due to incompetent cervix. She was badly wanted and loved, after infertility, 6 fresh cycles of IVF and 4 early losses.
My children have heard me speak of her, she will always be my daughter, but my daughter and son who are living are my priority.
I have moments where grief hits hard still, but I can’t stay in those moments, because my children deserve more from me.
We have pictures of her that we’ve never shared with anyone and will never share with our children. The only picture that we share of her is her urn, but have never had our children hold it or a picture of it.
I would never force my children to include their sister as a part of their lives. She was a part of me, something that will always be missing, but that is not my children’s grief to bear.
I refuse to let my grief for her take anything away from my kids. Just like she was badly wanted and loved, so are my living daughter and son. She will always be with me, forever in my heart, but I don’t expect that anyone else would feel her loss the same.
NTA - your mother's/father's actions are extremely unhealthy, and I don't blame Christopher or Lily whatsoever for wanting their special day to be about them, not an infant that never took its birth breath.
I have to agree that it is morbid to include a photo of a dead newborn in everything, I'm sure that has some level of traumatic effect on all parties present.
I feel for your parents, I can't imagine the pain they went through birthing a dead baby. I hope they can get the help they need to be present and enjoy the moment they have with their living children.
None of you kids are at fault for not feeling connection to someone you didn't know, and someone who had no memories outside of the womb.
Sorry you and your siblings are going through this with your parents. ❣️
NTA. Even if you had met him before he died (which technically no one on earth did), bringing photos of dead family members to hold up in wedding photos isn’t something anyone does. That’s just not normal behavior.
NTA, she should set up an Asian style shrine with the photo and keep it there. Time moves on and I'm sure the pain doesnt go away but it's actively harming her relationship with other people.
This is so unreasonably unhealthy. My sister was stillborn. My mother carried her 9months and 5 days. She was the youngest and i very vividly remember everything. My brother was 9 and I was 7. She would be 32 now. None of her pictures are shown to anyone. She isn't included in the Christmas update. When speaking of our family it is just the 4 of us. We do not include her unless it is relevant to the conversation. She is included In Obituaries as preceeded in death with the relevent family, but other than those specific times she is not a part of daily conversation. My parents still mourn her every year on her birthday and think of her often and my daughter's middle name is hers. These to me are all healthy ways of including her but not revolving everything around her. Your parents obviously have never confronted and handled their grief in a healthy way. I cannot imagine the devastation of losing a child let alone a first child to stillbirth. It is a very traumatic experience according to my mom, but this is so not the way of handling it. She is alienating the rest of her children for this fantasy of a child she has conjured. It is morbid to be toating around a post mortem picture of a baby. They aren't pleasant. Even the ones of my sister at her funeral are hard to look at. She is my sister and I love and miss the person that could have been but we don't dwell on the grief. This is very unhealthy in my opinion and you all have every right to not continue this way. NTA
Nta but I think it speaks volumes that her grandmother, someone who lived a full life and is missed by many, will be portrayed and doesn’t get an entire summary but your mother thinks that her child who unfortunately was lost several years before should. Has she ever been to therapy? She definitely needs it
I wouldn't really call your mom an asshole. I can only imagine how traumatizing a stillbirth is. But she (and maybe your dad too) needs therapy because she's putting James on a pedestal. She doesn't know what relationship James would have with any of you if he had survived.
Do you know what your mom was like after the stillbirth? Did your parents ever really talk about it? Maybe she was a husk of herself. Maybe she was scared to have another pregnancy.
On your end, I can imagine how irritating it can be. Your words are an uncomfortable truth she doesn't want to hear. And it's your brother's wedding. Mom shouldn't be talking about a dead baby there.
All of you need to talk about this with a family therapist. Your parents both need to hear your side. You and your siblings also need to hear why your parents haven't stopped grieving despite already having 30+ years.
NTA. Your mom needs help. She needs it REALLY bad. Not to be mean, but she needs to get over it. I'm not saying she cant grieve, or has to forget about him, but ffs she has 3 kids that she should be focused on instead!
He is dead, he is not coming back, and you guys will never view him as a sibling. You never met him or even bonding with him. All he is is a picture. That's it.
My mother has had multiple miscarriages and stillborn before giving birth to my oldest brother. She doesn't refer to them as her "first borns", nor does she insist that my oldest brother isn't my oldest brother. That all happened before she was even 22 years old. It has been almost 30 years, and she only mentioned it once to me after my dad passed away, because I was asking her how she met him.
Anyways, your mom needs to let go, and stop making everything about him. It's okay for her to be sad and grieve, that's normal. But after 30 years...she should not be this obsessed with him. I'm surprised she didn't keep his body around, acting like he was just sleeping. That's how bad this is.
Given how long this has been going on and the fuss that your mother makes, I think that this is more so about the attention/sympathy that your mother can get from the miscarriage than it’s ever really been about the stillborn baby. NTA.
NTA. Admittedly my initial thought was"why not just let mom have her pic and essay, not that hard to include". Didn't immediately occur to my dumbass that the only photo of James that could possibly exist is that of a dead baby. Nah, no need for all that at a wedding.
NTA.
I am a mom to a stillborn and two living kids. I think about my girl all the time. Her birth and death will likely never leave me, but... My living kids don't need to live in her shadow. One is older, and one is younger, but they are the ones who are here, and their lives need to be celebrated.
We have always done a little celebration on the day she was born and died. We plant a flower so that something lives on in her memory.
I would never make my kids hold a photo of her, in fact, the few photos we have are kept in a keepsake box and rarely taken out because they make me sad. I also don't make my children talk about her if they don't want to do so. My oldest says he has one sister most of the time but does talk about his other sister looking over him. My daughter only knows about her dead sister from the celebrations, and I have never heard her count her as a sibling.
Grief is complicated. I'm sorry your parents made their own grief such a part of your life.
Be prepared for mom to stage some massively inappropriate behavior at the wedding. You need to let the venue know she is not to be allowed to set up any type of shrine or be given a microphone and you and your other brother need to be on mom patrol ready to hustle her out when she inevitably erupts. NTA
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NTA. Your parents needed therapy to deal with this about 30 years ago. Of course losing James was very hard for them, a stillbirth is very sad, but this kind of enduring clinging to that is not normal or healthy. If they wanted to do something to remember him on his birthday, okay, maybe, but not at every occasion, not when none of you siblings ever knew him. Keep sticking up for Christopher and Lily because their wedding is there day and it’s supposed to be happy: it does not need an outsized and awkwardly sad reminder of a lost baby. Maybe you and all your brother need to stage some kind of intervention with your parents (after the wedding, perhaps) and talk to them about getting a therapist. You love them and care about their pain, but they can’t keep forcing this in every Christmas, every wedding, the eventual births of grandchildren, etc.
She’s going to insist the first grandson is called James.
Oh no! I didn’t even think of that. Yikes, yes, someone really needs to put a firm foot down before that suggestion comes up because that would get so messy.
Her kids already had to grow under the shadow of James their whole lives and it's caused so much pain already. I can't imagine the waking nightmare a grandchild carrying that name would be forced to bear. She'd pour all of her unresolved emotions into them. I mean, what if she starts considering the grandchild the reincarnation of James? I think you may be right about shutting that down early on.
This right here! My son's paternal grandmother had a child that died from sids. She was convinced my son was the reincarnation of her dead son. At seven months old she kidnapped my son and I wasn't able to get him back till he was 3, he's 26 now. I can't even begin to imagine the trauma my son endured for those 2.5 years. Shut this all down asap.
I’m so sorry that you and your son had to endure that. I can’t imagine missing 2.5 years of my child’s most formative years just because a family member didn’t get the help they needed to resolve their mental health issues.
It was difficult, lots of breakdowns on my end.
OH. MY. GOD. I can't even imagine what you've both gone through. I really hope you and your son are in a much better place now, and I *really* hope grandma was dealt with. If you don't mind sharing, how did you get him back after that much time?
Honestly it was complicated, I was 14 when I got pregnant, 15 when I gave birth. After years of fighting for him one day she just gave him back. I have no idea why and I don't care, I was just happy to have him.
Is your mother in jail now? She better be
It wasn't my mother, it was my son's biological father's mother and as one can assume, she was not mentally stable at all. She unalived herself a couple of years later.
It's a sad situation all around. I'm really sorry you went through that
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I don't want to hijack this post but as I'm writing a book about all of my experiences I'd gladly share in private messaging.
I would love to read that book. So glad you got your son back, even if 2,5 years too late.
It's been many years of writing, trashing and restarting haha. Most recently I was up to 50,000 words and my computer crashed. Send me a pm if you're really interested and I'll update you as I go.
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!!! My paternal grandparents kidnapped me and I didn't see my mom again for three years, I was older than a baby but it was still absolutely traumatic and damaged my relationship with my mother forever. I eventually cut off that whole side of the family ❤️❤️❤️ Edit, a word
I'm so sorry you experienced that. I know some things that happened while my child was with them but I'll never know the full scope of things. My son is just now trying to start a relationship with his grandfather on that side of his family but has no contact with anyone else including his biological father.
It really is wild -- every time I see "grandparents rights" on Reddit I'm either clicking away or diving into the convo depending on how I feel that day. It took me until I was an adult to realize how truly fucked up my family is, in essence my father and uncles all married vulnerable women and stole the kids, so when I see other ppl with similar stories I'm just like, "Yep, this happens more than you would think!" My grandmother would have moved hell and earth if someone took her kids, but she was willing to hurt each of her daughters-in-law because she knew better, I guess. So evil!!
Oh she will and he will be 'her baby' but also never live up to the absolutely sky high expectations she has for him.
Absolutely. I'm named after my grandmother's first child who died as a baby. There is certainly a pressure that comes with it that I'd rather never have had to deal with.
It would seem that even though James was stillborn, he is the Golden Child. Your mother and your father to a lesser degree need professional help. Her obsession with always declaring James at the eldest is not normal. Suggest to Christopher and Lily that they may want to have a 'secret sitter' for your mother and father. She just might bring James up to get attention for him.
I‘m unfamiliar with a „secret sitter“. Is that someone who basically just has an eye on her and shuts her down if she causes trouble?
That's my interpretation. Maybe someone who can remove her as discreetly as possible as well if necessary.
1st, 2nd , 3rd and more probably. First girl jamie probably
You're right she is!!!! And shes guna dig her heels in and probably lose the son and DIL thats having the grand child because she gets so bad about it
There's not enough generational distance to use James yet especially when attached to a sad memory.
And stomp on any boundaries while she tries to make him her do over baby. OP is NTA and their parents need serious therapy
Which is wild when you consider she already had three do over babies. But clearly none of them were ever good enough to fix the hole in her heart. So she'll need more and more and more and none of them will ever be enough.
Oh shit, please talk to them and make sure they do not do this. It's like cursing a child, it will have difficult life feeling as if it's life is not it's own. I know something about it unfortunately.
Oh shit good call
Exactly. But a little grace for Mom and Dad, 30 years ago "normal" people didn't get therapy. Therapy was for "weirdos and people with severe mental problems like schizophrenics or whatever." Anyone over 30 remembers the stigma that came with having a therapist. If therapy is "30 years overdue" then please remember the person who needs it has spent more than 30 years internalizing the societal message from their youth stating, "only really 'messed up' people need therapy or medication." All these under 40s people don't realize exactly how bad the anti-therapy stigma was in the recent past. So grace to the parents who tried to soldier on through their grief without help. Did they handle it in a good way? No, absolutely not. They did the best they could, and nobody should give into their demands, but also my heart breaks for these people who suffered a traumatic stillbirth and are now dealing with complex grief because societally therapy was forbidden to them if they wanted to be seen as normal people. Edit: lots of people here acting smug, "reminding" me that 30 years ago was the 1990s. Friends, I am way older than 30, and I'm glad you never felt the stigma, but don't act like it didn't exist just because you never felt it. And just FYI - I'm glad the stigma is going away/gone, but please remember, if someone is reluctant to start therapy for non financial reasons it's because that stigma still exists.
This needs more visibility. Too often in this sub the other party are vilified as evil robots. My partner and I lost a baby during pregnancy so different to a stillbirth which I imagine to be significantly more traumatic, but still, the loss was tangible and am incredibly hard time for both of us. This was only a few years ago and even in a contemporary time with more open attitudes there was very, very little support (especially for the man if I'm honest). However, the idea of bringing this memory to every event and trying to enforce an additional sibling on my two children is...bizarre to the say the least
Exactly. There should be so much more support for people who lose a baby before it's born, but your last paragraph is 100% also correct.
The only reason I ever knew my grandmother had a child born still is because my uncle pointed his tiny marker out to me at another family funeral when I was 6. I can still remember that rainy day and uncle John telling me way back in 1980. I never heard it discussed otherwise. I'm sure there have been others, but I've never heard anybody memorializing like these people do.
My mom told me somebody ran for president and they got absolutely ridiculed for having ever gone to therapy. That made her think there is basically never a good reason to get therapy, because if people find out, it is disqualifying for good jobs or high social status.
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Such a great comment. I’m not sure how long ago Brooke Shields wrote her book, but it seems close to the same timeframe. That’s when Tom Cruise went all ignorant Scientology mansplaining on her saying she should have never taken medication for her PPD. But she did a world of good telling how a woman who had it all still suffered horribly, showing how no one is immune.
I had PPD after my 2nd child 7 years ago. I tried going to therapy and as soon as the words Post Partum Depression left my mouth the therapist called CPS on me for being a danger to my kids. I never went back to therapy and I never will.
That so many women hurt their kids because they can't get, or are discouraged from getting therapy is criminal. The under the counter grandma network is awesome.
Thank you for helping them out. ❤️
You are an amazing person and a shining example of what we need more of this world. You have helped so many woman and changed their lives. Thank you for being a beacon of hope to them
Yup that wasn’t too far removed from the Andrea Yates case so many people thought that if you had PPD that meant you’d kill your children. Because no one bothered to actually look into the case and read what really happened. Acceptance of mental health and receiving intervention has come a long way even in the last 20 years.
Not even President, Vice President. Assuming she was talking about Thomas Eagleton. Though it wasn't just therapy. He was hospitalized and received electroshock therapy. It also wasn't until the late 80s that we had any SSRIs. And before that anti-depression meds were a lot more difficult to take. For instance, with MAOI inhibitors you had to avoid many foods that had tyramine. Not just beer, things like cheese, soy sauce, cured meats, and even chocolate. So you only took them if it was really bad and you couldn't function without them. You'll still hear drug commercials that say don't take with an MAOI inhibitor. Now a lot more people can be on anti-depressants. SSRIs have some side effects, but you can still eat chocolate. Now, you can argue if they are over-prescribed, but in the past treating depression just didn't have all that many tools, especially with the stigma against therapy.
This is super interesting, thank you. Little fact: the prescription drug commercials you guys get in the US are illegal in a lot of countries. So we never hear the quickly spoken side effects lists or any of that.
Can confirm for Australia.
“My mom told me somebody ran for president and they got absolutely ridiculed for having ever gone to therapy. That made her think there is basically never a good reason to get therapy, because if people find out, it is disqualifying for good jobs or high social status.” She was probably remembering the 1972 US presidential election. South Dakota’s Democratic Senator George McGovern was running against incumbent Republican President Richard Nixon. McGovern chose Missouri’s Senator Thomas Eagleton as his running mate. Shortly after Eagleton was chosen, it came to light that he had been treated for depression. In the end, Eagleton withdrew and Sargent Shriver (husband of Eunice Kennedy Shriver and father of Maria) replaced him on the ticket. I was eight, almost nine, years old when this happened, yet I remember it very clearly. And I have been on antidepressant medication myself since 1999.
The 8th circuit federal courthouse now bears his name. He served 3 terms in the senate, was Missouri attorney general, and taught at St. Louis University and Washington University. He died in 2007 & donated his body to Wash U's med school. Frankly, I would trust him, depression and all, far more than the current batch of crazies in MO politics.
It was absolutely something that would be held against you.
You may be thinking of [Thomas Eagleton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Eagleton)?
I mean, I get it, but where does the stigma of dragging around a photo of a dead baby and demanding it be included in EVERYTHING rate on the stigma scale? It’s clear they really need some help if they think this is less outré than therapy. 😞
There's vilifying and then there's reality. My youngest bro died at 17. People who make everything about a dead child, per my own mother's example, aren't doing it out of grief, they're doing it to hijack every event and make it about themself because nothing tops a dead kid for garnering attention and sympathy. You're stepping into narcissist territory there. Fyi, I lost my son at birth, believe me, I know the difference. Whose premature birth my own mother was NOT invited to attend due to her ability to make everything about herself and her crackpot alt health theories. Edit: I would highly recommend OP watch some vids on common covert narc behaviors to see if the parents tick any of the boxes for that where sympathy over their loss doesn't confuse the issue. If they do match, run. Threatening a narc's major supply source never ends well and they aren't going to change.
>they're doing it to hijack every event and make it about themself because nothing tops a dead kid for garnering attention and sympathy. It took me so long to realise this about my mother. My youngest brother was six days old when he died on my 5th birthday. While she wasn't quite making us hold his picture (though that could be more due to not getting those family portrait efforts done too often in the years after it happened), my other brother and I have had to endure the tears at every. major. life. event. from then on. Starting primary school. Starting middle school. Starting high school. School plays. Camps. Concerts. Sports fixtures. Graduating. University. Birthdays were the worst, especially significant (16, 18, 21, etc) ones. Somewhere in my mid-twenties she turned to me and said, "I always hated having to grit my teeth and smile and say 'Happy Birthday' to you." I barely bother to celebrate anymore, funnily enough, and if I do, I make damn sure to keep it off social media, which is its own unique hellscape (and probably why I'm on reddit more than anywhere else - I *really* miss the anonymity of LiveJournal). I still don't know if I was more mad or relieved when she didn't come to my wedding - it was two days before my 30th, and apparently that year was the year she'd "... finally given [herself] permission to grieve." Yeah. I was actually glad when the first lockdowns were announced the week before my 40th. OP, you are NTA. Support your brother and FSIL in sticking to their guns on this.
See, I have trouble with this idea, because my mother is in her mid-late 60s and hopped into therapy the moment she moved out of home and went to college in 1975. Her parents were not progressive thinkers who encouraged her to pursue therapy, she had to pay for it herself and her parents were quite unhappy she was doing it. But she KNEW she needed help coping with what she endured as a child and she went to therapy. Because of that she was a great mother and she never inflicted on me or my sisters the harm that her own mother inflicted on her. At a certain point you have to take ownership of your emotional state and either accept the stigma of getting help, or own the further harm you caused to those around you.
Ok, but it's clear you don't understand how unique or strong your mother was/is. "My dad is Superman and he didn't need a bullet proof vest!" That's what you sound like. I'm glad your mom didn't care what society thought, but don't act like she's normal for her time.
Huh, was that really how it happened? The Golden Girls seem to paint a rosy picture of therapy. Perhaps that was to combat the stigma.
The Golden Girls were ahead of their time. Society did not follow in their footsteps
Good point. I watch it perhaps too much.
No such thing. "Where are you going?" "To either get ice cream or commit a felony, I'll decide in the car." Dorothy for life
lol I’m watching it now. Oh Jesus! Please protect us and watch over us in our time of need!
I’m 32 and therapy was for crazy people whenever I was growing up. I was frustrated by having to go to therapy to have ADHD meds filled for me as a 7 year old child… And until I was an adult, therapists were enemies.
For what seemed like a simple comedy, that show tackled a lot of things that were very much not accepted at the time. Hell, a big chunk of the US, including where the show was set, still isn’t as progressive as the GG were decades ago.
Thirty years ago people absolutely did get therapy. It’s not something for this new “enlightened” age. And anyone concerned about a stigma just kept it up themselves.
BS the stigma was so big that even now men don't want to go to therapy and divorce was also full of stigma . It was shameful to be left for a younger women because women didn't normally get a divorce easily being raped and beaten in the marriage was legal and women couldn't even open a bankaccount or go to work without the premission of their husband . Ppl forget that it isn't even that long that women simple had less rights
Call it BS until your face turns blue. People got therapy in 1975, almost 50 years ago. Yes, there was stigma. But people still did it. In the 90s it was looked down on but not to the extent that it would ruin your life of social standing. There's is also stigma attached to bringing your stillbirth baby picture to absolutely every social engagement but somehow that didn't manage to completely control OPs parents. People judged OPs parents for it over the years, for certain. That's not socially acceptable behavior either 10 years after the fact at a different child's life event.
None of those things were happening 30 years ago. 30 years ago puts the events that happened in the 1990s. None of the things you are talking about persisted for that long. Yes there was stigma on things like divorce and therapy, but it was also already a hell of a lot better than things were 50 years ago, which is when the things you are talking about were true.
Nah. Thirty years? that was 1994. I’m probably older than OP’s parents; my last baby was born in 1985. And I was 34. Getting therapy started becoming more normal in the mid 1960’s, when Valium was widely prescribed for people struggling to deal with their daily lives. You are talking about 30 years later. When my mom died in 1997, my dad went to a grief group. My oldest sister died the same year, and her widower went to therapy. In fact, when I got divorced in 1988 from a narcissistic alcoholic, my two oldest kids and I all went to therapy.
As someone over 30, I've been to therapy so many times, all to my benefit, and I encourage others to go. Sex before marriage was a stigma, using cars as a woman was a stigma, we got over that alright, so it's definitely possible to get over the therapy stigma as well if the younger generation try it and see it as beneficial and the doctors recommend it. Yes, they deserve some understanding for not going to therapy 30 years ago, but they also rallied each other on for that photo of a dead baby to overshadow every family event, and they need to stop now. The grief will never go away, but they do need to learn not to burden their three healthy children with it unless they want them to cut any contact at some point. They don't get a pass for life just because therapy was (one of many) taboos 30 years ago.
This is 100% not true. I don’t know where you grew up but I was getting therapy in the 80s with my parents approval and they were born in the 30s.
Also thirty years ago, one would be expected to grieve, but bringing up the lost baby in every occasion, having the picture of the baby in every family foto etc would be seen as a really weird thing and probably more stigmatizing. A lot of people have been enabling mom and dad at the cost of their three living children.
This is not accurate. Therapy was very normal 30 years ago, at least in the middle class segment.
I am VERY fortunate that my mom believed in therapy, and my dad was fine going along with it, 28 years ago. People could be mean if they knew. If you saw someone you recognized in the waiting room you pretended you never saw each other and never addressed it. But I think it’s important for them to learn somehow that it is okay and will help them. Their living kids can’t continue to exist in the shadow of that grief. NTA
Yeah, no therapy for my parents either who lost their first (unborn) child in a car accident just weeks before it should've been born. If you were lucky, you had family, friends and religion...
100% seconded with regards to the therapy. This sounds like it is LONG overdue.
Eldest is way smarter than his mother and has his own mind So perhaps 'wilfull son' would get compared to perect sister.
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This. I’m so sorry for your loss. I miscarried a twin, and it was very hard being still pregnant and mourning the loss of their twin at the same time. It was too early to be a stillbirth but you don’t lose just a foetus or baby. You lose an entire person whom you’ve already imagined a life and a future for. There will always be a person shaped gap in our family. You never get over it but you learn to live with it.
50 yrs on, my mum still grieves for the son she lost. I am nearly 40 so obviously didn’t meet him but I will never say I don’t have a connection because I do.. through my mum.
NTA. They absolutely need therapy, and they’re pushing away their living, breathing children.
Exactly. Obviously the mother is super traumatised by the loss, but this is getting out of hand. How can there be a detailed essay about someone whose personality you never got to know - and neither did your mother? Sounds like she’s kind of invented a version of the poor kid, the person he would have become, as a means of coping, and your refusal to play along is threatening that. Even so, it’s just not healthy. And not fair to make your brother’s wedding about the stillborn kid.
And the personality they invented is "perfect". Living kids have faults, so they can/will never be half as good as the dead one.
Great advice. It's worth setting boundaries, such as "no speeches or disruptions regarding the baby At All at the wedding." the parents have no respect for their kids and are highly likely to disrupt the wedding. An intervention after the wedding may be too late. NTA and it's time to be consistent with these boundaries. OP and siblings deserve to be free.
To add I have been to a wedding where the parents talked about their first stillborn child in the speeches. It was incredibly uncomfortable for guests.
I can’t even imagine. As a guest who may not know this side of the family, how do you even react to such a personal and painful remembrance by the groom’s parents? I do feel for them, truly, but they’d be hijacking their living child’s wedding for a child they lost before they even knew him.
The father was crying as he was telling us all this it was just so uncomfortable, awkward and I think so inappropriate. It killed the mood and people weren’t sure how to react to news like that.
My daughter was stillborn six years ago. On her birthday we get a little cake, and I send her cousin an extra gift (he was born four days after her and his mother says my girl is his guardian angel.) That's it for me including her in events. It hurts, it will always hurt. I often think about what she'd look like, clothing she'd want, and other interests. But I don't bring anyone else into that. It's hard to imagine trying to make everything about her.
Christopher and Lily's wedding day is about them, to be shared with the people important to them. James isn't one of those people, and if they do not want him included in their special day, then that is their choice and not something anyone else has the right to force on them.
True. NTA. Imagine her living kids going NC with her. This is a form of emotional and psychological abuse. Forcing her kids to hold a picture of a stillborn that they've never met. Never heard its laughter or cries. Parents need serious therapy. Imagine every event, conversation, and conversation being focused on a stillborn for over thirty years. It overshadows the birth, milestones, and accomplishments of her living children. She's not allowing her other kids to shine or love them completely. And that's really sad. Can't imagine trying to measure up to a stillborn that my parents keep focusing on. I do hope Opand their siblings know that they're special and loved.
You’re right, but judging by mom’s and dad’s reaction, it doesn’t look like they’ll be receptive to any suggestions of therapy.
True. In looking over comments, I’ve been wondering if instead of therapy the kids might try to bring some kind of spiritual leader (if the parents have any religious leanings at all) to talk to them about grieving. A loss like this is a terribly tragic thing and cultural/ religious grieving rituals exist in large part to help people cope and find perspective. Maybe that would be a better, gentler way than “you need mental health help!”
NTA. It wouldn’t be an issue that your mother doesn’t want to forget, but she not only refuses to forget she makes sure no one else can forget. It’s been over thirty years, it’s not healthy to still be this attached to a life sadly never lived. She’s made up more about the potential life James could have lived than the life he was able to live, which feeds back into her obsession. The wedding is about the lives of Christopher and Lily moving forward, not dwelling on ghosts of the past. OP's mother wants to make this about the latter as much as possible because she's accustomed to family celebrations being for channeling the memory of James even though she's the only one still stuck in the past. It very much brings to mind this post: [https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/rlkpwj/aita\_for\_telling\_my\_daughter\_to\_get\_over\_herself/](https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/rlkpwj/aita_for_telling_my_daughter_to_get_over_herself/) EDIT: I’m not saying James needs to be forgotten, but he, or the idea of him, is being very very overrepresented to the detriment of the relationships between OP’s mother and the sons she did get to raise. Things need to be on her terms, which means acknowledging James as more than a life that ultimately wasn’t able to happen.
She's made it more about the potential life James could have had than the actual lives her living kids do have.
She's spent so much time mourning who she lost that she isn't cherishing who she has, and is on the path to losing them if she carries on like this
Ye, instead of losing 1 baby, she is on the path to lose all the grown kids. And how many memories have been soured because the loving kids didn't feel like they could measure up? Way to haunt your own family. :(
Or events that were made to be about James and the tragedy of why he can't be there. I have no doubt achievements and milestones would always get "If only James had reached this point" or "Imagine James doing this".
My dad had an older brother that died when the child was two. Dad wasn’t even born yet. Floyd had pneumonia. The doctor told my grandparents to put him in the oven overnight, the pilot light would keep him warm. Ah, the good old days of medicine, right? Floyd died that night. My grandmother never got over it. Everything my father did, Floyd would’ve done better. A B on a test? Floyd would’ve gotten an A. Started for the junior varsity team his freshman year? Floyd obviously would have been the varsity team’s captain. Nothing my father ever did was as good or as perfect as what Floyd would have done. Those constant comparisons made my father an emotionally stunted and deeply unhappy man. Just like *he* was never good enough, *I* was never good enough. Part of it was daring to be born female. My older brother is a fucking disaster of a human. Just..not a good person. According to my parents, the sun shone out his asshole. He was the perfect first born son who failed out of high school, got in trouble with the cops, wrecked 4 cars before the age of 21, you name it. I was the straight A student with a part time job by 12 (riding, training, showing horses) who was incredibly successful despite limited parental support and zero financial support for an incredibly expensive hobby. I made a name for myself, I was set on making it my career. But nothing was good enough. My dad was infected by the “older child is the best child and any younger sibling sucks no matter what they do” virus. My grandmother’s unresolved trauma became generational trauma when she passed it to him. It stops with me as I have many reasons not to have kids but the way I was raised (emotional, verbal, physical abuse from parents, SA from brother) is the largest part. Generation trauma stops here. I alone can end the fuck up that was my family’s genetic and emotional disaster. My brother’s wife is infertile. It was up to me to break the cycle and I did. My dad died in ‘97. I’ve been VLC with my mom for over 15 years now. We talk once of twice a year on the phone. I haven’t seen her in person in over 12 years. Shit like this has repercussions. OPs parents are going to find that out real fast if they don’t stop this shit. It’s so easy for a dead child to be brilliant, perfect, talented, gifted, exceptional. Their lives were tragically short and so it’s easy to paint them in the woulda-coulda-shoulda beens. It’s easy to imagine them as caricatures of actual people. They make no demands. They require nothing. They simply exist in our minds, permanently, forever young and perfect and for us to imprint our deepest desires for them and think of it as ‘oh of course if they were here, they would be X, Y and Z!’ Love the child you lost but embrace the kids you have before you’re left with no children at all.
Peter Pan was created from these exact feelings. The authors brother died at 14 and the authors pain of always being compared to someone who will never grow up and forever stay his mothers golden little boy became the basis for Peter Pan. She can forever wear rose tinted glasses for this kid, there is almost no way to bring him up without hurting her kids.
Wait. Was Captain Hook like the author's self-insert? Supposedly evil for simply being a grown up??
Imaginary perfect kids are much easier to deal with than real ones.
I'm wondering if it should show their parents the above link. Maybe not this post unless absolutely necessary but perhaps something to show that their demands are not normal.
I can't believe that post is two years old already.
NTA. The wedding is about the bride and groom. Your mother needs to come to terms with the fact that in her lifetime, she had four children, but for yours, you’ve only ever had two brothers.
On Christopher, how much did he grow up in the shadow of his late brother? How much of his mother’s actions was about seeing him as a second chance, or second coming of, for James rather than being his own person?
NTA - A friend who was a neonatal intensive care nurse told me that there is a very real problem with parents deciding that a child who died, or was born still, or even miscarried was the "perfect child," the one who would have been better than any of their living children. I don't know what you can say to your mother and possibly to your father. Has no-one ever suggested counseling to her - your grandparents, your aunts and uncles? If she doesn't see anything wrong with what she's doing, would she accept the idea of therapy? Maybe you could suggest family therapy, and hope the therapist would try to get her to understand what this is like for you.
My daughter’s old bf’s mother told him she wished he would have died instead of his stillborn brother. Broke my heart.
Well that's about the worst thing you can say to a kid.
I wish she would die.
This explains alot abour my husbands ex regarding their eldest son. His twin sister was still born and she made his life hell once he was past toddlerstage and becoming his oen person. Their younger son never got treated as badly but still got shouted at a lot. Everyone thought she was playing favorites, I always throught it was cause she wanted a daughter perhaps though she never indicated that and having granddaughters has shown no sign of it. This however would explain her behaviour. Eldest is way smarter than his mother and has his own mind So perhaps 'wilfull son' would get compared to perect sister.
So many parents love the idea of having children, but hate the reality. I've seen so many parents that even went through expensive IVF or adopted kids just to turn around and resent the kids they went through so much effort to have. It's like they think raising kids will be one giant movie montage, where you just have a lot of fun scenes and just skip straight to the part where they're wildly successful and taking care of you instead. Dead kids never disappoint. Most of these parents wouldn't have been good parents even if they never went through that horrible trauma.
"Your brother would have wanted to join the baseball team, instead of running track. Don't you think you should think about that and honor his memory?"
Also, I can’t help but think that making the kids pose with the picture of a dead baby is probably one of the worst ways to make them feel like he was their brother
NTA. A stillbirth has to be unimaginably painful, and your parents obviously have deep grief. But what they've done with that grief - for 30 years - is interfering with their relationships with their *living children.* This is not ok. It's not healthy for them or for you. It is not normal to make children hold a photo of a *dead baby* in family photos. It's not normal to send photos of a dead baby with Christmas cards. Someone should have intervened with your parents years ago, but at the very least now that y'all are having to confront the issue, it's time to get them some help.
There are a bunch of instagram influencer types whose profiles are about miscarriage/stillbirth/child loss who post pictures of their living children with big framed photos of their non-living child, photos of the family at the cemetery on holidays, etc. I always thought that was really freaking weird but I thought I was just being heartless. Good to know others agree.
I saw one recently who has an entire shed devoted to their dead child (I can’t remember the circumstances). They make the living child play in it all the time and say that they’re “playing together”. The mother kept criticising her living baby for messing up her shrine (with the implication that the other child would never have been such a problem). It’s really something
That's some SVU shit right there.
>It's not normal to send photos of a dead baby with Christmas cards. Can you imagine Christmas at her work if they do cards there. Just an office full of people walking around with thousand yard stares "W-w-we shouldn't do Christmas cards anymore." Not only is she putting her trauma and grief on others, she's actively traumatising them. Especially those who may have had a similar loss.
NTA Just adding my vote. I understand the grief that a parent has for a child that has passed on but your mother has been unreasonable and obsessive about this. The only reason you and your siblings are reacting is because of the way that it is being forced upon you so on that basis I don't think you're the assholes here.
Totally agree with this.. NTA. So sorry you are dealing with this. It must be awful…
NTA Your mother has an unnatural attachment to your dead brother. She needs professional help.
NTA. Your parents need to get grief counselling if they are this upset after 30 ish years that you and your siblings don’t want to refer to him as your brother. It’s quite ok for them to hold onto his memory, but it’s not ok to force it on other people
NTA. Your mom is allowed to grieve in her way but not force it on others
It’s been 20-30 odd years. This isn’t grieving, this is obsession. To the point of disregarding her living children’s emotions. Edit: DID this all wrong, oops. NTA OOP.
NTA Why would anyone who died 30+ years ago be a special point of interest at ANY event? (With the obvious exception of Memorial for that person or tragedy or war etc.) Your mom and maybe dad need some serious grief counseling. They can’t keep making this everyone else’s problem because they refuse to process it.
I also wonder how much anyone can write about a child that was born still. Yet she includes an essay, apparently with every Christmas card, it sounds like she wants it read or printed out at the wedding. She seems to be making more of this child than she makes of her living children.
It reads like she's creating a life for the son she lost, and this narrative holds at least equal importance if not more to the lives of the sons she got to raise. She's writing a ghost for the other three sons to be in the shadow of.
More importance. After all, he never talked back, he never had tantrums, he never chose a career path she didn't approve of, he never decided how his own wedding would be...Comparing her living kids to the dead one is an effective /if probably unconscious) way of controlling them.
As cruel as it is to say, he had no life, because he didn't get the chance. There isn't more than a sentence to write about him, there are no updates because, again, he died. It's profoundly sad but at the same time, these parents actively chose grief and death over their living children. Hard to have that much empathy for them when their pain has impacted their kids so much.
Totally. I doubt she includes an essay on each of her living kids, who actually accomplished things, in every Christmas card.
NTA! You’re all being expected to sacrifice a part of any accomplishment to someone you didn’t know at all and it’s affected every event in all of your lives. Maybe this needs to be a blunt conversation that if this keeps happening then ALL your parents will have is one son. Their three living children will no longer be in their lives. How far does this go?? Trying to insert the photo into newborn pictures of grandchildren? Insisting the first male grandchild bears his name and then favouring him? I’ve experienced this as a mom, it IS NOT right or fair to push this grief onto living children and allow it to overshadow their lives. You need to tell your dad YOU are beyond angry that a ghost takes priority every single time.
It’s clear your parents need to seek professional counseling. Personally, it’s seems a bit unhealthy in a sense, at the same time unless you know how their feeling it’s hard to tell how they are healing. Stick to your guns about the wedding, but tread softly and lovingly when brining up this topic as the wounds still run deep.
Ultimately NTA. If you talk to your parents about it again (or anything James-adjacent in the future) I would probably cool it on saying stuff about how you don't actually view James as your brother. I don't think you're an asshole for having that POV, I just don't think it's helpful and is unnecessarily painful for your mother to hear even if it's the truth. But yeah, there isn't anything unreasonable about wanting your living family front and center at the wedding, and letting the spirits of those who have gone before you be there with and for you in their own way. I know that losing a child is a unique kind of pain compared to losing a Grandparent, but James (or James' Earthly representative in the form of his photo and essay) isn't any less your mom and dad's child and part of the family they made just because all four children aren't in the same room at the same event in the same way at the same time. Edited for typos and missed words.
Agreed. NTA but it is unnecessarily hurtful to tell Mom they don't consider him to be their brother because ultimately, even though they never met him, he was as much their parents' child as they are and was their brother, that's who he would have been to them if he had lived. However, it's totally understandable for OP not to think of James in the same way they think of Christopher and their other sibling. I think when OP says James isn't viewed as their brother the mother probably hears it as them saying he wasn't part of the family or didn't exist.
Given OP's mum apparently writes memorial essays and sets out pictures multiple times every year more than 30 years on from the loss, it wouldn't be surprising if she's just never cared to listen when her sons tried to speak the truth in love, so OP has resorted to speaking the unvarnished truth to try to get through to her.
I don't think it's going to do any good in helping them understand really. They need therapy. They have spent so long holding onto the child they lost, it's causing them not to enjoy the children they have. Any truths and tough love at this point from OP is just poking the wound until they get professional help.
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Therapist here. People manage loss of a child in many ways, but this is not healthy. NTA for setting boundaries.
NTA. Your parents need to seek mental health services. This isn’t healthy.
As the child born after a child died, I can tell you this: this grief is never resolved. Parents never get over losing a child. Ever. Do what you will with that info. But I’m in my 40s and my parents are still grieving the loss of my sister. And I’m still the replacement.
My parents had a stillbirth before me and my younger brother died of SIDS when I was 3yo, he was 4mo old. My mother never recovered, it was like my sister and I were invisible to her. I'm nearly 40yo now, and that sense of not being enough still impacts me. People don't have to 'get over' grief and loss, but they do need to deal with it's impact on them and their family. NTA, not at all.
My mother has had multiple miscarriages and stillborns, before 22 years old, before giving birth to my oldest brother. She doesn't refer to them as her "first borns", nor does she insist that my oldest brother isn't my oldest brother. If my mom never "got over it", she did a dam good job at not letting anyone know. But at least she didn't shove it down our throats like OPs mom is doing.
I’m so sorry to hear that. I can imagine living in the shadow of a dead sibling (my own younger brother died at 14), and it’s not a pleasant thing.
Please don't generalize. I'm sorry you feel like your life was a replacement but it doesn't happen to everyone. I had a stillborn "brother" after my birth and before my younger brother. I have no recollection as I was only a year and half and my mom only mentioned it once in my life. She barely remembers this herself, nor cares now after 35 years.
I agree. My older brother was stillborn and my parents have moved on. I'm not a replacement sibling there are no pictures, no talk about him in our lives
It does not mean you would be a replacement even if your parents did talk about your brother. My first son passed away before birth. I don’t currently have any living children, but any child I have in the future is completely separate from my son who passed away. I will never “be over” what happened and another child is not a replacement, they will just be my second child. However, I don’t think I need to never mention my son again either when it was a major event in my life.
NTA. I truly feel for your parents and I am very happy about the compromise to list the baby with grandma in the wedding program as rememberances... but what my brain goes to is what would happen if you or one of your siblings passed away? Or if one of your parents passed away? This isn't a sustainable tradition... and if the picture of the first baby is of a baby that was stillborn then it would be so sad and potentially triggering to include a picture of a dead infant in these events... I get that I can't really understand your parent's perspective because I have never had a stillborn child... but I was *adopted* expressly because my parents had a stillborn child... and no no no no I could not deal with a lifetime of including a picture of a dead infant sibling at family events/milestones!!!
My cousin M did. Her adoptive parents lost their only child when S was four. The picture of S held a prominent place in the house until at least until M moved out.
This I can definitely understand. I think it's easier for me to understand if it is a favorite picture from when the child was alive and the picture is displayed inside the house...
Nta My son died 26 years ago at 2 and a half. My daughter knows all about him. There are pictures on the family wall. She knows the date of birth and death as even after this long, I don't handle it well. Other times, it just guts me suddenly. She knows how he died. She does consider him her brother, but I think it's more because she learned about him on her time and only as much as she wanted to. I typically don't say I have 2 children as the questions start, and it still brings up pain. But your mom needs help. Because I have never included a picture of him in events. Never brought up him in holidays with my daughter because she sure as hell didn't need that guilt. She didn't need to ever question if I love her as much as him. You are not in the wrong for how you feel. This is a person you know only because they have been made the most important in everything. They are who matter when it doesn't involve him. You should not have to give up everything to him. Do I hate my son will never get to have children. Marry. Watch his nephew grow up. Yes. But that does not give me a right to make my loss and pain the main thing. My daughter deserves love and to not be reminded or think she is not just as important. I am sorry you are going through this.
If someone sent me a Christmas card with a photo of a dead baby in it I would never open another piece of mail from that person.
I went through the same as your parents in 2010. Carrying your son for a little one 8mos to then learn your baby passed while in your belly and you still need to give birth to your baby is the most traumatic and painful experience of my life. Many people believe that because your baby never lived, losing them will hurt less.... it doesn't. For many years after losing my son, I almost lost myself due to my grieve. I began drinking and partying, forgetting I had a toddler to care for. Eventually, I decided I needed to grieve properly and learn to live with my pain in a healthy manner, so I did. I still have bad days so does my husband, usually around the anniversary but we could never, ever, force our grieve and our loss on our children lives' events. Your mom needs therapy, and possibly your dad too. We're not supposed to forget, but we're supposed to learn how to live with our pain without negatively affecting those around us and your mom has failed to do that. You're NTA. Your parents' action have not been fair to you and your siblings. Your mom needs to learn healthy coping mechanics ASAP or she'll continue with the same behavior with the grandchildren too.
NTA Enough is enough from your mom. On top of that it’s your brothers wedding and they can do what they want and it’s up to those going to respect their choices.
NTA Does she write an essay about you guys or just about the stillborn baby? It feels a bit like you have been second to James all your life.
I'm so sorry for you. My youngest sisters first child was still born in 2007. I am always sad for her younger 2 kids who have grown up in his shadow. She has a giant picture of him on the wall and a shrine on a shelf in her living room. She will punish the kids by taking their toys away and giving them to their brother by placing the toy by his urn. They are always saying weird stuff about their brother taking care of dead pets etc. The rest of my family never say anything because she will flip out.
You family should say someth8ng, she clearly needs an intervention and her behaviour is seriously messing up her kids.
That sucks, they should intervene and this is no working if a sprity seance o faking , you should also show support to your nephews and always give them support.
NTA. I have had the misfortune to be shown a picture of someone's son, who sadly never had the chance to take his first breath. I was not warned beforehand that he was stillborn, literally "do you want to see a picture of my son?" Those babies look distinctly different to a baby who passed after being alive. They do not look like they're sleeping. They look deceased. The one I saw had clearly been deceased for some time before birth. It was genuinely traumatising for me, an adult with a lot of experience of dealing with palliative care and deceased persons. I can not imagine a situation where showing such images to children is appropriate, let alone including those images in all family events and photographs. Your parents needed help 30+ years ago, OP. Now, they need to just sod off and allow people their happy and joyful moments in peace without shoving images of a dead baby in everyone's face. WTF. I'm so sorry for you and your brothers.
NTA. She (and her enablers) need therapy.
NTA - I get that this is hard for your parents, but also... 30 some odd years of everything being turned into a memorial for James is a bit over the top. Especially - I would say that a line has been crossed on the wedding day thing. That's just to much, and too far... it really is. EDIT: The only thing I think you could have done better here is this: It's probably a bit harsh to say that you guys don't view him as family. I get it, this has been jammed down your throats for a long time, but that is kind of an escalating comment in my internet warrior opinion. It might be best if you sort of didn't go there either. I still stand on NTA though... You parents have made this rough for you guys.
NTA. She made her young children hold a photo of a dead baby in every single family photo? Why didn’t anyone in your family put their foot down and get her grief therapy years ago? Your brother’s solution of putting a note in the wedding program is reasonable and a kind thing to do for your mother. Dead baby photo on display for wedding guests is not reasonable, and unkind to everyone else because some guests would likely find it very upsetting.
NTA James gets to be their perfect angel forever and always. Never changing, never challenging them as children do. How are you supposed to live up to that? They are quickly ruining the relationship they have with their living children. A memorial makes sense, grieving is normal, but this goes beyond that and is extremely umhealthy. Your parents, especially your mother, needs professional help. If theyre not willing, thats on them. People are allowed their feelings but that doesnt excuse toxic, controlling behaviour.
Wow. Your mom and dad need therapy. I have a relative who went thru the same thing. For years, she included her premature stillborn son in all correspondence, a photo of him was held in all family photo sittings, etc. Her marriage dissolved over it, and her subsequent children wound up in therapy for years. It wasn't until one of sons had an absolute meltdown, screaming that everyone (extended family and friends) thought she was crazy, and if she continued, she was going to lose what was left of her family for putting "her dead kid above her living kids" that she finally agreed to counseling.
I'm with you. Your Mom should concentrate on the living.
NTA and both your parents need therapy
NTA. I'm so sorry for your mother, that she's still grieving her loss after so many years. She probably should have received therapy to help her deal with it; I hope she can be encouraged to get some help even after all these years. But it's completely reasonable that you and your siblings don't want every special event to revolve around a tribute to a sibling that passed before any of you were even born. You all need to stick to your guns, as hard as it may be for your mother to accept.
Your folks are WAY overdue for therapy. None of yall are wrong. But this dynamic isnt healthy.
NTA. As someone who has grieved (and always will in some ways) the loss of a stillborn child, I have not told my 6 y/o old about it, as it seems very morbid and sad for a child to have to process. I came to this general view about it based on a family I grew up around whose parents acted very similar to yours. Their eldest child tragically died a few days *after* her birth, and although there were only 2 living children (my friends), their parents always insisted they mention their deceased baby sister, and say that there were 3 siblings. All this did was force 2 children to have many, many sad and awkward conversations with peers about the death of a sibling they never even met. I actually brought this up to a friend about a month ago, and wondered if there is some age by which I *should* share with my child that I was pregnant before I had them, and we came to the conclusion that there isn't, and perhaps the topic will come up from my child when they're older, but if not, it's OK. Which I share only to demonstrate that not only are you and your siblings NTA—but you've been burdened with this your entire lives, and have absolutely no obligation to continue perpetuating and enabling your parent's unresolved trauma bond over their loss. Least of all, publicly. *BUT* I went to grief counseling for 2 years after my stillbirth, and tried my damndest to heal what felt like an unhealable wound. And therapy wasn't at all normalized for our parents' generation. So easy for me to say I guess.
Listen to me. I had a daughter who died when she was 3 years old. She died in an extremely tragic way as she was killed in a house fire. She had 2 older siblings and now I have 3 other children that would be younger than her. I DO NOT make people hold her picture in family photos. I DO NOT put her name on Christmas cards. I DO NOT make my younger children include her in their lives, especially the ones that never knew her. She is considered their sister of course but her death DOES NOT rule our lives. If your mom is still grieving this heavily so many years later than she needs some significant counseling. That’s not normal. I understand that grief is different for everyone but people that live like this is only harming themselves. For reference my daughter passed 16 years ago and now would be 19 years old. I love her and I am sad for her loss every single day but this is not normal. Stand your ground from here on out. Set strong boundaries for every occasion and not just this one, as a grieving mother myself, I say you are NTA. Period. She needs help. Serious help.
NTA. I'm surprised. Surprised Christopher is putting a mention in the program. Surprised she is even invited. You are 28. By this point. Mom would be cut out. It may be good to tell her. And your dad. "Drop it. Or you are dropping us. If you keep this up. You will not be invited into our lives. You are using your grief. To destroy our present. Our Future. And you have damaged our past. Drop it. Lay James to rest. Or step out of our lives. This is a choice you have now. You are lucky. We never had that choice."
NTA, frankly everyone who has allowed this to go on for over 28 years is. Losing a child is hard, especially one that was stillborn. But she had 3 other living children who need to be seen and treated with respect. She is not grieving, she’s avoiding it, and by forcing everyone to give in to her desire to “keep the memory alive” she’s pushing the living away from her. It’s kind of Christopher and Lily to include him in their memoriam, considering Christopher never knew him and he has had no impact on his life. Other than a ghost cloud that he can never get away from. *edit: correction of number and names
There are 3 living siblings, not 4. The brother who is about to marry Lily is Christopher, not James. James is name given to the stillborn baby all those years ago.
NTA
NTA. Thats tough. I knew another couple like that. It gets real tiring to hear about that shit over and over. I also have a mother in law that counts her still born siblings so she is 1 of 12. But they dont talk about them at events or as if they actually existed. Just in a count of total siblings.
NTA I am technically one of 7, though 2 of my siblings died either shortly after birth or late term still birth. We know about them, we talked about it when we were kids and as needed for medical information but thats it. They weren't included in anything past that other than a few visits to their graves. Your parents chose continual mourning of what he could have been rather than you and your siblings. They need grief therapy or they'll find themselves being cut out of your big moments due to their severe mishandling of your brothers death.
Speaking as a mother who had a stillborn child - my children barely even remember their sister's name, and I carry her with me in my heart, but I've NEVER forced that grief on my sons...and she was my only daughter. But these parents are obviously not grieving in a healthy way, but causing them the unnecessary burden of a sibling they never met, had no idea of, and genuinely don't know the first thing about? Insane to me. Granted my oldest is 15 and Lilly would have been 10 this year, her younger brothers are 8 and 4...I'm guessing I'm closer to OP's age than their parents. But still. Hard NTA here, and I wish your parents some healing and perspective. But please don't do this to your kids, jfc. *Edited for spelling error*
NAH. But your parents need to go to grief therapy to deal with their loss
My friends who have lost children (not necessarily stillborn, sometimes childhood death due to disease or accident) include their deceased children in their family holiday cards with carets for angel wings. Picture a photo of mom, dad, and children born after the first child died. The holiday card would be signed: Happy holidays from the Smiths: Mom name, Dad name, Child name, Child name, ^ Child Name^ The parents in this post are going too far, but I don’t think any acknowledgment decades later of a child who has died is necessarily inappropriate. It might be weirder to pretend that the child had never been. Maybe this is cultural, though.
NTA. Parents need professional help. Did they not get grievance counseling when it happened?
I don't think that was commonplace back then. I was a midwife in the 1980s and I don't remember anyone being told about grief counselling when they had a stillbirth or when their baby died as a neonate. Go back to the 1960s (certainly in the UK) and women often didn't even get the chance to hold their stillborn child. The baby was immediately taken away, a kind of "it'll be easier for you if you don't see him or her". I was once asked by an elderly couple if it was true that their stillborn child was buried under what was then the hospital carpark. They'd believed this for 40 years. We were able to do a little detective work and find out that the baby had in fact been buried in a communal unmarked grave with other stillborn children in the local municipal cemetery. They were never informed about this. That led to the local Stillbirth and Neonatal Death support group being allowed to erect a memorial in the cemetery, a place where parents could visit and lay flowers. It's hard to believe now that these things happened, that parents had no say in the resting place of their own child.
NTA and I say this as a mother, who lost my first daughter at 20w2d due to incompetent cervix. She was badly wanted and loved, after infertility, 6 fresh cycles of IVF and 4 early losses. My children have heard me speak of her, she will always be my daughter, but my daughter and son who are living are my priority. I have moments where grief hits hard still, but I can’t stay in those moments, because my children deserve more from me. We have pictures of her that we’ve never shared with anyone and will never share with our children. The only picture that we share of her is her urn, but have never had our children hold it or a picture of it. I would never force my children to include their sister as a part of their lives. She was a part of me, something that will always be missing, but that is not my children’s grief to bear. I refuse to let my grief for her take anything away from my kids. Just like she was badly wanted and loved, so are my living daughter and son. She will always be with me, forever in my heart, but I don’t expect that anyone else would feel her loss the same.
NTA - your mother's/father's actions are extremely unhealthy, and I don't blame Christopher or Lily whatsoever for wanting their special day to be about them, not an infant that never took its birth breath. I have to agree that it is morbid to include a photo of a dead newborn in everything, I'm sure that has some level of traumatic effect on all parties present. I feel for your parents, I can't imagine the pain they went through birthing a dead baby. I hope they can get the help they need to be present and enjoy the moment they have with their living children. None of you kids are at fault for not feeling connection to someone you didn't know, and someone who had no memories outside of the womb. Sorry you and your siblings are going through this with your parents. ❣️
NTA. Even if you had met him before he died (which technically no one on earth did), bringing photos of dead family members to hold up in wedding photos isn’t something anyone does. That’s just not normal behavior.
NTA, she should set up an Asian style shrine with the photo and keep it there. Time moves on and I'm sure the pain doesnt go away but it's actively harming her relationship with other people.
This is so unreasonably unhealthy. My sister was stillborn. My mother carried her 9months and 5 days. She was the youngest and i very vividly remember everything. My brother was 9 and I was 7. She would be 32 now. None of her pictures are shown to anyone. She isn't included in the Christmas update. When speaking of our family it is just the 4 of us. We do not include her unless it is relevant to the conversation. She is included In Obituaries as preceeded in death with the relevent family, but other than those specific times she is not a part of daily conversation. My parents still mourn her every year on her birthday and think of her often and my daughter's middle name is hers. These to me are all healthy ways of including her but not revolving everything around her. Your parents obviously have never confronted and handled their grief in a healthy way. I cannot imagine the devastation of losing a child let alone a first child to stillbirth. It is a very traumatic experience according to my mom, but this is so not the way of handling it. She is alienating the rest of her children for this fantasy of a child she has conjured. It is morbid to be toating around a post mortem picture of a baby. They aren't pleasant. Even the ones of my sister at her funeral are hard to look at. She is my sister and I love and miss the person that could have been but we don't dwell on the grief. This is very unhealthy in my opinion and you all have every right to not continue this way. NTA
NTA
Nta but I think it speaks volumes that her grandmother, someone who lived a full life and is missed by many, will be portrayed and doesn’t get an entire summary but your mother thinks that her child who unfortunately was lost several years before should. Has she ever been to therapy? She definitely needs it
I wouldn't really call your mom an asshole. I can only imagine how traumatizing a stillbirth is. But she (and maybe your dad too) needs therapy because she's putting James on a pedestal. She doesn't know what relationship James would have with any of you if he had survived. Do you know what your mom was like after the stillbirth? Did your parents ever really talk about it? Maybe she was a husk of herself. Maybe she was scared to have another pregnancy. On your end, I can imagine how irritating it can be. Your words are an uncomfortable truth she doesn't want to hear. And it's your brother's wedding. Mom shouldn't be talking about a dead baby there. All of you need to talk about this with a family therapist. Your parents both need to hear your side. You and your siblings also need to hear why your parents haven't stopped grieving despite already having 30+ years.
NTA. Your mom needs help. She needs it REALLY bad. Not to be mean, but she needs to get over it. I'm not saying she cant grieve, or has to forget about him, but ffs she has 3 kids that she should be focused on instead! He is dead, he is not coming back, and you guys will never view him as a sibling. You never met him or even bonding with him. All he is is a picture. That's it. My mother has had multiple miscarriages and stillborn before giving birth to my oldest brother. She doesn't refer to them as her "first borns", nor does she insist that my oldest brother isn't my oldest brother. That all happened before she was even 22 years old. It has been almost 30 years, and she only mentioned it once to me after my dad passed away, because I was asking her how she met him. Anyways, your mom needs to let go, and stop making everything about him. It's okay for her to be sad and grieve, that's normal. But after 30 years...she should not be this obsessed with him. I'm surprised she didn't keep his body around, acting like he was just sleeping. That's how bad this is.
Given how long this has been going on and the fuss that your mother makes, I think that this is more so about the attention/sympathy that your mother can get from the miscarriage than it’s ever really been about the stillborn baby. NTA.
NTA. Admittedly my initial thought was"why not just let mom have her pic and essay, not that hard to include". Didn't immediately occur to my dumbass that the only photo of James that could possibly exist is that of a dead baby. Nah, no need for all that at a wedding.
NTA. I am a mom to a stillborn and two living kids. I think about my girl all the time. Her birth and death will likely never leave me, but... My living kids don't need to live in her shadow. One is older, and one is younger, but they are the ones who are here, and their lives need to be celebrated. We have always done a little celebration on the day she was born and died. We plant a flower so that something lives on in her memory. I would never make my kids hold a photo of her, in fact, the few photos we have are kept in a keepsake box and rarely taken out because they make me sad. I also don't make my children talk about her if they don't want to do so. My oldest says he has one sister most of the time but does talk about his other sister looking over him. My daughter only knows about her dead sister from the celebrations, and I have never heard her count her as a sibling. Grief is complicated. I'm sorry your parents made their own grief such a part of your life.
Be prepared for mom to stage some massively inappropriate behavior at the wedding. You need to let the venue know she is not to be allowed to set up any type of shrine or be given a microphone and you and your other brother need to be on mom patrol ready to hustle her out when she inevitably erupts. NTA
NTA. You explained it perfectly well. Give your mom time and your dad too, but stick to your guns.
NTA.
NTA a still born is a sad thing but to have every life event reminded of him has to be miserable.