I don't own Dan or Natalie or Diana or Dr. Madden or Gabe or Next To Normal
I always knew the day would come when my daughter would ask me the question I didn't want to answer. I knew the day she found out it would send her into a tailspin. Sometimes I felt angry with my wife for being crazy. She's imagining a son in her mind that was the result of a miscarriage. The child was supposed to be Natalie's twin and he died before Diana was even pregnant enough to tell if he was a boy or a girl.
Since Natalie was a girl, Diana decided that the lost baby was a boy. It was already determined through ultrasound before the miscarriage that Natalie was baby A but in Diana's mind because we lost the baby before Natalie was born he had to have been the older baby. In Diana's mind it has gone so far that she believes Gabriel (the name she has chosen for our child that never was) was born before Natalie, lived eight months and then died. That was when Natalie was born. I get so frustrated with her because I can't understand why she can't see that she's living an alternate reality.
I mean she has a strong healthy daughter who loves her. She has a husband who adores her. Why does she need to live in a world that doesn't exist? Doctor Madden said that she had no control of it. That makes no sense to me.
How could she not remember not giving birth to a son? She remembers having Natalie. Wouldn't she remember the labor before if she did have another child? Doctor Madden says no. The miscarriage traumatized her so much that she forced herself to believe she did have another baby before Natalie.
"In her mind the day of the miscarriage was the day of your son's birth," he explained to me.
"I don't have a son," I said annoyed
"But Diana did," Dr. Madden said, "he didn't exist but he's real to her"
I wish I could understand. I hate that I can't.
The day Natalie turned 7 was the day things changed. I had just gotten up to make my birthday girl a special breakfast.
"Daddy?"
"Hi Princess," I said
"Can I ask you something," she inquired
I pulled her up onto my lap.
"Go ahead," I told her
"Why we don't have any pictures of Bawb," she asked.
That was how she said Gabe. She had a bit of a speech impediment.
I didn't want to tell her but she had to know.
"Honey," I told her, "the reason we don't have any pictures of Gabe is very simple. But it's also very confusing. We don't have any picture of Gabriel because he's not real. He was never born"