Does being alive merely by habit still count as living?
I guess it all comes down to the definition of living.
Besides, even being alive is a menacing slippery slope
that can degenerate precipitously into name-calling
and ultimately a factional war of attrition and demise
of the couple you once were.
My first child was never born—the foetus failed to develop a heart and died.
The doctor assured us that we had nothing to worry about because, in the first
pregnancy, such things happen often—kind of a false start—and the next one
will be perfectly fine for sure. What really struck me then was the discrepancy
in the language. I guess the child occupied the parental realm of the possible,
while the foetus was the clay-cold reality of medicine.
hidden pilcrow 