This was originally posted as a response to "Stages of Grieving" but I got so much nice feedback on it that I am indulging it with its very own thread. Besides, I got to fix some irritating typos in the process.

Many nicely written essays have discussed the connection between Y2k awareness and the classic stages of grieving. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. At first I found this to be a helpful metaphor but as the days progress I am finding it to be pretty useless. This is because Y2k is more complex than death. It is much more like birth.

In any given situation there is a certain amount of perceived predictability and a certain amount of mystery. The more mystery involved then the greater uncertainty in how to prepare.

The most mysterious process of my life was childbirth. It was similar to Y2k in many ways.

I knew approximately when it was going to happen.

There were many "experts" with competing opinions that all felt compelled to tell me what to do.

I had no idea what my baby was going to look like or how it was going to behave.

I knew that my life would be forever changed after its arrival.

I knew I could die in the process or at the very least need medical intervention.

I knew I would very likely experience some pain.

I knew that my life and that of my child could be in the hands of strangers.

I knew that once the child was here there were many things I would have to give up for a long time. Probably years.

Finally, I knew that regardless of what all those experts and well- meaning friends said it was still me who had to decide how to prepare for the birth and where I wanted to be when it happened.

This is what we are facing in Y2k. Not a death. A birth. Birth in all its scariest most primal ramifications. This is not a happy Hallmark stork and bunting birth. This is an old-fashioned rag-chewing, gut-screaming, no pain killers birth.

Here in America, the mother has had problems all through the pregnancy. She is out of shape and has been living on a diet of junk food, nicotine, alcohol and Tee Vee. The baby is breech and has the umbilical cord wrapped around its neck three times. The mother has appeared to go into premature labor several times. She may yet. She has ambivalent feelings about breast feeding and is more concerned with her own appearance and bank balance than she is about the baby's health. If the little tyke makes it and the mother survives you have to wonder what the baby will eat since the mother doesn't know how to grow a garden or prepare healthy food.

The father? Off diddling interns and bombing babies.

Next prenatal check-up is June 30th. We hope for good news, but hey - its only a physical. Its not like the Dr. can guarantee the birth will go well just because the prenatal seems OK.

So here I sit like a nervous aunt. If the mother comes to me for help do I feed her? Do I let her starve? She has made some heinous life decisions and she and her string of Presidential hubbies have squandered my hard-earned tax dollars in a bewildering variety of wasteful and (IMHO)often immoral ways. She could turn on me in a heartbeat.

I could leave the country. I could hide. I could lie about how much food I have. I could run whenever I see her or shoot her if she comes for my beans. No matter what I do she will always be there. Her child may be sweet and resourceful or it may be demon spawn. With parents like that its hard to be very optimistic.

Just like every other basic human survival skill - farming, self defense, shelter construction - birth has become something done by experts in protective clothes. Most people have never experienced a real birth so they have no way of recognizing the Y2k process for what it is. They recognize it as a major life passage, but our culture is so obsessed with death that that is the only metaphor it can come up with.

Time to roll up the sleeves, chop some wood and boil some water. Theres a baby coming.

-- Rachel (riversoma@aol.com), May 24, 1999

Answers

This is fantastic! Bump to 'new answers'! Just when I thought I had seen every possible y2k metaphor, something actually original and clever comes along!!

-- Blue Himalayan (bh@k2.y), May 24, 1999.

Birth and Death have similarities.
Usually before one dies, there is a heavy, difficult period to go through, the Labor of Death, before the soul wins release from the worn-out body.

That is, unless some well-meaning but misunderstanding person decides to take it into their own hands and kills the patient before that Labor has begun, progressed, or ended.

Abortion also stops the Birth Formation process. Or miscarriage can prematurely stop it. Or the mother can die before the due date.

Or a nuclear, bio, chemo, or unforeseen disaster can abort the water-torture wait for the Y2K Death and Birth.

Will some control freak decide to do a Mercy Killing before the dates are ripe and ready?

On our mind because yesterday our patient, a Buddhist nun who wanted a conscious death, was instead murdered, and not by us. Only God can judge this situation, but we are thankful our hands are, and always have been, clean of killing.

Y2K will be Death and Birth. What will be the ratio?

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-- Ashton & Leska in Cascadia (allaha@earthlink.net), May 24, 1999.

I hear you, but , there is no history of the affects of y2k. to me, if you have to select between birth and death, I must chose death, because no one have came back to tell us what it's like on the other side.

The living may never know the mistery of death, but we will all know in a few months about y2k. Only then can we compare it to the birth of a child. (THERE WILL BE MANY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES OF THE BIRTH OF Y2K AND WE WILL SHARE IT WITH EVERYONE WHO IS LEFT)

-- Arthur Washington (ARTWASH@webtv.net), May 24, 1999.

I was one of the people who offered the Y2K and the stages of grieving analogy. I think their are parallels to birth. Y2K represents many things to grieve; the death of the illusion of certainty; anticiipatory grief of the loss of life (a certainty in other unprepared countries); anticipatory grief of the loss of comfort, lifestyle, connection with people living in other states/countries, etc., etc.,

Birth involves anticipatory grief as well; the loss of freedom, the loss of independence, the loss lifestyle, the loss of position (lover vs. mother, etc.), the loss of job (even temorarily).

The perceived losses anticipated differ with the perspectives of each individual, yet all of the forum appear to be grieving the illusion of certainty. None of us has ever looked forward to an event such as Y2K. The fact that we contribute to this forum is evidence that we care about the issue, and that we are struggling with it. It is also evidence that we care about each other, either by polite discussion or angry rant. The bottom line is we care, IMHO.

-- leslie (***@***.com), May 24, 1999.