Comedian Michael Cruz Kayne isn’t especially proud of his Twitter.
“It’s mostly just incredibly stupid jokes,” Kayne told TODAY Parents.
But on Monday, the New Yorker tried something new: He started a thread about the death of his newborn son, Fisher.
“This isn’t really what twitter is for, but ten years ago today my son died and I basically never talk about it with anyone other than my wife. It’s taken me ten years to realize that I want to talk about it all the time,” Kayne began.
Kayne revealed that Fisher has an identical twin brother, Truman, and a sister named Willa, 7. He wishes more people would ask questions about the experience of losing a child.
“Most of the conversations we have about grieving are very very weird. Tragedy is still so taboo, even in the era of the overshare. It’s all very *sorry for your loss* and tilted heads and cards with calligraphy on them and whispering. We’re all on tiptoes all the time,” Kayne wrote.
Describing grief as “a galaxy of emotions,” Kayne noted that he has felt both angry and confused since Fisher passed away at 34 days old. But Kayne also recalled laughing when the funeral home handed him and his wife, Carrie, a receipt that said, “Thank you come again,” at the bottom.
“Grief is isolating, but not just because of the sadness. Also because the sadness is the only part about it that anyone knows,” Kayne explained. “Not a single person has ever been unkind about my son, but almost no one considers the fullness of his loss and how complicated and weird and everything else it was and continues to be.”
After losing Fisher, Carrie went back to school to become a pediatric intensive care nurse. Kayne hopes to contribute to Fisher’s legacy by opening up a dialogue about the layers of grief.
“Everyone is different, but I like when people ask more than one question about Fisher,” Kayne told TODAY Parents. “A lot of people will ask one question and then try to move past it, because the answer is uncomfortable. I get that. But when they ask a second question, I know, ‘OK. We’re really gonna talk about this.’”