Can You IMAGINE Being The Buckley Parents And Seeing The Ghost Of Your Dead Child Everytime You Look At The Kid You Had To SAVE Him And - Tumblr Posts
Every time I see a post painting the absolute worst bad faith takes about the parents, I'm just confused.
Have they made mistakes? Sure. But they care even if they aren't great with how they go about it.
Were they emotionally distant? Absolutely. Can emotional neglect leave long lasting issues? Of course.
But some people act like they are horrifically abusive in such a way that it honestly rubs me the wrong way as a person that not only lost two siblings, but survived an abusive home.
The Buckley parents are actually the ones I feel..."protective" of the most? Because they're literally my parents, and the parents of so many others that have lived through the loss of a sibling. (Sorry to hear about yours. I know it never gets easier. </3) It takes a VERY strong parent to overcome the death of a child without allowing it to have long-term negative effects. It is not a moral failing on their part if they struggle to find reasons to go on as normal. (Which, friendly reminder, IS canon for Margaret. She literally wanted to die.) And in the case of the Buckley parents? Even though Maddie had a big hand in raising him, we know they were still there when Buck would get himself injured for attention. So obviously they DID care about his well-being AND they still found the strength to keep going to the hospital/doctor to get treatment when Buck couldn't go by himself because he was a minor. (This part doesn't get enough recognition, IMO. They hate hospitals because of Daniel, but still made sure Buck was taken care of as a child because THAT'S WHAT A PARENT DOES.) There's a thing that happens when you lose a sibling where *sometimes* parents find it easier to create emotional distance between themselves and their other kids because they live in fear of losing another and don't want to experience that intense of a pain a second time. It explains why the Buckley parents didn't want to go to the hospital to see Buck in his worst moments prior to the coma. It's not that they didn't love Buck. They would have been reminded of Daniel. They would have been watching another son possibly die. The fact that they went to the hospital after the lightning strike, no questions asked, shows how they ARE trying to do better despite whatever lingering fears still live inside of them after three decades worth of grief. We don't have to agree with their choices. But to insist they're in the wrong or that they don't even love their kids...spoken like a bunch of people who know nothing about the dark side of sibling death - the side where parents let their pain consume them rather than fight through it because fighting is just too hard.