Grief is a very hard concept to explain. It is different for all people and different for all situations. It is a process, and while it does have a definite start, it probably has no real end. The shift from unbearable, to tolerable, to…well….. to something that is just a part of you which is indiscernible from your other parts is impossible to pinpoint. I don’t know where I am on that continuum. I did realize just the other day that when I respond “good” when people ask how I am doing, I actually mean it. I have been responding “okay” or “good” to that question since the beginning because there is nothing else really to say. Even though the response is the same, the feelings behind it have shifted dramatically. When I was asked that question, the words from my mouth were forced and the pain in my heart welled up at even having to say them. Because I wasn’t good. I was consumed by grief and I realize that while it’s still there, it is no longer consuming me. My response now is focused on life and hope and thoughts of now. I think that’s a good thing. It sure feels better. It made me start thinking about how it is that that happens. I remember all too well the second by second wavering between grief and hope in the days and weeks after my daughter’s death. It is a horrible, gut wrenching existence… barely an existence at all. For a few seconds alone, you can start to put your life into some sort of perspective, but before you can get a clear image, a feeling of hope at all, that chocking wave of grief passes over your body and lands on your chest crushing you back into despair. It’s like trying to claw your way out of a hole, and getting your fingers dug into the steep sides enough to barely life your feet of the ground and then losing your grasp….over and over….tens of thousands of times a day. It seems that after even a short time of that, we would give up. The grief would win, choking the hope out of us completely, but it doesn’t.

1 Thessalonians 4:13

Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.

Psalms 34:18

The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

These two verses came to me many times in cards and in prayers, but I didn’t really have a place for them in my understanding. I do now. Grief would win, if we look at the situation with human eyes, but it is because of a power greater than ourselves that that seed of hope can grow. The seconds between grief and despair become minutes. Each time, we climb out of that hole just a tiny bit more before falling back. And then somehow, miraculously, you find yourself with more hope than grief, more life than defeat, and that my friends, is by the grace of God.

“In the final analysis, the question of why bad things happen to good people translates itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it has happened” Harold S. Kushner When bad Things Happen to Good People

I guess the last few weeks this has been on my mind more than anything else. I have not been feeling too articulate as of late, so I haven’t written much, but what has been on my mind the most is what I intend to do now.

First, when people use the term “getting over it” when talking about a tragedy or loss I just try to pretend in my head that they have misspoke. There is no “getting over it”. I think it is more like putting the loss into perspective. In this same book, Rabbi Kushner compares a tragedy or loss to a giant bolder. When you are standing right in front of it, all you can see is the boulder, but if you can step back, the world around it comes into view, putting the boulder in perspective and allowing that person to see the joy that world holds. I hope that is what I have been doing.

Through all of the ups and downs of this loss, I have tried to hard each day not to lose sight of my son, my family, my friends or our faith. I don’t want that boulder to eclipse these things because they are not only what have sustained me, but I feel like losing sight of them would not be honoring the memory of my daughter. It would be like making her an obstruction of the life I have and I know she was not put on this earth to be any such thing. She was and is, part my life – a life which I give thanks for every day – so I can’t make her loss the only thing in that life. I know I have so much to be thankful for, and I have truly felt that with my whole heart each day even when my grief has been at the worst. What I have struggled with is incorporating the idea of this loss into that gratefulness. Can you be grateful for such a tragedy? I’m not sure but I know I am grateful to have a daughter that is in heaven. I know I am grateful for the opportunity to be her mother. And, I think I can be grateful for that boulder that is now part of the landscape of my life. I am just happy that I can finally start to see the joyful world around it.

Watching TV last night, my son saw a commercial for the new movie Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. I didn’t even realize he was watching it until he looked up at me and said “Mommy, that boy’s dad died.” I could feel that tightness in my chest… not even my chest really. It’s like a knot in my heart. I reminded him that people usually die when they are old. That children’s’ daddies don’t usually die. That babies don’t usually die. That it is very unusual.

That knot in my heart has come up a lot with my son lately. Saying prayers about a week ago, my husband told him that he could pray for another baby brother or baby sister someday, if he wanted to. I wondered what he would say and expected some of his earlier responses about “fixing it” or maybe that he already had a baby sister. Instead, he stood up on the bed and looking at us both said that he would pray for another baby and that he would pray that this baby would be very powerful. Then he threw his little hands down and said “And this baby will not die”. We were a little stunned that he had come to understand some of the permanence about her death…at least that she wasn’t coming back…. but it let us inside his head a little bit more. We realized that since he didn’t understand the details of the cord accident, he was putting his own ideas together. As a three year old, he thinks that if you die, you must not be strong so if another baby is powerful it won’t die. A few days later he talked about the idea again. He told us that someday he wants a sister, but not a brother. Then he looked at me and said emphatically that he did not want the baby in my tummy, that he just wanted it to be at our house. It took me a second to get it, but since we told him “there was an accident in mommy’s tummy” he had decided that, again, if it’s not in my tummy that an accident can be prevented.

Although we talk about his sister openly and we always will, I’m glad that we brought up this idea of another baby with him. It opened up a door for us to what he thinking about death and made us realize it has been on his mind. He is starting to think in concrete terms and reason in his own way through this problem. Sharing these things with my mother she was so happy that he is expressing his feelings to which I agreed but added that it is breaking my heart to talk about these things with a three year old. But, we didn’t really have a choice and I know that it is better for him to verbalize these thoughts, rather to try to figure them out in his own head when he doesn’t have the knowledge to do it. Trust me, if I had a choice, I would rather be having these questions come up later….about a goldfish…. but that option was taken away from all of us.

I wonder a lot how this experience will influence him. It scares me and I pray to God that he will help us to have the right words, to do the right things that will have a positive effect on my poor son. It is just so hard to tell. I am still seeing ways that this has affected me, both positively and negatively and I know I will continue to see them. The most hurtful and shocking to me though came the other night. My son was saying how much he loved us and he looked so cute that I asked my husband to take a video of him talking about it and while he was taping I was looking at my darling son and I thought “we will want this when he is gone.” It was so shocking to me that I shut the thought out immediately, and it was so upsetting that I can hardly write the words now. That I could even think such a thing was so hurtful and scary, but the next night when I finally told my husband about it with tears in my eyes, he shook his head and told me that he had had the exact same thought. We have both experienced loss before and wouldn’t consider ourselves too green in that area. We are both strong and I know I have suffered through several trials before this….. but this…. this has ripped the rug out from under me so hard that I can’t even see straight sometimes. It has changed my perspective so that nothing seems permanent…. and not in a good healthy way… in a scary hard to live in fear way. Knowing that my husband had the same unimaginable thought too made me feel less alone and more normal, but then I thought of my son…. what will he feel about the permanence of the world? I just pray that he isn’t shaken to his little core like his mommy and daddy have been.

Today was my darling baby's original due date. I had no idea how I would feel today an i'm still not sure as this day is slowly ending. One thing I can say is that it is still undelievable to me that we are wherre we are right now. I teared up last night talking to my husband before we went to bed. All the months of excitement and joy. And now this. It almost seems surreal at this point that her death even happened. And where does all that joy go? How can I find peace with such an unimaginable loss? The lyrics to one of my favorite Mumford and Sons songs keep running through my head.

"Love; it will not betray you
Dismay or enslave you, it will set you free
Be more like the man you were made to be"

In some ways I think love is the key. True unbridled love for her is the only was that I will be set free from the pain. I have to let my love for her override the way that her life ended on this earth and the pain that is has caused me. Every day that I had with her was happiness for me. Every day I lived with love fer her in my heart. I loved her when she was born. I love her each day as if she is still coming....because she is. The difference is that with each day now I am coming closer to her. I know that I can't live my life with fear or with anger because of this tragedy. Not only would it not be fair to my family, to myself or the faith that I live by, but it wouldn't be fair to her. I can't let the event of giving her what turned out to be not life on this earth but life eternal, ruin me. Life is a gift and I gave that to her. When I can look at it correctly, I can see that I was not betrayed just because I did not get what I expected with the birth of a child....no one promised me anything. It was my own expectation. The only way that I can let this experience enrich me and not hinder me is by accepting that loving her despite what happened will allow God to continue the good work that he started in me.

Failure

1 in 120. This statistic has been on my mind since I read it. 1 in every 120 births ends in stillbirth. It is extremely disturbing to say the least that this many women have to go through such a nightmare and have to find some way to cope with it. Over the past days since I read it, though, I have found it oddly comforting to think that if that many women go through it and find some way to walk through the pain and carry on with their lives, then I probably can too. It’s a strange sense of connection that I have to women I don’t even know, but it’s such a particular experience, such a particular kind of grief, I feel like I could talk to any of them like I know them. I think too of women in the past. Long ago, when infant mortality was something that was probably sort of expected and a healthy baby and child was not the usual. What those women had to endure….and now so many centuries later and there are still many parts of pregnancy and birth that remain just the same. Some mysteries of that process that still can’t be seen of fixed even with all the technology we have.

The other thing I think of is the silence that goes along with these reproductive problems…problems of all kinds. I can understand it, even though for some reason unknown even to me I have continued on the path of sharing my loss. If something like 20 percent of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, and of those that don’t we get the unexpected statistic above, then a lot of women have to be sharing a lot of the same experiences. I am sure it is that as women, as mothers, we all deal with these things so differently and also, when does it come up in normal conversation? Probably not a lot. There are other reasons too, reasons that I don’t really like to think about. Reasons like guilt and fear. It seems so crazy. How could you feel guilty about something that you had absolutely no control over? I certainly didn’t think I felt guilty, but I have noticed that I inexplicably keep feeling the need to justify what happened …. justify it even to myself. I keep reminding myself that it was a cord accident. That my body didn’t fail me, that there was nothing wrong with me, that it was just simply a terrible accident. This is true, but I keep wondering why that is so important to me? There are many causes of stillbirth, and often, I think most of the time, the reason is unclear even after birth. So why is that distinction so important to me? Fear of being a failure. I know, I know. I am well aware that I am not and that no one thinks that. I mean, I have never heard about a pregnancy loss or someone’s infertility problem and thought anything remotely like that. But still, in the back of my mind, I know that is what I, at least, am afraid of. I am afraid of looking like a failure to other people. I guess there is something so basic about reproduction that we feel like if anything bad happens we are somehow responsible by default. The women who suffer with fertility problems, women who have random disorders that cause problems in pregnancy or women like me who have a baby that is born but never lived on this earth… aren’t they just all random, or bad luck, or part of God's plan in the end? So, of course, failure is a completely ridiculous feeling to have in such a situation. I have a feeling though that just as I know many women stand beside me with all kinds of losses related to reproduction, I have a sneaking suspicion that I may not be alone in my illogical fear of feeling like I failed.

A letter to my son

My dearest son,

I have been writing to you since you were born…actually before… in a journal, but a few weeks ago I switched from the journal I keep in my bedroom to a word document. That was because your sister was coming, and I started writing to you both. Unfortunately, I only made one entry to her. She was so close to being born and my pregnancy with her had been so perfect. You were about to become a big brother and you were so very excited. We were so excited. Finally a sibling for you and a daughter for us. I have no idea what you will remember from the tragedy that took place after those eight months of excitement, so I have to explain it to you here. Your baby sister did not come home. You were with us at the hospital the night after Thanksgiving when we went to the hospital because I had not been feeling her move as much as usual. You were sitting on a little chair spinning around when they hooked the monitor up to my abdomen and then looked at me with their eyes full of pity and said “We are so sorry”. Quickly, the nurses took you in another room and gave you a popsicle so you would not see the scene that ensued. Your grandparents came to the hospital and took care of you. I’m sure you had no idea of the nightmare your parents were enduring that night and into the next day. But, eventually you had to be told. We consulted with the doctors, our pastors and friends about what to say to you, and then they brought you in to me. Daddy and I pulled you up on the hospital bed and I started by telling you that an accident happened in mommy’s tummy and that your sister would not be coming home. We told you that she had died and that she was in heaven with Jesus. I didn’t know what you would understand of that, but to my surprise you started to cry. Realistic like your father even at 3 years old. You somehow knew that what we were saying was real and permanent. You wailed “But I don’t want her to be dead” to which we all cried and could do nothing but agree with you. It was one of the hardest moments of my life. To break your little heart like that, to let you in on the adult pain that we were all bearing, it took my breath away. But I couldn’t keep it from you. It was impossible. She was taken from all of us, and no matter how little, you are a part of this family and I couldn’t shield you from it. Later, the time came when she was born. Your father and I held her for a long time and sat with her and cried and smiled and loved her. Then we knew we had to share her with our family…Grandmom and Grandpa and aunts and uncles. Our family had to honor her life too and so we invited everyone in, including you. They all got a chance to hold her, and talk about her, and remark on how very much she looked like you. And then when they were done, she was handed back to me and we had to ask you if you wanted to see her also. We didn’t think it would be right to exclude only you, but I was surprised when you said yes. We reminded you that she would not be able to move or talk because she was not alive, but we wanted you to see that she was not scary, or something to be afraid of. We wanted you to see that she was a life, a child of God….your sister always. And so you climbed up on that bed and peaked around the blankets. You said nothing. You just looked at her for a few moments and then looked up and announced you were ready to go home.

These last five weeks have been hard. So so hard on me, but they have had an effect on all of us. You have been more teary than usual – probably affected by the stress – and you bring up your sister from time to time. At first, when you would see me sad or crying, you would tell me you wanted to fix it, but I think you have finally understood lately that we can’t and so you have stopped saying it. You have asked questions about heaven, and Jesus, and when we will die and if we will see her again. All so hard to answer for a 3 year old and my heart breaks when I have to speak about these things to one who should know nothing of this kind of pain. But yet, we have all kept putting one foot in front of the other. You have had to be so patient with me, but patience is not for three year olds. There have been times when I have been unable to be the mother that I want to be for you, and for that I feel so guilty. I feel awful that any of this has been put on you, but it has, and it will probably continue from time to time. All parents want to protect and shield their children from tragedy, from experiencing such loss. At least we try to avoid it as long as possible, but for you it came so early and so tragically. I can’t change the fact that me, your father, you…our family will always have a part of us that is not with us. A part we are waiting to meet. A part watching over us. A part of us that is literally in the arms of Jesus Christ right now. That is a powerful and difficult thing to remember. Yet, when I was crying the other day, you climbed up on the bed and asked me why. When I told you that I was crying because I missed baby sister so much, you hugged me and patted my back and said that we would see her. I wiped my tears, reminding you that she was not coming home. You sat up and said “no, no Mommy. We ARE going to see her. You know. When we are very very old, we will go and see her with Jesus.”

My sweet darling child, reminding me in so many ways that life goes on and that this is not the end. There is no end.