milagros.

photo by emdot

I search through the cases of milagros. Through silver hands, patina-ed trucks and copper lungs. Medals of disembodied legs and small praying men with hats held in hands. I settle on a sacred heart, flames rising from its fold, and, at the last minute, point to a pair of eyes for Santa Lucia, for my daughter. I seek ritual now. The repetition of the familiar helps me touch my childhood, reminding me of comfort. When I get home, I dig out my antique wooden Virgen de Guadalupe. I place her over a handwoven fabric, light a candle and pin the ex-voto to the cloth. I am trying to remember a roadside shrine I found once on the Ruta Puuc, the road that follows the Mayan ruins on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico.

It was a decade ago that I followed the road with a rental car and a day pack. When I passed the unadorned shack on a road from the ruins of one Mayan temple to the next, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe caught my eye and I quickly pulled the car off the road. Lit and unlit candles dotted the ledges and floor of the little alcove in the middle of nowhere. Pictures, letters and thousands of milagros, little metal folk charms of body parts or saints, surrounded the statue of her. Each symbol imbued with its own individual and very personal meaning--some a prayer for healing, others a call for fortune, a change of luck, a dream of love or a need for strength. I hardened fast to the spot in front of the makeshift altar, enraptured with something primal within me, my indigenous roots suddenly alive to magic and the gods. There is a way Latin American culture, my culture, seamlessly ties together the ancient, Pre-Columbian with the  New World; the pagan and the Catholic; the profane and sacred.

A decade later, after Lucia was stillborn, I recreate the same shrine in my living room. I wanted all those things in my grief--a miracle, a prayer, a call for fortune and a dream of love. I set the Virgin up in the center. They call her the "Mother of the Apocalypse." Apocalypse, indeed. I add a sugar skull, a picture of St. Lucia, a rock, some water, a drippy candle, a Buddha and a mizuko jizo. A bit of heaven, of earth, of water and of fire, the altar seems to touch an ancient secret in me I have only just  remembered during the ritual. I whisper it to myself, "We have all grieved." Humans, that is. Humans have always grieved.

Humans have always pleaded with ancestors and visions of saints and demons and volcanoes to alleviate that which aches within us. We have invented religions around it. We have knelt in front of shrines to Coatlique, or the Virgin, or Demeter, and asked her to heal our broken hearts, to give us back our children. I feel connected to this sense of universality of babyloss. Maybe it is the only religion I have now, the only thing I really believe--that babies die and parents grieve. It has happened for so long and so often, in the first stories of the universe, that I bend my head in shame for being surprised that it happened to me.

:::

My mother reminds me again that I should have had a funeral for Lucia, so that she can have some closure. "It is different in my country. The whole town would come to help lead Lucy to heaven. She will be stuck here." And I instinctively look around my house.

Please let her be stuck here, I think. Maybe in that space between the couch and the wall. I could kneel on the cushion and peek into that spot, 'Hello, love,' I would say. 'I miss you.'

My mother says that in her country she would have the baby's body interned in the house. In the living room. They would set up chairs. The people would come, she says, the local village ladies who always pray rosary for the dead. They would coo about how beautiful Lucia looks, and everyone would see her as a baby instead of something unmentionable after a long pregnancy. For a week, every night, the women and her family would pray rosary over the dead. Light candles. Her sisters would sit. Every once in a while, a cousins would come before going out drinking that night.

"My sisters will cry when they are moved to cry. They will fix black coffee and plain soup. Her soul goes to heaven that way."

The silence of disappointment sits between us.

"You eat soup? At the equator?"
"It is tradition to not make anything spicy or interesting."
"Huh." My mother stares at me, as I stare at my chewed fingernails.
"It helps, Angel."
"But you don't even really believe in this stuff, Mama." I protest.
"What does believing matter? It helps. Those rituals are important. Maybe you just need a funeral for her for you to heal. Believe me, at the end of the week, after sitting and praying the rosary every night with those women all covered in lace, you accept the death. We all walk to the cemetary after the week is over. The vultures fly around and stare at you. You don't expect anyone to walk through the door after that. "

I never expected Lucy to walk through the door.

Though I have seven living aunts and three uncles, forty-seven first cousins and double that in the second cousin category, I have no aunts in this country anymore. Very few cousins, respectively. There are no village ladies. There is no way our baby can lay in our living room. I live in suburban New Jersey. My neighbors, while kind people, don't pray rosary at dusk for the souls of dead babies and grandmothers, or make huge vats of tasteless soup so we can mourn properly. My husband and I made decisions for our mental well-being, but I didn't quite think of my mother, or how American our decision seemed to be to my entire Panamanian family. It seemed right to have Lucy cremated. To fold her into the fabric of our daily grief.  To spare everyone a funeral the day before Christmas. I feel like I have always had my feet in two worlds. Panamanian and American. Brown and white. Joyful mothering and grief-stricken mothering. The living and the dead. And some days I feel like I fail both sides of each of those coins.

:::

After Lucy died, I ask my mother how to translate stillborn into Spanish. "We don't use that word 'stillborn' in my country. No one talks about it."  And I remind her that no one really talks about it here either, but we still have a word for it. She sighs and reminds me that she was eighteen when she came to the United States and she doesn't know all those adult words. The only thing she knows is nacido muerto, born dead. It is much more blunt than stillborn, which has the sort of poeticism to which I am drawn. But truly, Lucy was born dead. Beautiful and dead. Nacido muerto.

We have a long tradition of storytelling in my Panamanian family. Of hyperbole and tall tales over liquor and candlelight. Magical and wild tales of my grandparents and their parents are woven with both the vivid and proper. My family has stories of stabbings and sex. Music and cigarros. Affairs and guitarras. We even have stories of lost babies, found again decades later on the arm of a son, and affairs that end in our legacy. I weave my own tales, some days, about my daughter's afterlife. I tell them to no one in particular. I whisper the words, "Mi Lucia nació muerto." Then I set the story in a place of my invention, a dirt road cut through the jungle, pyramids rising in the distance and roadside shrines dot the way. The air is thick there with humidity and rainforest perfumes. And they sit, my Indian grandfather with his Seco and milk, his arm around his round wife, mi abuelita. My great-grandmother Isabel plays guitars and sings bawdy Catalan songs of death and sex. Lucia spins, her skirt flaring around her like a flame, as they clap for her young, beautiful spirit.

Did the cultural traditions of your family bring you comfort or conflict? Have you used rituals in your grief, and if so, how? Have you found yourself attracted to the traditions of another culture or religion? How have you adopted rituals into your grief and search for comfort? Have you integrated different cultural or religious rituals into your life?


The thin (disappearing?) line

I'm sure you're all anxiously awaiting the new edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders V (also known as DSM V, replacing DSM IV). You should be. In now-outdated edition IV there apparently was a footnote of sorts that made grief an exclusion to depression. In the draft edition of V however, the footnote is removed, and grief is essentially enveloped into the definition of depression. Which means, you, me, anyone who experiences a loss that s/he mourns (well, mourns deeply for more than say two weeks), will be thusly classified as suffering from depression. (To reiterate, right now V is in draft stage. The following discussion is on a possible -- but significant -- change in psychiatric diagnosis.)

If you've ever been hit up in a doctor's office by the quicky depression Q&A, you know it asks such things as, Do you have trouble sleeping? Do you have trouble focussing and making decisions? Has your appetite changed recently? And if you check yes to a certain number of these, you go on the doc's radar as being depressed. But if you're grieving the death of your child(ren), many of us probably answer yes to these questions, too. Have you lost joy? Does it take a great effort to do small things? Do you ever think about killing yourself?

So how to tell the difference between grief and depression? Is there a difference or is this a matter of semantics? Does it help or hurt our case when we say things like, "You never really get over it, you get through it and learn to live with it"?

There's an NPR news article on this shift in classification here.  According to this article, there is in fact a difference between bereavement and depression, but according to the doctor quoted therein it seems to be one of time: weeks. Not months, but weeks. If you're not rethinking some of those questions above in the space of 14-21 days, you will now be hit with a diagnosis of depression.

Huh.

Allen Frances has emerged as one of the lead critics against this particular change. Frances was the chairman of the group who devised DSM IV, and wrote an op-ed in the New York Times highlighting his concerns. (Op-ed can be found here; sign in may be required.) Among Frances' problems with the proposed change from IV to V are that healthy people who happen to be hit upside the head with a loss will now be labeled as depressed. Which is a problem if you're applying for health care or a job. Frances also worries that drugs will now be willy-nilly doled out to people in mourning, who either won't need them, or will unnecessarily remain on them. Frances writes,

Turning bereavement into major depression would substitute a shallow, Johnny-come-lately medical ritual for the sacred mourning rites that have survived for millenniums. To slap on a diagnosis and prescribe a pill would be to reduce the dignity of the life lost and the broken heart left behind. Psychiatry should instead tread lightly and only when it is on solid footing.

+++

I used anti-depressants, but they were not foisted on me by a doctor in the hospital. They also came later than two-three weeks. On the contrary, I went about a month or six weeks until it hit me one day that I was no longer functioning in a capacity that I needed to for the safety and well-being of my two-and-a-half year old. (I wrote about my decision to use anti-depressants here on Glow; the post can be found here.) I was also in the care of a psychoanalyst, and the decision to go on medication was entirely mine -- as was the decision to go off them in six months. They did not take away my pain or mitigate my grief. They did not put me in a fog, or even make me feel better. They helped me function. I still felt the awful full force, but could now drive and lift myself out of bed and otherwise make sure my toddler didn't play with knives while I hid under the covers.

Perhaps I'm different in that I actually sought help, and I'm wondering if there are babyloss parents out there who should but are caught in that whole "Can't make decisions" and "Small things are difficult" mode and don't pick up the phone to make that appointment. Or maybe I'm the rarity of which Frances speaks who actually needed treatment.

I'm a bit confused about the change from IV to V because it seems that there are already clear markers in place in order to make this distinction, markers that medical professionals are quite comfortable with. When I interviewed a grief counsellor for this site (interview found here) I asked her point blank what the difference was between grief and depression, and she gave a long and nuanced answer involving "normal" and "complicated" mourning, and the ability to "bracket" one's feelings later in the process and keep them somewhat separate from other parts of their lives. She also pointed out that it takes much longer than a few weeks to process loss and go through some of the more severe feelings. It seems to me this makes an enormous amount of sense. Are the people writing version V worried that psychoanalysts won't be able to do their jobs properly and discern these gradations? (Hey wait, aren't psychoanalysts doing the re-writing? Are they saying this is too difficult a job, or they can't be bothered, or what?)

Although I agreed almost entirely with Frances' arguments, I bristled a bit at " the sacred mourning rites that have survived for millenniums." Because I think babyloss is it's own little dark corner of bereavement, and I think we show here and on our blogs on a weekly basis that contemporary society has a ways to go before it wholesale accepts our particular grief as a healthy if not painful and uncomfortable process that people experience. Babyloss parents frequently speak of having no one to turn to or talk to, and in fact, document people turning and running in the other direction when given their news. God bless the internet, because places like this -- here, online -- have become a life-line for many who need to grieve and make sure they're in some bounds of normalcy. As we all showed a month or so ago when I asked for input on funeral services, there aren't as much "rites" as there is "getting through the moment to the best of our abilities." So where does this put us on the analytic scale? Are we difficult to place? So difficult that we might as well just lump us in the larger definition of depressed? I'm not saying because we as a group lack a cohesive and common social experience ergo we need Zoloft; perhaps this is a clarion call to examine babyloss more closely and for society to agree to abide and sympathize with us and give us the support that we so desperately need.

+++

I want to open this to discussion to the people whom it actually affects. You. And find out what you think.

But.

I don't mind anyone here getting defensive about being labeled depressed right out of the gate. Hell, I'm a bit pissed about it all, too. But I think we need to be a bit careful that our arguments against Draft DSM V's line of thinking don't play into any preconceived negative notions of depression, therapy, and anti-depressants. Society may not know how to deal with babyloss parents, but let's face it -- we're also battling a stigma of depression that paints its sufferers as weak. Weak and perhaps suicidal, delusional, or even alcoholic depending on what Lifetime movie you've seen recently. And there are people here, who read here, who have sought out therapy and used anti-depressants to their advantage, who have crossed that line between mourning and depression. Let's not take them down, too.

And what I'd really regret is slamming the new proposed change and taking down anti-depressants with it and then leaving a newly bereaved parent saying, "Well hell, I'm just grieving goddammit." And not wanting to eat his or her words two months later when they get knocked to the ground and are scraping the barrel because sometimes it's hard to make a decision, and sometimes its really hard to make a decision where you have to admit you were wrong about something, publicly. It shouldn't be that tough to ask for help, and to get it.

If I've learned nothing else writing and reading around here over the past few years, it's that everyone grieves differently. So I ask that in the comments, we're mindful of this.

So let's hear it. How do you feel about the proposed change that will essentially make grief a mental disorder? Semantics? Do you see a problem that could impact your life directly? Do you feel funny being labeled as such, or relieved that someone is even paying attention? Do you think you ever crossed that line between grief and depression, or think that you could? If you could address the people drafting DSM V, what would you tell them that you think might be helpful in making their decision? I realize many of you have already addressed this issue on your blogs -- please post a link to any posts in the comments.

Warrior Position

Angie, a writer, poet, and painter, joins us today at Glow in the Woods as a regular contributor. With the stillbirth of her second daughter Lucia, Angie began writing at Still Life with Circles. She shares a piece of art, music or writing from a bereaved parent or family member every day at the year-long creative project still life 365. Angie resides near Philadelphia.

Angie is kind, thinky, and an occasional firecracker. And so here, among us, she just makes sense. Please join us in welcoming her as yet another glowy cabin host.

~ Kate

I don't want her to notice me, but I keep staring at her. I will myself to simply ignore her, but then I look back to make sure she is not looking. My attempt to avoid her gaze wrenches her towards me.

"I know you. Where do I know you from?" My eyes fall on the eighteen month old girl staring at me from her shopping cart.
"Prenatal yoga."
"That's right! How are you?" And her eyes fall on the car seat propped in the front of my basket.
"How old is he?"
"Twelve weeks."

She bends down to see in the front of the car. Math is happening. Confusion is settling in. She stares at me, unsure what to say. I have a three year old and a three month old. Nothing is calculating. Awkwardness has just split again and again like some kind of quickly reproducing virus, filling the air around us, suddenly and oppressively.
 
"My daughter, from that class, died. She was stillborn at 38 weeks."
We drink in the conversation suddenly diseased by death.
"Oh my God. I have chills."
"Well, to be honest, I have chills too. I haven't talked to anyone from that class, or the instructors, and some of the most loving memories of my daughter is prenatal yoga. I have been afraid to see people, or even go back to a yoga studio."

I said it. Out loud. I am afraid of you. I am afraid of yoga.

:::

With Lucy in me, I felt more beautiful than I ever have in my life. I wore long flowing dresses and walked in the grass barefooted. I reveled in being rounded and beautiful. I was able to grow beautiful baby girls, and it made me feel like magic. I took yoga to connect with Lucy, my second daughter, after chasing my one year old all day. Prenatal yoga was the time of the week that was solely ours. As I practiced, I would think how incredibly happy I was on a deep fundamental level. Every cell of my body was contented. I wanted this exact life at this exact moment.

photo by virginia zuluaga

The  prenatal yoga instructor made each of us promise to email or call within 72 hours of our births. So she could tell the others. So she could know about our beautiful babies. She said the same thing every class for the new people and to remind all of us. She. Was. Serious.

I did, you know, tell her in the 72 hour window after Lucy died. I sent an email to every person in my address book with our impossibly sad news. It was the worst thing I could imagine at the time--having to tell someone in the supermarket that my daughter died.

We received many condolences. The ones that were most surprising to me were the ones that weren’t there. There was nothing from the prenatal yoga instructor. I wish I could say that I didn't keep score of such things. But I did. I remember every "I'm sorry," no matter how awkward. Every. Single. One. Weeks passed and I sent her another email about continuing yoga. And then a few more weeks, I sent another. Written delicately between the lines in invisible sanskrit, I wrote, "Please help me, Yogini. Certainly, you of all people have sat with a grieving mother. Certainly, you of all people can help me trust this body again. Certainly, you  of all people can shed a beautiful light on this darkest of occurrences. Certainly, you of all people have wisdom about death."

Two months and another email later, I received an email from the yoga instructor with many excuses about why she didn’t say she was sorry earlier. “I wanted to give you space to grieve,” she said. Because emails with a simple “I’m sorry” are always so disruptive, I snarked in my head. She gave me ten free sessions and wished me well.

To be frank, I forgot she ran a business. I considered her part of my holistic maternity care. We talked long after class about birthing. I thought she loved and cared for each little baby growing in each lumbering body that came to her studio. I thought she was a healer, some kind of secular shaman and a person comfortable with life as well as death. How do you soothe people, help them find a center, when you ignore a huge part of this human experience—death, grief, mourning and chaos? Can you sit with life if you cannot sit with death?

:::

To the beautiful pregnant hippy mother I once was with Lucy in my belly, I am now the ugly punk rock girl with pins through her face and a mess of fried green hair. I feel scabby and damaged. I reject yoga. The mind/body connection feels like bullshit to me now.
 
It is acute in this market, talking to this mother. The refrain in my head is, "The fucking yoga instructor said nothing."  But this yoga mother is different. She speaks with sincere compassion about my daughter. If she had only known, she said. She wears her health and happiness, her spirit and her graciousness, like war paint. I wear my grief and sadness like a Kevlar vest. I protect myself against who I once was, maybe who I want to be. But she made it easy for me to talk to her simply by dint of her not making excuses to get away. She listened. There is no magic formula to being a good support in my grief. Listen. Be brave. I want you to work out. I am rooting for you.

Sometimes I think my subconscious is a neodymium magnet. I didn't want to talk to her. I felt nauseous and unnerved when I saw her. But maybe I did want to talk to her. Maybe I want to invoke Lucy's name. Maybe I wanted one of the yoga women to know my baby died, while theirs lived. Or maybe it is this little girl staring at me. I don't usually imagine what Lucy would be doing, or where she would be in her life. I am not that imaginative. But maybe I just wanted this specific experience--Little Girl: Aged Same As Dead Daughter.

I thanked her for standing and talking to me a bit. Maybe, I muse, talking to you might help break that fear I have of going back in a studio and practicing yoga again. But deep down, I know it won't. I don't measure my growth in long speeches, but perhaps a sigh here or there. One day, perhaps, my warrior position will be different. Perhaps it will hold both life and death.

:::

I believe in the mind-body connection sometimes. Other times, I think it paints the world with a broad magical brush, especially when it comes to pregnancy. 'Just buy into the organic / yoga / no lunch meat / no alcohol / left-side sleeping / meditating / positive thinking thing and your baby will be fine.' And I think that is bullshit, even if I think all those things are good to practice in pregnancy. And I think it's okay to call bullshit.

What about you? What large part of who you once were have you rejected after your child's death? What schools of thought, or spiritual and mind/body practices have you retained since the loss of your baby? What have you discarded, and why? What have you found that's given you some comfort?

chance encounter

“We’re 30 minutes early – we didn’t realise how quickly we’d get here. We’re happy to go sit in a café if that’s easier?”

I’m put on hold for a minute and a half while he makes a call from another line.

“Mrs. M no, its fine, the vendor is more than happy to show you the house herself. She just wanted me to let you know that it’s her son’s feeding time so you may be on your own if he’s fussy.”

.::.

Another Victorian row house, another new and unfamiliar neighbourhood. Another reminder of just how big that ocean is between us and the nearest family member.

Three years ago I would have been in a tailspin at the thought of making this decision on our own. Now, having proven what we can survive together it’s almost… exhilarating, to be experiencing a major life change that does not involve major heartbreak.

.::.

A lovely and very English woman in her mid thirties shows us the front room before we hear a gurgle and the thwack of a sippy cup hit the floor. 

“That’s Alex, I should just check on him quickly. He might be hungry, he might not.”

I’m closest to the door and find myself heading towards the next room uninvited.  In the bright white kitchen a blonde haired cherub looks up at me from his high chair. His instant toothless grin is like a tractor beam. I’m at his side before I realise I had moved. Six months old, chubby folds in all the right places, barefoot and happier than anything. His entire face is a wet smile and eyes full of joy.

“Well hello, Little Man!”

An even bigger smile from both of us and our eyes are locked.

“Why don’t I just take him with us – it’ll be easier. I think he likes you! He’s such a little ladies man already!”

And then it happened. I gave his fat little leg a pat and held out my index finger to welcome his super grip. He bounced in his mother’s arms and waved my hand back and forth, back and forth.

I would have bought the house right there and then had she agreed to throw him in with the deal.

.::.

I haven’t even been near a baby in just over two years and two months. The last time I held Sadie she wasn’t my baby anymore. I wish so many of us here didn’t how firsthand how life changing that is.  I certainly didn’t expect that little Alex would make me laugh so purely with his unadulterated exuberance at the sight of my smile. Wee little hand, huge flood of… what? Relief? Happiness? Hope? Maybe all of the above.

.::.

What was your first experience with another child after your loss? How soon was it? How did it make you feel?



Hearing Voices

Last year I befriended a woman who moved to my city to give birth at Children's with the knowledge that her baby girl would need surgery. (To cut to the chase: Her daughter, though she came close to brink -- dangling her feet off the ledge even -- survived and is now a beautiful fat one year old.) I packed up some cookies and fresh fruit and went down to the hospital one spring day to see how the parents were doing. I had no intention of "helping" really, but simply listening, which I did.

There is, as many of you know, a certain language that comes with a stay in the NICU. It's full of medical jargon and loaded with fear. But for many, it's also dripping with sarcasm, and dotted with macabre humor: responses to doctors, observations on treatments, acknowledgment of fears. It's also a kind of humor that I could see someone with no reference point not understanding, being made uncomfortable by, or even being offended by. I of course smiled and giggled (while passing out kleenex and adding my own one liners when appropriate).

The respirator machine that shakes like a hotel bed hopped up on quarters. The doctors that are so young you watch that you don't slip and call them Doogie. The lines from doctors that they have no idea will stay in your consciousness for months or years to come: "The sickest baby in the hospital." "We're not out of the woods." How many times did you discuss your child with a man in a suit while you were topless and hooked up to your double-pump?

Here at home, we had our own humor after death, too. While trying to cease lactation, Bella asked, in full voice in front of a kitchen full of people, "Mommy why are wearing Salad on your boobs?" To my husband, through tears, telling him that the receptionist at my six-week post-partum visit asked if I brought the baby: "Why yes, here she is!" whipping a box out of my purse.

Riffing off the bad lines that people fed us; musing on the irony of a relative who gifted us with alleged daily prayers at the Vatican for our unbaptized daughter whom we pulled off life-support.

"I made the therapist cry today." High five.

One reason I love my husband as much as I do is his sense of humor, and the way we can banter back and forth. We deal through a lot of adversity through humor -- it's who we are. And a week after Maddy died I realized this was a place where humor didn't work. I didn't know how to communicate with him for any length of time seriously. I dragged us into therapy.

Eventually we found the funny and the means to talk again, and when I started blogging six months later I used this voice. My voice. The only one I've ever known, the one that got me through everything from infertility to my doctorate to watching my team lose in the championship game. I needed to fall back on it, to rest on it, to rely on it, and allow it to guide me through this passage, too. I only knew how to communicate effectively with cynicism and profanity and funny. It would have to do.

In grad school, one of my advisors said a line to me regarding one of my drafts that went down as one of THOSE lines -- that get repeated and used in conversation by everyone, especially when drunk, and ultimately become quite funny:

"You don't read much poetry, do you."

No. I don't. I don't write that way either, obviously.

I was a bit surprised when I noticed that readers whom I'd describe as, let's say, "religious," began reading my blog. No more surprised than when I consistently started reading theirs in return. I think we all need to fall back on our voice, whether it's religious or spiritual, lyric or poetic, wry or fucking side-splitting. And when writers channel their grief through that voice, the one, the true one, I'm riveted. It's always raw and powerful and beautiful. It's as if this grief has introduced me to a world of different languages.

There are writers who question their voice -- question the appropriateness of humor, the need for positive thinking, or the bedrock of their religion. They swim in their voice, challenging the metaphors, pushing the limits of prose and sacredness and flat-out good taste. Others find a new voice -- a dollop of sarcasm or perhaps a streak of divinity. Even though I never questioned nor found God or the sonnet, I love these writers too.

About the only voice I can't bear to sit with is one that is obviously false, the one that hangs like a bad suit: It's glaring to me when the person brings up the Almighty in the first post and it's evident they haven't used the language in years if ever. It's painful when they drop an F-bomb and are awkwardly, overtly, uncomfortable about it. When they start in, very soon, too soon, with the happy-sunshine-y "I'm finding the positive in this," and "This has given me unbelievable perspective and strength." Or when they assume that speaking of a deceased child necessitates florid vocabulary and intricately constructed metaphors when it's evident to the reader they simply need to cough up the facts and state the obvious: My baby died. I'm fucking sad.

I know people adopt false voices for a variety of reasons -- convention, assumption, or because mom and dad are reading the blog. I feel for them. I think the only way through this mess is leaning on what you know, what is yours, what this can't take away. My voice, thankfully, did not die with my baby.

How would you describe your voice? Did it change after babyloss? Do you find yourself gravitating towards writing that uses a certain type of voice? Are there voices you appreciate even though they're not yours? Does your blog voice differ from your true voice, and if so, why?

Dear Friend,

I'm so sorry you thought of us when your friend's newborn died this week.  I'm sorry for your friends and their lost child most of all, but I'm sad for you, and for us, too, that we are now experts at this.  But fear not, you contacted the right people.  We can help you help them.

First of all, start cooking.  Do laundry, clean the house, take charge.  Keep it up for at least a month, with the help of other friends.  Right away, order her to bed and give him a beer or nine.  Yeah yeah yeah alcohol is dangerous and addictive and all that, but I swear to whatever god is out there, delicious malted barley and fermented hops probably saved my life in those first days.  Way better than the anti-depressants or valium they'll probably want.  But let them have them, too, for a little while.  Obviously, not together.  But a little bit of numb is fine.  They are in shock-panic-disaster-mode.  All their alarms are going off and nothing makes any sense at all right now.  Let them grieve, but help them be calm, too, if you can.

And frankly, yeah they are probably a little suicidal and a little crazy and definitely extremely lost.  Their souls have just been shredded by the Universe itself.  They are fucked up and they need help.  That is why you have to hold them tight and keep them close.  Do it in shifts.  Be with them, but don't overwhelm them with people.  If anyone manages to make either of them laugh no matter how dark and awful the humor, that is an extremely good sign.  Don't bring in clowns, but aim for a little bit of black humor if they are the type that needs that.  I did and my brothers did me right.  Those moments of dark levity were less-awful-spots in a terrible, incomprehensible time.

Don't make them have to make decisions.  In the first days after Silas's death I could only think a few minutes into the future and not all that successfully.  "Should I get up?  Should I eat?  Should I bother even thinking about any of that?"  I felt alien and awful in the outside world.  I'll never forget my first errand out to the bank and a Walgreens after he died.  I returned worn out from a ten minute ride up the street.  I was crazed with grief and overwhelmed by the fact that the world just kept on going even though mine had come to a complete stop.

Do anything you can to make them have less to think about.  Right now they are trying to figure out what the fuck they are supposed to do with their dead child, with their demolished hopes, with their annihilated lives.  Don't make them have to think about chores, too.

And yeah, she's worse off than him right now in a more immediate, physical way.  But then the other way around, that also makes it worse for him, too.  His disconnection from the physical bond mother and child shared is also a loss for him.  Mentally, emotionally, chemically, he was preparing to meet and bond with that child, just like the mother, but now he has even less than what she had, in a way.  Really all I'm saying is he's working hard to stay strong and upright for her, but don't mistake courage for strength.  I always felt like I was on the verge of a bottomless, endless void.  Stand there and face it with him if you can, and don't let that void consume either of them.

A death like this can be a poison to their souls.  It will take a great deal of patience and time for either of them to even begin to fake normalcy.  Shower them with love.  Talk about their child, use her name.  Look them in the face and the eyes when you discuss the absurd awfulness of their plight.  Tell them how much you miss her.  Do not be afraid to be direct and honest and clear with them.  The death of their child is like a blazing nova of utter blackness and its awful light reveals everything about their lives, their hopes, and about their friends and their families.  Do not be afraid to stand directly next to them and face directly into that palpable pain if you want to keep them alive and keep them protected and keep them as friends.  Those that cannot handle what they are going through won't stay around long, and they will know very quickly who they can count on.  Be someone they can always count on, because right now they can't count on anything at all.  The Universe itself has turned on them.

Never say that everything happens for a reason.  Never try to mollify them with talk of angels and meant-to-be's.  Never say that God works in mysterious ways.  Never compare a trivial loss in your own life with what they are going through.  Don't talk about babies.  Don't talk about hope and somedays and futures.  Help them deal with the immediate dilemmas of everyday life (ie what show to watch, what time to eat, that it is okay to not shower) and don't even consider trying to tell them anything about the true nature of reality and what good might someday come.  Any of that is just dressing up a shit sandwich with rotten tomatoes and wilted lettuce.

I'm sorry.  I love you.  I miss your child.  I'm here for you.  Let me do that for you.  Those are the only things you need to say right now and each and every one should be followed with a tight and true hug.  Cry with them.  Be silent with them.  Talk with them if they can find any words at all.

Lastly, don't forget to take care of yourself, as well.  Work with your friends to always keep someone close, but make sure to sustain your own life so that you are strong and ready when you are with them.  They will be strange and sad and difficult, but if you love them and are patient you just may keep a flicker of light alive in their souls.  But don't worry about sanity right now, that's a lost cause anyway.  Just leave breadcrumbs on the trail back and help them be a little bit okay for a little bit of one day, each day, every day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

They are on a whole new timescale now.  They are now counting the moments since they lost their child, and nothing will ever be even remotely the same again.  They need company in this new landscape, though, and that means you need to help them find their way step by step.  But don't call them baby-steps, they just might punch you in the face for that one.

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What else everyone?  What advice can you give to the friends and family of someone that has just lost a child?  And what do you disagree with from what I said?  This path is completely different in so many ways for each and every person so I'm sure my advice is anything but exactly right for everyone.  What did I miss or get wrong?