From the Gut

I read Deborah Davis’ Empty Cradle, Broken Heart: Surviving the Death of Your Baby about 4-6 weeks after Maddy died.  I found it . . . redundant.  I guess it was nice knowing I didn’t exist in a void, but confirming that I’d be feeling . . . exactly what I was feeling?  Thanks?  I guess?

But there was a gem in there that helped me significantly, and rolls around in my head to this day.  I’m sorry I can’t quote it verbatim because I sent off my book to another grieving mom, but it went something like this:  it’s actually a good thing that the major decisions we make during the time from hell are made while we’re sleep deprived and loopy and trying to juggle a million different balls and exhausted from crying because that way, they come from the gut.  Davis suggests that it’s a good thing we don’t over-think the major decisions, and that instead, because of our circumstances, they come from somewhere subconscious rather than based on intellectual reasoning.

If I remember correctly, Davis used this statement in the context of removing life support from a child.  But I really think this sentiment applies to a lot of decisions we made under duress, no matter the specific details around your baby’s death.

We did in fact make the decision to remove Maddy from life support.  But it wasn’t even a decision, really, certainly not one that keeps me up at night.  She didn’t have a nervous system to speak of, her heart was only beating thanks to machines, and she was fed through tubes.  At six days, she was given a prognosis of 48 hours -- on the machines.  And after seeing her almost crash (on the machines), twice, surrounded by strangers, we decided that if nothing else, we wanted her to go peacefully and in our arms.  The decision here was really what kind of death we wanted for her, not whether to grant it for her or not.  And I’m more than positive we made the right choice given our grim options.

But we made some other decisions that week:  we moved her to Children’s Hospital from Delivery hospital, where we were told that they might be able to offer us more in terms of a diagnosis.  This was by no means a life-saving measure, and our only hold-up on this particular decision was whether Children’s would honor our wishes and not take life-saving measures when we didn’t want them.  We were a bit leery of the bright and shiny technology, but they were more than sympathetic and accommodating.  We decided other things too:  to have the nurses take pictures.  Not to have Bella see her.  (It was a bit complicated anyway, since Bella wasn’t feeling well to begin with.  But we didn’t force the issue.)  To name her our first choice of girl’s names even though at that point we finally named her on day two we knew she would die.  To take footprints.  To swaddle her for her death instead of dress her.  To have her cremated.    We didn’t have a service.

I think an outsider might look at these “decisions” and analyze, but wait – if you were that mentally exhausted, don’t you think the doctors and nurses and family were somehow guiding you?  Leading you on?  Making your decisions for you?  Putting words in your mouth?  Last year in group therapy I met a woman who told of a scene when her extremely ill two-year old (he lived to a week shy of his third birthday) crashed at the hospital, with her in the room.  The lights flashed, the bag went on, CPR administered, and the line kept steadily flat.  For a good few minutes.  Her son had been sick since a month after his birth, his prognosis was grim.  The doctor looked at her with his arms in the air and the knowing look, the look that says, “I think this is (finally) it.”  And she said, without hesitating, “Keep trying.  It’s not time.”  And they worked, and a few minutes later, the line started bouncing, and her son zoomed back.  And she bought a few more months with him.

For some reason this story comforted me greatly.  She went with her gut, and she was right.  And when I told her my story of my decision to remove Maddy from life support, she said I was her hero – that she couldn’t imagine being faced with that option and having to make a decision.  But you did, I said, you did.  You did in the face of doctors telling you it probably wasn’t the right one.  We both did.  From our hearts, our guts, and we don’t question them.  We were both right.

I’m not entirely comfortable with all of my decisions, especially not having a memorial service.  I just couldn’t.  I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to do that seemed remotely appropriate, anything to say.  I was so angry and tired and heartbroken it just sounded like salt in a wound and following a script that I didn’t want to be a part of.  It didn’t sound like “closure,” and it didn’t seem like nearly enough for what this poor little girl went through.  And sometimes I regret that we did nothing – that I should have done something to remember, no matter how painful.  Sometimes I wonder if it would’ve made any difference in how some of our family behaves if they had been forced to acknowledge in a public forum that she was here and living and now she was dead and gone.

But, know what?  I really think I made that decision for a reason.  It was my gut talking.  It’s what flew out of my mouth when I was asked, and what I felt in my disoriented, barely vertical state.  And I think my mind was trying to tell me something about my limitations, and what I could handle at the time, and ultimately what was right for me.  For all of us.

I’ve seen women here and elsewhere struggling with the weight of their decisions already made:  to terminate pregnancies in the face of mind-blowing devastation for their babies, or themselves.   To name their dead children, or not.  Whether they held their children long enough, or didn’t hold them at all.  Whether they agreed to autopsies.  Whether they had services.  Whether they should’ve cremated/buried, or vice versa.  And as I told the commenter, I think given the extraordinarily shitty circumstances and the mental capacity we have at those moments, these decisions are made from our guts for a reason.  I don’t like to acknowledge the tiny voices from within because it sounds like I subscribe to teh Crazy, but let’s face it, there are voices that protect and warn:  don’t touch that, it’s hot.  Don’t go that way.  Change lanes, now.  And sometimes, as a parent, that’s the only way to make the tough decisions:  to listen to the tiny voices emitted from the heart, not the mind.  

I recognize fully that some of us were not given decisions to make; that medical personnel or family intruded and made them for us.  And I find that deplorable, and I’m so sorry if that happened to you.  That’s certainly a subject for another post.  But for those of you were given choices, which really weren’t – choices where A was heartbreaking and B was downright shitty – it’s probably best that they were made in the heat of the moment, while you may have been in a hazy drug-induced coma, or on your umpteenth night of no sleep, or after crying your brains out for 12 hours straight.  And now we simply have to breathe through them and recognize that our subconscious was probably trying to tell us something.

Easier said than done, I know.  Easier said than done.

amnesia

Counting the months on my fingers – November, December, January – I realize that it’s been more than a year and a half since the twins died. That's a long time, but, apparently, not quite long enough. When I sum up what I've been doing since it happened, I decide that, mostly, I've been trying to teach myself to forget.

Back when I started my blog, a commenter named Julie suggested that I take a look at the end of Deuteronomy 25, pointing to the verses about the Amalekites, a tribe who attacked the Jews following the exodus from Egypt: Remember what Amalek did to you on the way as you came out of Egypt . . . you shall blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven; you shall not forget.

Though Julie had no way of knowing, this was one of the biblical passages that, as children, my brother and I found particularly hilarious. We even developed a whole who's-on-first routine about it.

--Remember, one of us would say, you need to blot out their memory.

--Blot out whose memory? the other would ask, eyebrows scrunched in mock confusion.

--You know who.

--Just remind me.

--You need to forget the Amalekites. The Amalekites. The A-mal-e-kites, Forget the Amalekites. Remember to forget the Amalekites.

--Okay. I've got it. I'm forgetting the Amalekites.

Pause.

--Wait. I can't remember. Remind me again. Who was I supposed to forget?

But remembering to forget turns out not to be a contradiction in terms. If you can't erase the past through an act of will, you can obscure it, soften its sharp edges, dim the spotlights, mute the voices. Back at the beginning, when I was terrified that that I'd never be able to escape the words and pictures in my head, I deliberately questioned each of my recollections, cast doubt on every memory as it surfaced. Was I in the hospital for two weeks or three? What did the social worker suggest that I do? After a while, I couldn't be sure. And I feel fortunate that there's no anniversary date for me to dread, because I can no longer remember exactly when they were born.

I realize that many people, most people, perhaps, want something different, want, in fact, the exact opposite. But I sometimes wonder if remembrance causes more pain than it eases. And despite the obvious evidence to the contrary, I tell myself that if I had a way of blotting out all memory of the twins from under heaven, I would do without a second thought.

Here's the thing. Imagine you're on a ship setting sail. For a while you can still decipher the expressions on the faces of the people standing behind you, crowded together on the dock. Eventually, though, the expressions, the faces, the people, and the dock itself shrink, blur, run together. More and more, your attention turns to the grey sky and the greyer water in front of you. The waves curl white and you take out a chart and run your finger across it. On shore, everyone is eating dinner at their own tables in their own houses. The dock is empty and no-one is watching, wondering if it's really true that the tips of the sails are the last part of the ship to vanish beneath the horizon. Even if you looked back, there would be nothing to see.

once and again

I think I was probably well into my adolescence before I understood that the word "pregnant" could actually be spoken above a stage whisper.

When I was eighteen and groping my way blindly through the minefield of college sexuality, "pregnant" was one of the scariest words in my vocabulary.  When I was twenty-four and at my first real baby shower, traumatized by the balloons and the sorority-style squealing and those bizarre paper hats, "pregnant" felt like a word from some foreign language I couldn't fathom being fluent in.  When I was twenty-nine and in the midst of a divorce and a PCOS diagnosis, "pregnant" began to feel like a heartbreaking word, one that might slip through my fingers forever.  When I was thirty-two and the pee stick turned shockingly positive for the first time, "pregnant" became a magical incantation that I whispered to myself, secretly, almost in disbelief that such wonder had ever come to pass.

It was the next spring, at thirty-three and deep in the bone-numb grief of mourning my firstborn, that I lived all those incarnations of the word - the shameful and horrifying and foreign and heart-searing and secretly longed-for - all together, each time I encountered a ripe belly.  They echoed all the long weeks up to my due date: that could/would/should have been me. Bellies seemed to sprout up everywhere, the world a sudden minefield of them.  And each one, beautiful and poignant, full of possibility, made me gasp for breath and sent my shoulders hurtling up over my ears and my eyes skittering to the street.   To a babylost mother, there's little so evocative, so exposing and so wrenching as a healthily glowing pregnant woman, the Other, our opposite, blithely traipsing down a path that has dumped us remorselessly overboard and marked us Not Wanted On the Voyage.

Which makes the whole conversation about pregnancy after loss a little awkward, and being pregnant, in the company of fellow Medusas, a little like being the elephant in the proverbial room.

I am twenty weeks pregnant today...a round, portentious number in a body becoming more round and portent by the day.  I am on bedrest, that strange half-life, existing and interacting mostly online.   I am disembodied, in a sense, and perversely grateful for the cloak of this purdah, this enforced hiding from the world.  Because in being pregnant, I already embody enough of my own nightmares that I'd just as soon not trigger anyone else's while they're innocently out for groceries. And yet here, in this good company, I know my words have just the same power to wound as my silhouette would if you ran across me in the checkout...that in owning the elephant, I risk sending someone's eyes darting away from the screen, hot with tears; I tread on scars and the plaintive sorrow of why not me?

I don't want to, but I do, just in being here.  I know that, and I am sorry.

I know I am profoundly lucky that pregnancy after has come easily, or at least conception has.  I had my second son, then a nine-week miscarriage, then a positive pregnancy test that's brought us safe thus far to this midwayish point, all tenterhooks and cervical stitch and quivering, half-naked hope I can still barely look in the eye.  But it is in the hope where the luck resides: hope spins futures, however cobwebby.  And it is futures, dreamed and cast to ruin, that haunt those who mourn.

In the early weeks after Finn died, when I was still waking shocked to find my body empty and no longer pregnant, I wanted desperately to turn back the clock.  I felt wrong, robbed.  I wanted to be pregnant, to rectify this hole that had somehow ripped its way through the space-time continuum.  As acceptance began to beat its way into me, and I flailed like a fish on a line trying not to confront the weight of my grief head-on, I wanted again to be pregnant...to force the hand of fate and try to peek, somehow, into a future I could no longer imagine.  But these were not the clinchers, not the reasons that led me to throw caution and the pill back to the wind.  It was more a compulsion than a decision, ultimately...an inarticulate, animal pull, like a cat in heat.  I felt reckless.  I wanted to breed, to be fecund, to ripen, to throw myself at pregnancy with all the fierceness I could muster.  I wanted to make babies, hundreds of babies.  I wanted it like I have wanted nothing else in my life, like it was the brass ring, the hope that would bring back hope.

And yet when I locked myself in my bathroom to take that home pregnancy test, five months after the death of my baby, I didn't feel hope.  I felt ridiculous, exposed, foolish.  I imagined cackling harpies crowding at the door, taunting me: look at the crazy lady whose baby died, conjuring up pregnancy symptoms!  pitiful!  nutjob!  bwaa haa haa haa!  Even when the test turned positive, they didn't have the decency to disappear, those harpies...they just altered their tune a bit, drowning out any hope I summoned, reminding me that I had no reason to expect that all would go well.

I did not trust my body.  I did not trust my instincts.  I once again had something precious to lose, to fear losing, and oh, how I feared with all my heart.  I became fixated on dates, on counting, on parsing out days until the heartbeat, the ultrasound, the window for x to go wrong, the next ultrasound, viability, the gestational age at which Finn died.  

I still do it.  For a brief window last fall, I had the most uncomplicated few weeks of pregnancy I've ever known.  Even with Finn, I'd begun bleeding a few days after I found out I was pregnant, and had thought for a week or more that I was miscarrying.  With my second son, I bled from the day of the positive test, harpies bleating, and died a little each time I peed for the entire seven months after.  So when my pregnancy last fall hit the six, seven, eight weeks with no sign of blood, I began to strut a little, inside, began to race ahead of myself with hopes and fantasies...began to think, this is what it feels like to be normal.  I felt the strange conviction that all would go well.  Ah, hubris.  The nine-week ultrasound showed that the fetus had never made it past six weeks.

So this time too, again, I leapt in still bruised, still with healing yet to do.   I leapt in acutely aware that what I want and what I think mean squat, in terms of outcomes of this pregnancy, understanding that if we were lucky enough to get out of the first trimester there would be bedrest, possible medical complications, all these things that scare the living shit out of me.  I still forgot that for days before every ultrasound I would manage to convince myself, subconsciously, that the baby had died...and thus leave with good news but feeling worse, as if the inevitable torture had merely been postponed.  I still forgot that the societal discourse surrounding pregnancy - all bloom and celebration and oooh, fight stretch marks! and let's have a shower at twenty weeks! and if something were wrong, mama would know - would make me feel like drinking rat poison...or like feeding it to the oblivious smiling hordes, so certain in their entitlement, their claim to a "rewarding" pregnancy.  I still forgot that I would choke on the words, "I'm pregnant," just as if I were an adolescent or a frightened eighteen year old...that I would feel sheer terror at the prospect of having to expose that much of my secret soul - my fragile hope - to people even long after my body was negating the need for an announcement. 

What I did not forget is that it is a gift, this one more try.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

What is your relationship to pregnancy after?   Is it a possibility?  Something longed for?  Feared?  If you've had multiple losses, did you find your relationship to the subsequent pregnancies different?  Did you choose an alternative path to having further children? 

If you have been pregnant after loss, what was the experience like for you?

And lastly...is this a topic you're comfortable encountering here, and if so, under what circumstances and terms?

GITW awards: Amplified

Today we are proud to share with all of you a new feature of GITW-- our monthly award. Every month, on the 15th, we will announce the recipient, selected from among the posts we stumble on in our travels around the blogosphere and all of your nominations.

I think of the award recipient as a "Wow! What she said!" post, a post that stays with you, that calls to you, that shows you something you haven't thought of before. It can be short, it can be long, it can be lyrical, it can be hilarious piss-your-pants funny, it can be a rant. It can be anything that moves you.

This month, as the time was short and the idea new, we did both the nominating and the selecting. In the future, though, we humbly ask for your help. Unfortunately, the babyloss blogosphere is large, and the wider one is unfathomably humongous. Without your help, we will absolutely miss some of these incredibly insightful posts. And pretty please, with sugar on top, feel free to nominate yourself as well as anyone else. It's not at all weird. Honest. (And when we announce the winner, we will also list all the nominees for the month, so that everyone gets a chance to click their way through the richness.)

And this brings us to the official portion of today's program. The inaugural Glowing in the Woods award goes to...drum roll, please...

Lori from Losses and Gains for her post Never Enough Time.  It's a story of loss across generations, of time, of hard-won wisdom, and of course, of love. Go read it, and bring tissues.

I am particularly thrilled to be able to present this award to Lori today because she was one of the very first deadbaby mamas I "met" last year, and one whose words have always rang with quiet truth and wisdom to me. Congratulations, Lori! And please watch your email for your new bling.

Pst... There is another new post below this one. That's right-- it's a two post day. Hallelujah!  

Perspectives: How to be there for your friend

Lest it appear that I am bragging, let me fess up—I am sort of bragging. I have some incredibly supportive friends. We've been through thick and thin together, many times and in many ways. When A died, we couldn't imagine not having them by our side, and for the most part, most of them have not disappointed. But even among the very good ones, some stand out in this meta-way that maybe only a true geek can appreciate. These friends not only do what is right, but they are the ones who can articulate why they do these things in this particular way. They are the ones, in short, with whom you can have practical conversations about needing that damned drink already and philosophical conversations about your experiences, the asshats around, about why they are such asshats, and about what it is about the asshats that gets you so much. My friend Aite is one of these very very good friends.

Our little forest campfire hadn't even been going for a week when we got an email from a friend of a very newly bereaved mom. What can I do, she asked? What is there to do? A flurry of emails later, Kate put together the compilation of our thoughts and suggestions. Interestingly, that was also right around the time I had my little rant about the me-me-me type of "friends."

That was when Aite told me those two things have prompted her to formulate her own thoughts on being there for the friends in grief. Which, given the kind of friend she has been and continues to be to me, made me think that her perspective might be at least as valuable as ours to other good friends out there, friends who want to do what's right but are not sure how.

And so, without further ado, I am proud to present to you my friend Aite and her thoughts on being there. She is around and reading comments. She is kind of shy, but she promised to jump into the conversation in the comments if warranted.

***

Aite writes:

One time someone I know asked on her blog what to do when a tragedy befalls a friend. The post made it sound abstract, and most commenter didn't know it was precipitated by a stillbirth among our rather large group of friends and acquaintances. One commenter (who recently lost a close relative) reminded the blog's author of an experiment when two groups of people were told to keep their hands in very cold water—it's harmless, but it hurts. Both groups were to report the intensity of their pain on the same scale.  People in the first group went through the experiment alone while those in the second had one other person in the room. This additional person did absolutely nothing, not even making an eye contact with the participant of the experiment.  It turned out that people in the second group reported less acute pain. Clearly, the matters aren't that simple with grief, but my own comment built on the "presence in the room" analogy.  Here it is:

This topic cannot be discussed in the abstract. Let me talk specifically about grief arising from irrevocable loss. In such a case, saying things like "Everything will be all right" are out of question, by definition. The comment about the experiment suggests that you should simply be present for your bereaved friend. Using this analogy, before you can do anything else, you must enter her room. It helps me to remind myself that it's not about me. That thought helps to spend less time hesitating at the door before possibly deciding that it must surely be too late to enter now—no one expects you there anymore.

What are you going to say? Where were you before? Won't you somehow make it worse? What if you end up looking stupid? The point is that none of that matters very much because you, a friend, are by far not the most central figure in this situation, and the particulars of your actions matter infinitely less than the fact that there is nothing to fix. What's wrong can't be fixed. This is the essence of grief. Do not try to fix the irreparable, and you won't say anything stupid and inappropriate that could hurt your bereaved loved one.  Her grief will not get worse if she voices her pain. It's always with her. By and by she is learning to live with it, and it may take up a slightly different place in her life, but this process never ends and it's pointless to wait for its successful completion. And if she feels better right at this moment, it doesn't mean she is now better for good, and if she feels worse, do not be frightened, the rough patch will not last forever either.

Bereaved people often mistakenly believe that those around them forgot about their tragedy, or perhaps never cared in the first place. Those around the grieving ones, in turn, mistakenly think (even more often) that people who suffered a loss above all else want to be left alone.  True, some of them do, but that happens orders of magnitude less often than we tend to believe.

You have to realize that things will never be the same for you either whether you try to be there for your babylost friend or hide under a rock. If you bail out, it will cost you at least one relationship, and likely a good measure of self-respect. It's not that a babylost mother is necessarily keeping a score on who's been a good friend (although she is certainly entitled to).  It's just that you can't count on preserving your friendship if you can't deal with her grief.  Staying by your friend's side though babyloss is challenging and scary in part because it will inevitably change you as well. It may challenge your beliefs, your worldview, the way you look at people, they way you think, feel and behave in many instances. It will give you knowledge in areas of life where ignorance is certainly bliss. But it will allow you to continue and possibly deepen a valued friendship, to not be ashamed of yourself later on, and, well, to be of some support to your friend.

I think of my bereaved friend as the same person I've known all along, now in pain and grieving. This way, our history together can serve as the starting point for how we relate to each other after her loss. It's good if you can draw on things which always provided you with your strongest connections. (If you bonded primarily over happy carefree pregnancies—tough. You'll have to think of something else.)  You'll know best what you can offer to your friend, but realize that some of the offerings will have to wait for a bit.  Early on, concentrate on keeping up communication. The more you communicate, the less you'll need to think how to do it.  It's your responsibility to keep your conversation from being awkward and uncomfortable, so don't expect your friend to be articulate or take the lead. It doesn't mean she won't. But it does mean you need to abstain from placing any expectations on her and your conversations. Don't insist on her telling you what she needs right now. She may or may not know or concern herself with that at this point. If you stay connected, she will let you know in due time. Get in touch with her often, ask if it's a good time to talk, and take cues from her on how long she wants to talk. If you don't know where to start, ask her about something you two discussed in your previous conversation.  Express your concern about other members of her family. If there was an initial outpouring of sympathy, do not be swept away as the tidal wave recedes. Stay on.

You have to learn to put your babylost friend first in your relationship. On the other hand, you are responsible for keeping yourself on a firm ground. Hopefully you find other people who can prop you up. It goes without saying that you must have your grieving friend's consent to discuss her situation with them, if you feel that's what you need. But it's good to have someone to whom you can answer the question of how your babylost friend is doing in some truthful detail. I've been lucky in that my husband lent a steady, unflinching compassionate ear. I can mention to him still baby's pictures, cemetery issues, autopsy details, fears and grief without feeling like a pariah of the polite society. If you have midwives or doulas among your friends, they could be of good support to you because they often find themselves supporting babylost families as well. Stay away from people who are likely to suggest that you are enabling something unhealthy by being there for your friend, that you are reminding her of her grief and not letting her be all better already. Such attitudes are likely to make you angry and frustrated.  Depending on your personality, you may try to take them on, but I prefer to avoid them.

Early on you are likely to have a lot of conversation that start with, "Oh, have you heard what happened to the X family?" When you answer yes and that you are in regular contact with the bereaved family, many acquaintances will share that they are thinking about it, but aren't sure what to do. Communicate babylost parents' preferences. Many people assume that it's somehow indecent to contact the family, especially if they haven't been in touch for a while—that it betrays inappropriate morbid interest or something of the sort. I ask such acquaintance if she would have contacted the family have the baby been born alive and healthy. The answer is usually yes. Then what's the reason not to send condolences?

Some mutual acquaintances will ask if they can do anything to help. Again, communicate the family's preferences with respect to memorial services and charities of their choice. There may not be anything the acquaintance can do for the babylost family, but depending on your relationship with the person who's asking, you might get some logistical support. If you have small children of your own, ask people to look after them for a few hours so that you can spend time with your bereaved friends. This is very concrete, emotionally uncomplicated and highly valuable help.  In some circumstances, you may need rides or help with shopping and cooking.

As weeks and months pass, people will ask you how babylost parents are doing. What and how you answer is important. I usually say something along these lines: "Some days are better and some are worse. They find certain situations especially tough, and sometimes those aren't the most obvious things and present themselves unexpectedly."  I typically qualify this with "naturally" and "of course" in a few places. Here is why I think this works. It's important for people to understand that babylost parents aren't "over it" and "all better". It's equally important to make it clear that they aren't some kind of extraordinarily sad exception because they aren't. That you in no way expect them to be. That you don't suppose the person who's asking to expect such a thing. You may hear, "But I saw them as such-and-such social function and they seemed just fine," refer to what I said above about being momentarily better or worse.

I believe there is one more reason to make whatever effort it takes to be there for your bereaved friend. This reason, this goal is at the same time the most abstract and the most practical, the most ambitious and most naturally served by your effort. Our social circles are large. Bad things happen to people. It is important for us to learn decent, appropriate ways to respond to someone's crisis, both personally and on the level of our widest social circle. The courage to respond appropriately comes from experience. Contrary to the common exasperated cry of how hard, maybe impossible, it is to know what to do, the model is very, very simple:  remember that grief belongs to the mourner, come to her side, take cues from her, abide by her wishes, respect the finality of her loss. Do not expect everything to be all right again, ever. Do not leave. By taking these simple steps you challenge, and maybe even shift, conventional wisdom (or, shall we say, stupidity?) that it's oh so hard to know how to respond. Sometimes, for whatever reason, we personally aren't in a good position to help in a particular crisis. Stepping up when we can, we can help ensure that no one we know is left all by herself with her grief in her room.