gone is the ultimate goal

In July 2006, Rosepetal’s first son V was stillborn at full term—one day before her scheduled induction and three days after a check-up with heart rate monitoring and ultrasound showing that all was well. She discovered the world of baby loss blogs shortly afterwards and began her own—Moksha—and joins us for Glow's Are You There, God? It's Me, Medusa blogolympics.

Although Rosepetal’s family is Hindu, she was not brought up in a particularly spiritual way. There were no daily prayers within her household, no shrine in a corner of her childhood home and, at the time, no local Hindu temple in her hometown.

"I spent a lot of my childhood rejecting all things Indian, not being interested in Hinduism and just trying not to be different," she explains. "I have no spiritual leader, and patchy beliefs and understanding. When I was approached by Glow in the Woods to write a piece, I felt a little bit fraudulent being put forth as a Hindu voice. But this gathering is all about context and not credentials, and so here I am."

Rosepetal was born to Indian immigrants in 1973 in England, and lives now wih her husband and living son in Europe.

It is in our hands to plan and do everything to the best of our capabilities but the results are in the hands of God. The way in which every living being comes to earth depends on accumulated karma. The better our deeds, the better the opportunities we get in this life to perform better deeds. In the end some pious souls get freed from this cycle of rebirth.

I believe that your young son was one such Divine Soul who only needed a short time before being freed forever from this cycle and will now become one with God. It is called moksha, the salvation. You [and your husband] were both the chosen ones for this to happen.

So wrote my cousin in India after the unexplained death of my son at full term.

Comfort was in very short supply and this was one of the only letters I found comforting at the time. It presented V as having his own thing to do, his own destiny, one which I could not—and maybe even should not—have prevented.

There are two main views on what moksha, the ultimate goal for Hindus, is like. One states that the soul retains its own identity upon attaining moksha and continues to exisit in an enlightened state of perfection. The other states that the soul loses all individuality and becomes at one with the whole—you might call the whole God—and is indistinguishable from it. A useful analogy is that it is like an individual drop of water falling and merging into the ocean. It is the latter which I believe makes most sense.

When my father died suddenly less than a year after V's death, I sobbed to a friend that I must have done something really awful in a previous life. But the truth is I don't really understand how the paths of different souls intersect in this way. How come V attained moksha and I became the mother of a dead child?

Today I find the idea that V attained moksha both comforting and distressing. Comforting because that is the ultimate goal for any soul. Distressing because it means he no longer has any attachments to me and no longer even exists as individual entity. Whereas once I felt sure that I would find him again after death, that the mother-child bond was that strong, now I fear that it is in fact impossible. Maybe that explains why these days I feel so very far away from him.

But there is a small beginning of a grain of understanding of what it must take to attain moksha. As I cling to my individual self, I see that I am nowhere near.

stung by the thorn of a rose

Omar was gregarious, a magnet. I’d pepper my friend with questions about his origins, his culture and religion, all so foreign to my own. What he shared with me so many years ago was deeply lyrical, simple and complex at the same time.

"Muslims don’t have a Sunday," he’d said to me one day. "Every day is holy. God is God. He didn’t need to rest."

How would the loss of a baby be integrated by this poetic, unresting Allah and his passionate, deeply faith-living people? As we stoked the fire for the Are You There, God? It's Me, Medusa blogolympics, I wanted to know.

Souad, Moroccan by background and living in Germany, is a key figure of support and sisterhood on a very glow-like message board for muslim mamas—a gathering of voices so familiar, and yet so unique. "The only time Fudayl ibn `Iyad was ever seen smiling," shared one mother, "...was after the death of his child. His reply to those around him was: 'Allah loved something and I love what Allah loved.'”

Five years ago, Souad’s first pregnancy brought her Sarah, born and lost at 22 weeks. "I was crying in disbelief," writes Souad. "I held her and kissed her, touched her little fingers and toes. She was so perfect but too small to live."

photo by dysonology

Assalamu aleikum, peace be to all of you.

Two days after we lost Sarah we buried her on the Islamic cemetery close to us. It was such a horrible event. I wanted to be buried with her—how could I leave her in that hole by herself? How could I dare to go home? I felt my heart breaking in parts and I wished for death, may Allah forgive me. Then depression followed. I closed shutters and doors and stayed in the dark room all day. I didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t sleep. I just stared at the walls and cried.

People outside lived their lives like nothing was going on, I thought that they were very rude. I thought the world had changed and everybody was in grief, but it was only me who had changed. My husband and I cried every day.

When I knew I can’t do it by myself, I was lucky to find a muslim therapist who had lost five babies herself—she knew how to deal with me. I am always thankful to the One and Only God that He connected me with her. She showed me this saying of the last prophet of God, Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him):

The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, said, “Indeed the miscarried fetus will confront his Lord if He enters his parents into the Fire. So it will be said to him, ‘O fetus which confronts his Lord! Enter your parents into Paradise.’ So he will drag them by his [umbilical] cord until he enters them into Paradise.” [Ibn Majah]

She showed me my religion all over again.

I was born muslim but I didn’t practice the way I should have. We talked about how faith in God was important and how patience plays a big role in life. We went over the story of Mary and how she got pregnant through a wish of Allah—in a time when it was a catastrophe to become pregnant out of wedlock. Mary left her home to have little Jesus (in Arabic his name is Isa, and in Islam he is a prophet only, not son of God) all by herself and return with him. No one believed her until Jesus spoke from the crib. Allah made her the most pious woman of all time. She managed her trial with strength and faith in Allah, not fearing anyone.

I have grown since then. My faith in Allah has grown—I feel His presence every day. Just having passed my 5-year anniversary of our loss, I see now how much I have changed. I think of her with such joy, and thank Allah for blessing me with my two living girls for this life, with my little Sarah at my gate to Paradise, God willing. My little Sarah is with Abraham and his wife Sarah, being taken care of.

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In Islam, religion is not part of our life. Our life is part of our religion. Allah tests our patience and our trust in Him. Are we going to have faith in Him and get over it quickly and accept it? Or are we going to challenge Him, be mad at Him?

The believer is like the grain crops—the wind continually beats it back and forth. And a believer continues to be afflicted with trials. We have to bend with our trials—not be like a strong tree that would break with a stronger wind. Trials cleanse our souls from past sins, as the saying goes: we are not stung by the thorn of a rose without some sins being forgiven for the pain.

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We are allowed to grieve for three days. We can still cry after that, but must get ourselves together and go on with life. Visitors come every day with food and drinks, and to talk. You are never alone. If we have a strong faith in Allah, we know that everybody has to leave one day and that this life is not what we are here for to achieve. We are here to work for the next life.

Still, it took time to heal. I went through the same things that might be familiar for you—I saw pregnant women and newborns all around me, remembered the foods I used to crave, had milk leaking from my breasts, suffered postpartum contractions and had baby clothes at home but no baby.

Many years and two children later, I feel blessed with everything that has happened to me. There is wisdom in losing my child. It was a loss for this world, but a gain for the next.

In the absence of miracles

Today we welcome Kristin, a.k.a. Msfitzita of Certainly Not Cool Enough to Blog, to the Are You There, God? It's Me, Medusa blogolympics table.

Kristin finds it hard to describe herself these days. She is a writer by trade and a mourner at heart. After losing four babies to miscarriage and her sweet son Thomas to a placental abruption during delivery in March 2005, she spends much of her time trying to make sense of her childless world and peacefully dwell within it.

She also bakes, crochets and gardens with ferocity. Because, she says, she is happiest when she’s creating something - be it with seeds, yarn, flour or words.

She lives a quiet, determined life with her husband and their 12-year old cat just outside of Toronto, Ontario.

When I lay on the operating table muttering frantic prayers into an oxygen mask while they bagged my son and tried to stop the bleeding that threatened to take me too, my relationship with the God I’d always known and taken comfort in cracked, crumbled and eventually simply fell away.

He had deserted me. I begged for my son’s life and buried him 8 days later while God and his whole company of angels sat idly by watching.

God was a big deal in my house when I was a child. One of my earliest memories, hazy and sweet, is of being cradled in my Mother’s arms in the glow of the early morning sun while she softly sang “Jesus Loves Me” and rocked me back to sleep.

Although only one side of my family is Catholic, both sides were devout, involved in their respective churches - specifically in the choirs - going back generations. And I happily followed in their footsteps, singing and worshiping and believing. Not always following every single rule (and often questioning those that I did), but doing my best just the same.

And then, in an instant, the foundation that I thought was as strong as bedrock rumbled, shifted and knocked me off my feet.

After all I’d done all my life to try to live up to the sometimes impossible standards he’d set, God vanished when I needed him most. He denied me my miracle when, to my grief stricken mind, it seemed that he freely doled them out to others. To others who maybe hadn’t tried as hard as I had to follow the path he demanded.

It wasn’t necessarily that I thought I deserve miracles more than someone else – I’m flawed in a million different ways - I just thought I deserved them too.

I’m still very much living in the aftermath of this perceived betrayal. I’m a tentative believer now. Wary and cautious. My church is made of eggshells and glass, and I live with the feeling that the slightest tremor could shatter it.

I’m awed by others who were able to run towards their gods and churches and traditions when I ran from mine. And I wonder what it is that gives them the confidence and faith that I lack.

Sometimes, in dark moments, I have even wondered if this is why I didn’t get my miracle.

Immediately after Thomas died, while I was still numb and thoughts refused to reveal themselves to me in useful ways that made any sense, I took comfort in the formal rituals of death that I knew and understood. Contacting the priest. Arranging the funeral. Going to the Mass. Wrapping myself in the security of the traditions and practices I knew and understood dragged me through those first horrifying days.

This was the only part of Thomas dying that made any sense. It was the last time I knew what would happen next. Or what, as a grieving mother, I was supposed to do.

When he was finally buried I had nothing left. No rituals to cling to and nothing but empty space and endless time.

And that’s what I discovered that God was absent.

Simply gone.

I looked and couldn’t find him. I asked and received no answer. I begged and pleaded and cajoled and was, each time, summarily denied.

And this abandonment fueled an ugly, seething rage within me. I continued to go to church, but I was suddenly an outsider in a world I that I used to feel so much a part of. I went simply to challenge God. To force him to deal with me. To taunt him with my anger. To let him know that I hadn’t vanished like he had, and wouldn’t go away without a fight.

Admittedly, I also went to church because I was too scared not to. This new God killed babies. My baby. And I was utterly terrified at what he might do next. So I went to Mass filled with hate and fear. For months.

I waged an epic battle with God.

There was no one great moment of clarity – no startling epiphany - that changed my thinking. I just slowly, quietly started to notice the anger seeping away. And in its place, a longing to belong again. To find peace. To make amends.

There is still a hole in my soul. There are band-aids and sticky tape and staples and glue bearing the weight of my fragile faith.

But I can accept this. If it takes a lifetime to grieve for a lost child, it makes sense that it might also take a lifetime to repair some of the relationships that were lost with him.

I have nothing but time. I can wait.

the charnel ground

Glow's premiere feature for the Are You There, God? It's Me, Medusa blogolympics comes from Buddhist mama and author Katie Willis Morton. Katie's son Liam was born with profound brain damage. When he died six-and-a-half weeks later, she embarked on a wider search for solace.

Katie is the author of The Blue Poppy and the Mustard Seed: A Mother's Story of Loss and Hope, due out this month from Wisdom Publications and excerpted, in variation, here with permission. She is also a contributor to the anthology Mourning Sickness from Omniarts. She continues to try to play through the days of chaos, working toward wisdom, graced with the good karma of having Liam's brother and sister at her sides. We're deeply honoured to have Katie among us to share her Buddhist perspective—that all our babies are cherished miracles and teachers.

"Chaos is part of our home ground. Instead of looking for something higher or purer, work with it just as it is the chaos in here and the chaos out there is basic energy, the play of wisdom . . . the basis of freedom and the basis of confusion . . . This charnel ground called life is the manifestation of wisdom.” —Pema Chödrön

The Ganges, and the burning ghats on it, is one of the most sacred places on earth for Hindus. Many old people give up all their possessions and go to live the last days of their lives on the banks of the Ganges bathing in her waters and praying. Corpses bound in cloth and draped in marigolds and carnations are carried daily on the shoulders of their families to the burning pyres on the ghats. Their bodies are consumed in the flames stoked with incense and prayer. The ashes are gathered and then scattered in the flowing waters where they mingle with the ashes of millions. We had no ashes to add to the river only tears and wishes.

I was a pyre—a combustible heap, consumed by chaos, and confused.

We planned to go to India to see some of the Buddha’s holy places like Lumbini, where he was born; and Bodhgaya, where he found enlightenment under an acacia tree; and Sarnath, where he gave his first teaching, and turned the Wheel of Dharma for the first time.

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The lowest caste in India is said to be 'untouchable'. Orphans too are said to be untouchable, because of their great misfortune that caused them to lose their parents. I felt untouchable too.

Kids who lose parents have a name. Husbands and wives who lose their spouses have a name. What do you call parents who lose their babies? It’s an unnamed, and mostly unvoiced, situation of despair. We might call ourselves the Blue Poppy parents, the ones who have seen our children flower, for no matter how small amount of time, and die. We are in a despair that often feels ineffable, which closes us into an unseen, unaddressed, sometimes uncomforted, community. The name widow or orphan at least recognizes the beloved person who lived.

I felt an unspeakable conflict when someone asked me after Liam died if I had children. I had to choose between saying no, which seemed to betray Liam’s life, or say yes, but he died—leaving me stuck in an awkward situation because most people don’t know what to say or how to respond to an answer like that. Sometimes people say what a horrible experience that must have been with, of course, every intention of trying to sympathize. And again, if I said yes, I betray the great love and beauty and delight of him that came hand-in-hand with the horror of his diagnosis and passing. If I say no, not horrible I was afraid I’d seem indifferent, or crazy, or cold-hearted.

Wouldn’t it be nice if the morticians gave out blue poppy pins for us to wear instead of empty, ceramic hearts—a small symbol that says what needs to be said in a way that lets us all be at ease? And better, how wonderful if we knew to say something like That must have been a powerful/moving/intense experience for you. All of those descriptions would be more true than horrible.

All people no matter how small, all lives for no matter how short or long they bloom, are powerful, full of power. Blue poppies take root in mountainous scree; there is a place for happiness in the hard conversations of loss.

Now that the rooftop of the world has been explored and exported, some initiates inclined to cultivate rare plants have made blue poppies more prevalent. It’s been rare for us parents to speak of our loss, which was thought also to be rare. Now, with care, the memory of these delicate and powerful lives, our Blue Poppy Babies, can be brought into the light, and we can see we’re not alone. We can talk about them, openly, who they were and what they meant to us. To be able to, to feel allowed to, talk about our Blue Poppy children joyfully is even more rare then talking about losing them. Our kind of loss is more common then most people know. And more complex.

There is a bright center in all that darkness of my loss that speaks to me still. Liam’s existence makes me consider this moment now, consider the blessing of time, and consider the power of wisdom and skillful means.

It still amazes me that such a small person in only forty-eight days could teach me so much and hold me in an awe that inspired me to love, without too much attachment and too much aversion, the world around me.

Liam taught me just by being there. By existing. And despite his limitations and everything against him. On the phone one day my grandma told me she was praying for a miracle. He already is a miracle I told her quietly not knowing how to explain what I meant any more than that. We are all miracles, aren’t we? That we are here at all, maybe that should tell us something. Maybe, we are all small miracles, chaos of matter, capable of birthing light even with our limitations. My heart broke because of that powerful experience of Liam’s short life, but it broke it open too.

It’s not just that I loved my son Liam; when Liam was here, in concert with the crushing dread, I simply loved, unstrained and easily, without reservation, without discernment, without judgment. I was open to almost everyone that I encountered. It was a sacred experience to live in love and to gratefully accept the world with all its awful, unspeakable blessings.

What was solely horrifying was what came after the time with Liam when he revealed to me how to live within a spacious mind. Having to go on living, which is no small matter, and move on, through the chaos in here and out there. And knowing what a struggle it will be since I’m intensely aware that I’m not able in everyday to evoke this understanding he drew out of me and not give in to my horrible nature that comes hand in hand with my loving one.

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We had no services when Liam passed. We waked him the only way we could at the time, instinctively, setting an altar in our front room where anyone would see it upon entering our home, keeping his presence with us the only way possible—symbolically, elliptically, and then, to go on living anyway.

the 'are you there, god? it's me, medusa' blogolympics

Maybe, for you, it’s God with a capital G. Or perhaps it’s the Universe. Or Allah or Buddha or Shakti or Jesus or Gitche Manitou. Or the random spark of nature, of dust and regrowth free of myth. Or nothing.

For many of us, growing a headful of snakes through the experience of babyloss drums up a host of unanswerable questions: Why? Is there really anybody Out There? What’s the point of all this, and where do I go from here?

We thrash and cry and stomp feet and we may leave, answering what feels like abandonment with abandonment. Then we may find quietness, and we may find our way back to faith, or perhaps faith with a modified floorplan. Or perhaps not. Perhaps we are comforted with randomness, subscribing to no particular being who may or may not be responsible for who stays and who doesn't.

For the next while, babylost parents of varied faiths—Christian, Hindu, Atheist, Jewish, Buddhist, Islamic, Naturalist/Wiccan and more—will keep house here at Glow in the Woods. As guest authors, they’ll share with us how their beliefs have coloured their re-entry into the ordinary world and affected their path towards healing.

We'll be publishing them on the site through the month of October, and at any point we invite you to share your own story on your blog using the same meditations given to our guest authors:

• How has your religion or belief system helped you to contemplate the universal questions that babyloss props up so vividly in front of the heart?
• How did the institutions surrounding your faith (church, synogogue, temple, spiritual mentors) acknowledge your loss—or did they? If your beliefs are more freeform than institutional, what other sources of acknowledgement or comfort did you discover for yourself?
• Have you had episodes of startling clarity, or of being neck-deep in theological mud? Where did those episodes lead you, and for what purpose? How did they affect the kind of spirit-baby mother you are today?
• Trauma and loss can inspire moments of doubt and lapses in faith. What conviction, experience or encounter propelled you through that moment and brought you back into the fold—or helped you be okay with staying lapsed?

We're fascinated to see what comes to the surface for you. Don't feel you must explain why you believe what you believe. Just choose one moment, one idea, one teaching or mantra or sentiment that rang a bell in your heart—or simply tell us where you stand at this moment. The above are simply prompts from which you can explore as you wish.

how to participate

We’d love to see you all join in this conversation. Please share your reflections on your own blog by including your link in the comments of any are you there, god? post—either in response to a story written by an author who shares your spiritual background, or to explore new angles thanks to an author with a different perspective. Or, simply comment as you normally do, adding your voice to this space.

If you’re inspired to participate by posting your own story on your blog, the only rules of this exercise are word count—a maximum of 1000—and a few other points of commonsense.

• Be naked. Your writing need not be a religious hallmark card. The more authentic you are about what you know and what you don’t know, the more provocative and valuable this will be for everyone. Be open to talking about doubt, and uncomfortable lines of questioning, and episodes of therapeutic vice (we kid, but you get the idea).
• Please write in the context of your own experience, and refrain from using your beliefs as a basis to explain the spiritual fate of the loved ones of others.
• You’re all such clever mamas and papas we feel it’s almost unneccesary to qualify this, but we should: no proselytizing, please. Your intent is not to convince anyone of anything, nor to serve as an invitation to your faith. It is only to tell your story in the context of your beliefs.

The same groundrules will apply to all participants, contributors and readers/commenters alike. Please respect the sacred convictions and learning of everyone here by adding to dialogue rather than countering it with theologic generalizations or debate.

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Let’s all subscribe to a Buddhist principle as we share: that of gentle speech. We are here to create a conversation that is non-divisive, encouraging, thoughtful, and reckoned and measured in accordance with solidarity and healing.

We’re curious to prove our hunch—that this gathering will serve to illustrate the oneness of parenthood, of love for children, of a need for light and hope that crosses all boundaries. That no matter what semantics we subscribe to and what shapes our beliefs take, we all share the same unanswerable questions and walk this path together.

The memory of birth and the expectation of death always lurk within the human being, making him separate from his fellows and consequently capable of intercourse with them. Naked I came into the world, naked I shall go out of it! And a very good thing too, for it reminds me that I am naked under my shirt, whatever its colour.

From E.M. Forster’s Two Cheers for Democracy: What I Believe

glimpses

Today's post is the first from a new contributor to the Glow in the Woods family: Jen of There's a New Monarchy in Town.

Jen is a transplanted Canadian living in London, England, and a first-time mama in the first raw months of life without her daughter Sadie. She came on board as the 7th full-time medusa after writing to us to say 'thanks for being here', and 'I've completely lost my writing mojo' ...at which point we ambushed her to join our motley crew.

Please join us in giving Jen a glowing welcome--we're grateful to have her voice in our midst, and we hope you are, too.

I look back at photos from our four days in Vienna last month. Austria is damn nice, yes. And who knew it was so good at wine making? I loved the cathedral concert at dusk: Mozart and More. The end note of each song hanging in the air like it was up for grabs.

I like the tucked-away bar we stumble onto. The music is good here. The ceilings low, arched, stone. Peanut shells on the floor, wine savvy staff. We decide to sample the local stuff only.

Let’s have another.

.::.

We sit in a tiny room on tiny pastel sofas surrounded by four tiny white walls. Three, if you consider the one behind me is all windows. The view is the Thames and Big Ben. If you were in a restaurant you’d be pleased. Here, it’s nothing short of stifling. If you were me, across from the specialist who took care of her in those last hours, you’d want to scream back. He takes off his glasses to look at me squarely, Australian accent thick, and I wonder if he barely remembers. His words are clinical. I’ll bet the farm his own babies are alive and well.

“I don’t care if you believe it would have happened anyway. I would have taken however many more hours or days or weeks we’d have had with her if that nurse hadn’t moved her.”

It’s what I want to say.

Instead, I rock, shuddering through my sobs, conscious of the three sets of eyes fixed on me as I struggle to recover. I yank two, three more tissues from the box beside me angrily. I stay silent. I feel weak and my voice has forgotten how to work.

.::.

I am comfortable enough now that my confidence has grown as steadily as my indignation. I am here to work. Why are you looking at Facebook? Why are you complaining about someone else before you’ve even proven yourself? Why can’t someone give me the answer?

I smile. I put in 11 hour days on occasion. I think about the possibilities. I dream of what I was meant to be doing.

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She would have been six months old on August 20th. I tried in vain to not imagine what she’d look like, what milestones she would have reached. I am okay, then I’m not, and then I am again. Okay being a different, different place these days. Grief, like an unwanted tagalong, saunters alongside me daily. She is vindictive in the way she chooses the most inopportune times to surface. I thought Sorrow was only a word used in love poems that include, ‘hither’ and ‘unrequited’.

Not so much.

If you have ever wanted to see what damaged goods look like, look no further.

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We have been sitting in the garden for five hours or more, and the table is now a sea of glass, empty and full. I look from my brother to my friends and back to my husband. I laugh heartily and often, and realize in the back of my mind that this is where hope lies: among family and friends, new and old. I am grateful and then in the next breath I am homesick.

I am the luckiest unlucky girl.

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While I took the four hour round trip to Luton and back to reclaim my passport, he went to our favourite place. Waited for me, had a beer in the pub that was once a jail. He is proud and a bit secretive of the contents of his shopping bag. I am always in awe at how much this process pleases him.

Later, he serves a stunning plate of monkfish wrapped in bacon. I fold my pajama’d legs under me and tuck in. Tastes like lobster. Baby squash, peppers, asparagus sauteed next to the sweetest new baby potatoes I’ve ever tasted. I wonder if there are two people in the room who have missed their calling. He raises his glass.

‘Cheers. To the future, whatever it may hold.'

.::.

Fleeting moments of "happiness" continue to catch me off guard. Do you remember the first time you laughed, or felt hope for the future, after your child's death? Did you feel guilty for allowing yourself to do so?