back and forth, back and forth

Three days after we’d arrived at the hospital I was standing over her, staring in amazement. Her legs and arms were cycling away, occasionally bumping herself in the head, not used to the weight of a heavily bandaged arm. How could this beauty possibly be sick? My little Munckin. She smiled at me, a real smile, for the first time. My heart came close to exploding with something a thousand times stronger than love.

“Oh, Munchie! What are we going to do with you?!?”

In spite of our surroundings, I was ecstatic to see that perfect miniature grin.

.::.

“I thought you would be rolling on the floor, screaming and inconsolable.”

“You’re so strong.”

“Do you know how many women would have ended up in a mental ward?”

“I don’t know where you find the strength.”

“My God Jen, you’re just so strong.”

.::.

When they told me she was gone I didn’t understand at first. A woman, who remains faceless in my memory to this day, appeared at my side. She knelt down next to me and I think she took my hand. We had been pushed to the side to give way to the chaos.

“But... but... they’re still working...?”

Things still seemed to be happening. I was waiting for the miracle I just knew would happen. I was confused.

“I’m so sorry. No. Sadie’s gone.”

Four NICU doctors and nurses who had minutes before raced into the room still stood around her tiny bed, doing what they do. The yelling had stopped, but they were still moving. Machines continued to beep. It wasn’t until we walked to her side that they all stopped and looked up. When I saw how reluctant they were to look me in the eye, I knew. Two stayed with us, unhooking her as they asked if I wanted to hold her.

.::.

There are days that are darker than others. I want to call the office and be free to say, “Sorry, but I just can’t do it. It’s all meaningless don’t you see, because today I’ll be useless to anyone but her. She’s dead and I can’t bear to wash my hair and I really just need to stay at home to be with her.” I start to cry in the shower and hate the world for expecting me to stop and get on with it. The only her left for me to be with is not one anyone else understands.

Yet it’s exactly what I do: stop and get on with it. I smile and charm and make plans for the weekend. I maintain what others have built for me and wonder what parts, if any, I can actually lay claim to.

.::.

It was my husband who told me he’d expected me to be inconsolable. It was meant to be a testament to my strength. Like every other grief related ‘compliment’ I’ve had since. My dear partner, who on the darkest of days when I can’t bring myself to utter a single word, hugs me tight through my fragile silence. Having learned it’s easier to not make me vocalize, he simply holds my hand, finds me a tissue.

“It’s ok honey, cry.”

I am silent. I turn away. No words, inside or out, seem able to do what I feel justice. I wipe my tears and will myself to regain control. I want to tell him how bad it still is, but can’t help but feel guilty for forcing it all to his surface when he seems to have found a safe and quiet place to keep it. I know he hurts. I love him to my core and don’t want to magnify his pain with my own unyielding grief.

.::.

I prop myself up. I make my most valiant effort to be what everyone sees. I hope for balance at best. I wonder if the continuous memories playing like home movies in my mind make me a little too broken still.

What I can’t tell people, the fear I barely allow myself to acknowledge, is that I am terrified of what would happen if I did let go. What if my so-called strength is really just a farce? What if I did give in, outside of my own head, and found I couldn’t make it stop? It feels entirely possible. I can’t bear the thought of being so exposed. Like a fish in a bowl, examined from every angle, unable to escape the waiting eyes of those who used to call me strong. The jig would be up.

In the list of adjectives I’d use to describe myself, strong doesn’t even register.

.:.

I’m still so utterly raw; seven and a half months later, but most days feel I’m now left to navigate this journey independently, even with a supportive and loving partner. I wonder if other Babylost Mamas feel an obligation to keep up an appearance of togetherness after a certain amount of time has passed?

strong threads

I don't remember how I found her...clicked over from a comment at another blog, probably.  Her story was familiar - a son, stillborn, his absence huge and bewildering - and yet utterly specific...one particular little face missed, one particular family sorrowing, one particular struggle to resurface.  I was in a quiet place in my own grieving and surfacing, and the I hear you.  I feel you.  I'm so sorry that resonated in me never found a voice.  But I clicked back now and then, because her words moved me and her story felt like kin, her Callum an ephemeral brother to my Finn in this strange circle that binds us, the babylost.

Then she shocked me into speech.  Callum's anniversary, and a link to a series of baby slings by the company she started, then sold in the aftermath...slings that are being sold this month under the wry banner of Carry On My Wayward Son, with all proceeds donated to stillbirth research.  Carry on, indeed.  And oh, how I laughed, having howled that cockrock anthem beside moonlit bonfires, choking on smoke and the high notes - the perfect title.  But then I clicked through, and saw the label on the slings, and tears began to burn behind my eyes.

Because in early 2006, pregnant for the second time, still raw with grief and hospitalized on bedrest four hours from home, isolated and in despair at what felt like the hopeless cause of ever bringing home a live baby, it was her sling, made by her own hands, that happened to be the first baby item I ever dared purchase.  It was an act of defiance and an act of hope, clicking "buy now" there in that awful Craftmatic bed.  I lay still, eyes darting to the door, afraid that someone would catch me red-handed in the ridiculous, preposterous act of imagining myself with a happy ending.

I got my happy ending, that time.  The baby came safely, as did the sling.  It was the cocoon from which I introduced my son to the world during his early days...and since September, it's been doing the same for his sister.  It's made of strong stuff, well-sewn.  Of all the accoutrements of parenthood that have cluttered my house over the past few years, it's the one that I value most deeply, the one that testifies  to how tiny my babies were when they nestled almost invisible within it, the one that symbolizes my hard-won motherhood for me.  But realizing that C. sewed that sling - C. who did not get her happy ending with Callum - knocked the breath out of me and made me weep.  My heart sang out to her, You! You helped me heal! and I knew that she would understand.  And yet I would not wish anyone in a position to know how much that means.

Connection matters.  A year ago this weekend Kate and I first met face-to-face, and sat together and talked into the night of our sons and of Medusa-hood and of community and grief and love.  Glow in the Woods is the progeny of that night, thanks to Kate's tireless work and the contributions of everyone who writes here and visits here and comments here...it is, more than anything, a place for connections.  The threads that tie us within this circle of babyloss are messy threads, narratives of sorrow and brokenness, healing and resurfacing.  When the threads are all woven together, connected, our hope is that they make the circle a less lonely place to be...and make it easier to carry on.

What role have connections with other babylost parents - online or in person - played in your own coping and healing?  Have you had any random encounters or small-world experiences where your babylost identity and the rest of your life have collided, as I did with C?  Have you met many people who share your experience outside the ether of teh internets?

strength in the ashes

Angie of Bring the Rain brings our Are You There, God? It's Me, Medusa blogolympics to a close, rounding out a month of new voices that's left us all deeply moved, comforted and invigorated in the heart.

Angie lost her first child to miscarriage in January of 2002, and lost her fourth daughter Audrey Caroline shortly after birth on April 7th, 2008 due to conditions that made her incompatible with life. In her writing, Angie has shared what often feels like an intimate conversation between God and herself, a Christian walking the path of spirit-baby motherhood.

Speaking to the extraordinary response she received on her October 15th post to acknowledge the sisterhood (and brotherhood) of babyloss, she writes: "If you believe in Him tonight, you will know what it feels like to trust completely in the One who holds you high above the discernible ground. You know that it isn't always perfect, and it isn't always easy. It is entirely possible that something will give way and you will fall, head first into the ache that is this life.

But on the other hand, you'll never know unless you jump."

"Jacob, where do you find the strength to carry on in life?"

"Life is often heavy only because we attempt to carry it," said Jacob. "But I do find a strength in the ashes."

"In the ashes?" asked Mr. Gold.

"Yes," said Jacob, with a confirmation that seemed to have traveled a great distance. "You see, Mr. Gold, each of us is alone. Each of us is in the great darkness of our ignorance. And, each of us is on a journey. In the process of our journey, we must bend to build a fire for light, and warmth, and food. But when our fingers tear at the ground, hoping to find the coals of another's fire, what we often find is the ashes.

And, in those ashes, which will not give us light or warmth, there may be sadness, but there is also testimony. Because these ashes tell is that somebody else has been in the night, somebody else has bent to build a fire, and somebody else has carried on. And that can be enough, sometimes."

—Noah benShea

I was about 18 weeks along when they told me she wouldn't live. After the diagnosis, the doctor asked me how I felt, and I replied, "My Jesus is the same as He was before I walked in here." I believed it. I still believe it.

But it hurts.

We decided (against medical advice) to carry her as long as possible because we wanted to leave room for God to perform a miracle. I spent the next several months answering difficult questions from strangers about when my baby was due, what we were naming her, whether or not she would have red hair like her sisters, what were we thinking to have another baby when we already have three daughters aged 5 and under. The sweet shape of my growing tummy belied the truth. She wasn't going to be ours. Not the way we wanted her to be.

I spent many, many nights in tears of panic and desperation. I realized something about my faith that I hadn't known up until that point in time: I really believed in Him.

It's one thing to say it. It is another thing entirely to do it.

I found myself curled up in bed after the kids were sleeping, talking to the Lord like He was a friend sitting beside me. I told Him about Audrey and the way I loved her. I told Him I didn't think I could live without her, that I wanted it to be a dream. He never failed to meet me where I was, when I had nothing else that spoke to me. And so, in the darkest season of my life, I found myself falling head over heels in love with the God who held her life in His hands.

I think that as Christians, we are sometimes tempted to believe that if our faith is where it is supposed to be, we won't fear, we won't be disappointed, we won't mourn what we have lost in this life. Well, I am here to tell you that I have been through the worst of it, and it was, well, the worst of it. I didn't walk around life exclaiming my joy about the impending birth (and death) or my daughter. I remember driving home from (of all places) a baby shower for a good friend of mine. The rain was splashing all over my car and I started screaming and pounding the wheel. "You can FIX this Lord. You can heal her! DO IT! HEAL HER! HEAL HER!!!"

He talked to me about Who He was, and He led me to Scripture that I could press into. He earned in me a faithful follower, and in return, He taught me the power of ashes.

On April 7th, 2008, we met our sweet Audrey. She went to be with the Lord after about 2 hours, and it was bittersweet to say the least. We studied her bellybutton, the bottom of her feet, her rosebud lips. We held her, sang to her, prayed over her. We loved her as if we had always known her, and then, in the blink of an eye, she was gone.

We held her for many hours after she died, and I would be lying if I said that I didn't have it out with God during that time. I would be lying if I said I haven't had it out with Him every day since then. Yes, I believe. Absolutely. I don't know how to not believe.

But I don't understand.

I want you to know that if you have made your way to this site because you have walked across a cemetery to spend time with a child you cannot parent, I am sorry. If you have miscarried so early that you don't even have a physical marker of your sweet baby, I am sorry. If you are a mother who is without your daughter or your son tonight, I want you to know that I am praying for you as I type these words, and I am broken because I know the hurt of an unrealized dream.

We may not believe in the same God, and we may not attend the same church. We may not ever meet in this life, but I want you to know that from the deepest part of me, I am sorry that your hands have had to dig deep into the earth alongside mine, desperately searching for coals. We are united in the most undesirable of ways, but tonight, I am grateful to have women who remind me that I have permission to feel the way I feel, and above all, whisper in the dark of night, You are not alone.

And sometimes, that can be enough.

...and provide for those who grieve in Zion-
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair...

Isaiah 61:2-3

opening windows

David Spinrad of The Unorthodox Rabbi is a rabbinical student at Hebrew Union College, the seminary for the Reform (progressive) Jewish movement, and a personal trainer living in San Francisco. He is the husband of Gal of Growing Inside, whom we've honoured here at Glow. In the words of big sister Dahlia, Dave and Gal have one 'princess daughter' and one 'angel daughter'. Their youngest, Tikva, passed away in August 2008 of a diaphragmatic hernia diagnosed during Gal's pregnancy.

Dave joins our Are You There, God? It's Me, Medusa gathering with this caveat: "Even though I am a rabbinical student, I cannot promise that my perspective will be entirely Jewish. And even though I am a man, I cannot promise you my voice will be male. I will promise you that whatever I contribute will be a reflection of me, uncompromisingly honest and from the heart."

Do I really want to be a part of the Dead Babies Club? Can't I just do this myself, keep my feelings and perspective away from anyone or anything that I feel like I have to defend against?

I could be in the park right now. Sun, shining down. Me, dreaming up. Blue sky, above. Green grass, below. Is not this the purest connection to God? A clear head, feeling no differentiation between me and God and no distance from Source?

Sounds great.

Who are you kidding?

I hear You. It actually sounds boring.

I do like this ride, although I don't know about the DBC.

Afraid? Why make life experience conditional? Why not dive into all of life?

This is the Jewish way.

I did come here to mix it up. I came for experience and expression. I am alive to explore. I live to be here, desire there, find peace in the here and enjoy the journey to there.

But where I am is no longer here and not quite there. A liminal state of being. Can I enjoy being neither here nor there? Can I trust where I am even if I don't understand it?

You can, if you let yourself be where you are.

Does this lead me to becoming a better rabbi, too? More questions than answers. My response to a person saying, "This will make you a better rabbi," is "I would settle for becoming eighty percent of the rabbi losing Tikva will make me," is a lie.

I will settle for nothing less than the fullness of life's experience. Tikva's passing is, on a feeling level, exactly the depth of life I desire. I wouldn't have asked for the conditions in a million years, but the 'why' of it isn't for me to answer. I can give that question over to God simply because there is absolutely no way for me come to a satisfactory answer. I'm totally off the hook for that one, and making myself crazy or miserable isn't my way.

It unsettles me to admit this, but when I take the labels of 'desired' and 'undesired' off the piles of life, I have so much more freedom in my life.

In the Torah, upon sending Abram upon the adventure of his life, God says to him, 'Lech lecha'. In English, it translates to, 'Go for yourself'. Or, we can translate it as, 'Go to yourself'. Every journey to ourselves is for ourselves. And Tikva's life gives me gifts for my journey to self that I am only beginning to understand.

Whether I want to be or not, I have a lifetime membership to the Dead Babies Club. Since I'm stuck here, would you mind if we open up a few windows? And while we grieve, I'm going to throw out a few thoughts.

Losing a child is not my whole life. Do you know how uncomfortable I am that there are all these people out there who only know me from this experience, only know me as Tikva's dad? I am so much more, way, way more than just her dad. I am made of the same stuff as sunshine between tree branches and nothing less than the moon rising above the Red Sea.

I am a part of God. Without me, there could be no You. The Sh'ma, whose words carve the foundation stone of Judaism, demands my particpation in comprising God, declaring: "Listen, you who wrestle with God, the Unity that is our God, God is One." You need us. And we, as a part of You, are eternal.

So why so much attention on this one little soul, this little piece of God consciousness who projected herself into a body that gave her exactly the experience she, and our collective consciousness, desired? Because if we're going to give her all this attention, let's look at the glory of the life she lived.

How many people do in eighty years what Tikva did in eight weeks? How many of us inspire hope, real hope, real oh-my-God-oh-my-God-oh-my-God hope in our lives? Tikva doesn't only mean ‘hope' in Hebrew, Tikva is hope. That's what she was and that's what she is. And I got to be the parent of the physical manifestation of the feeling of hope. I got to hold Hope in my arms.

And you want me to mourn that? Are you kidding me?!

And yet, I grieve. And that makes me feel so mortal. So ordinary. So. There is no escaping it. There is no winning in life and no losing in death, only love and our capacity to give and receive it.

Tikva's middle name is Ahava, ‘love' in Hebrew. And the only love worth a damn is unconditional love. It's a real thing and Tikva gave me the chance to feel it. I'd heard all about unconditional love in the past, but I was never able to separate the message from the messenger. I always suspected that deep down inside the person yammering on about unconditional love was really trying to set himself up to get a piece of ass. Nothing wrong with that, but don't kid yourself about unconditional love. Until you've lived it, you can't know it. And the separation between those who can grasp the concept and those who have held the feeling is a yawning chasm that nothing but experience can bridge.

Until you love your child without ever knowing whether or not you'll ever get to hold her, you don't know unconditional love.

Until your love for your child is greater than your need for her to live even one more day with anything less than the dignity she deserves, you don't know unconditional love.

I grieve the loss of Tikva, but can't and wouldn't change a thing. It doesn't all make sense to me and it feels like it never will, but in Man's Search of Meaning, Victor Frankel wrote this from the concentration camp in which he was held:

The last freedom is ours - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.