why me?
Throughout the journey of losing my child, I have never asked myself, Why me?
Honestly, it’s just not a question I ask. Not because I wonder but won’t let myself ask. But because I could just as easily ask, Why not me? And because I already know the answer(s).
Why me? Because Tikva needed me as her mother, to love and hold her on her BIG journey.
Why me? Because there was a part deep inside me that was calling out – even if I didn’t know it – to be cracked open, stretched and expanded in this way.
Why me? Because even when I doubted it, Life knew I could do this.
Why me? Because I have boundless love and compassion – for my children, my family, my friends, in supporting others.
Why me? Because only through this could I become more fully me.
That’s not to say I wouldn’t trade it all in for a healthy, living Tikva toddling around me right now, nudging me off the computer and into a game of blocks with her. I would’ve been quite fine continuing on my way a bit less stretched, my soul less expanded, less fully myself.
But those are not the cards I got, and I want to remain in the game. So I’m making the best of the hand I’m holding now. As it turns out, I’ve got better cards than I thought.
***
I have wondered a lot if it’s all just about outlook, the color of the lenses on the glasses we choose to put on each day.
It’s easy when you’ve lost a child to go to that place of feeling like the person who got hit by lightning. What are the odds? In my case, they were somewhere between 1 in 2,500 and 1 in 5,000. That’s how often a child is born with a congenital diaphragmatic hernia. Me, I’m the one. 2,500 to 5,000 times more likely to be the majority, but this time I was the one. ONE.
It struck me sometime after Tikva died just how lucky I was that Dahlia, my first child, was born healthy and with no complications. What are the odds of that? One in how many? And my second pregnancy, which ended in miscarriage at 10 weeks – 1 in 4. Pretty high odds, but at the time I was utterly dumbstruck. Me? This happened to ME? I had to laugh about that when I learned that I’d made 1 in 5,000.
Back to outlook… I could look at that in so many different ways:
I must be the most unlucky mother in the whole world.
Someone out there must think really highly of me to be paying so much attention to my little self and giving me so many *$%@#! challenges.
What did I do to deserve this? Did I do something wrong?
The odds could be even smaller, I could be one in ten million.
The Universe is a random place, and shit happens.
Somebody has to be the one.
***
There is so much ego in this business of making sense of loss. So much ME in it all. So much of my busy mind trying to rationalize the irrational, comprehend the incomprehensible. Trying to fit something messy and confusing into a neat little container that can be shut and put away on a shelf, retrieved and reopened as needed.
I don’t think it works that way, though. I can put all of Tikva’s things – the physical reminders of her existence – in boxes in a beautiful wooden chest and keep it close by. But the meaning of it all – the WHY – isn’t so cooperative. And the answers don’t seem to come from my busy mind. From my ego.
Sometimes I ask Tikva…
Why me, Tikva? Because I needed you to hold me and look into my eyes and speak to me and kiss me, to lift me up.
Why me, Tikva? Because you are special, Mama.
Why me, Tikva? Because others will need your help.
Why me, Tikva? I don’t know, Mama, but I’m glad it was you.
***
I sat in a park in Jerusalem with Dave, just weeks before Tikva was conceived. It was sunny and warm and we lay in the grass under a tree.
I said to him, “I want to get pregnant.”
“When?” he asked.
“Now. Soon. This month.” It was just before Rosh Hashanah.
I was absolutely and completely sure. Ready. I had no idea why, but I was sure. Maybe Tikva was whispering in my ear. Maybe there was a part of me that was calling out, unknowing, for the journey ahead. It took us only one try.
If we had waited another month, would it have been Tikva? Would our child have been healthy? We didn’t wait another month. I don’t believe we could have.
Why me? Because this is my story. Tikva is my child. The only child I could have created in that moment in time.
It’s just not a question I ask myself, maybe because if it hadn’t been me, I would never have had a child like Tikva. And I would never have learned to love in quite the same way.
.::.
What are the questions you ask? Do you have answers? Where do the answers come from? How would you lost child(ren) answer your questions?
16 Comments
View Printer Friendly Version
Email Article to Friend
Reader Comments (16)
In addition to the how questions, there are the what ifs. What if I had been more vigilant about germs and exposure after his surgery? What if I had called the pediatrician over night the last night he was home before his hospitalization? What if I hadn't been scared to take him to the ER the last night he was home ever? Would he have gotten sick? Would we have caught things in time? I try not to wander down this road of thought too often. When I do, the answer I come to is this: it would have happened sometime. He was fragile, tightly wound. The tiniest thing could set off a huge, life-threatening chain reaction within him. Had I taken him in sooner at the last, I think he would have lingered longer. He would have lived in the hospital, on a ventilator and too many drugs. Maybe we would have gotten him home again. Maybe not. I tend to think not. I believe he was done.
Beautiful post, Gal.
This, though, is utterly beautiful:
"Why me, Tikva? I don’t know, Mama, but I’m glad it was you."
Liz, I want you and everyone else to know that I am very comfortable with, and in fact think that the only real answer is "because shit happens, and this time it's to you." Shit happens. Why not to us?
Gal, I am sorry if this is coming out cross, but I have to say this. I reject with my entire being any implication of a possible reason for why our babies died. I reject the notion that there is a good enough reason for a child to die. I reject the notion that we are so fucking special that our growth is worth another person's life, our child's life.
Which is not to say that I don't think that we change in the aftermath. Sometimes even for the better. But I reject the logical fallacy of saying that that change is the reason why it had to happen. After X doesn't mean because of X.
I think what we do with our tattered hearts and lives in the aftermath may help us become better people, and it may even say things about what kinds of people we are. But it says nothing about the reason for, or our need for, the horrible tragedy that befall us.
And you know what, we also conceived A on the first try. Very unlike the rest of our reproductive history. Also in a time where it would've perhaps made more sense to wait another month. But we didn't. And I do wonder, because there were things unique to A's pregnancy that didn't happen in either Monkey's or the Cub's, that might's contributed to his death, whether if we had waited things would've been different. But it's not anything I spend a lot of time thinking about, and it is in no way connected to the idea of a reason.
I love my son. I don't think I love my living children any differently because he died. I think I already loved Monkey the way I love them all. In my case I think it was me pushing consciously and hard against the model of motherhood presented by my MIL that shaped the way I feel about my children. And I have no idea how A would answer these questions. Also shaped by my issues with MIL, I am extremely adamant about letting my children speak for themselves, and so I can't put things in A's mouth. In fact, that was one of the hardest things in the aftermath of his death-- to realize that the world is continuing on spinning, with most people having no idea that he existed, and with him having no way to speak for himself.
But, sometimes I manage to touch the edges of a more gracious place where the question is less important than the enduring memory of her still warm body and her beautiful little face. I often had a feeling during my pregnancy that this child was not planning to stay.In the absence of any medical reason for such fears, I dismissed them as flights of fancy. Now, I think Emma was preparing me and, out of the immense love I have for her, I need to carve some acceptance that this is how it is.
Shit happens. It happens to everyone. Not everyone has to suffer the loss of a baby, but everyone goes through something at some moment in their life. I had a great life, I felt blessed. Then the shit hit the fan and now I'm the proud mama to a dead baby.
I know this experience has and will make me a better person. I did like who I was before and feel like I did not need this lesson to be better. But it happened, and to us, and that's that. I am way less trusting in things working out. I assume the worst now.
I also love this -
Why me, Tikva? I don’t know, Mama, but I’m glad it was you.
I want to feel that way about Silas. I haven't felt him speak to me. But I think if he were, that is what he'd say.
thanks gal.
Sara: So much of what you write is so familiar, especially the feeling of knowing when Henry was done. I knew, too, when Tikva was done, and it was days before we took her off the ventilator and said goodbye.
Kate: When Tikva answers me, it helps me breathe too. And I really do feel her talking to me. I don't feel as though I am putting words in her mouth.
Liz: Time does help. It doesn't take the tears away, but something does shift. At least for me, with each day that goes by. More peace. I don't feel more graceful than anyone else at this. I think we all are just doing our best with these cards we've been dealt.
Julia: I'm so sorry you interpreted what I wrote as feeling as though my daughter died so that I could grow and expand. That is so not what I meant to express. I honestly feel like you and I are saying the same thing, just in different ways. I don't feel like I have much of a choice about anything that will bring Tikva back, so I am doing my best with what's left, like you said, after her death, not because of it. I feel as though I could choose to shrivel up after her death, or I could choose to expand. I can't bring her back, but I can choose my response after the experience (not that the "after" part is in any way over and neatly resolved). I conceived all three times on the first try, so I don't feel like Tikva was special that way. And if it had happened in that second pregnancy, or a month or two later than when she was conceived, if that is when she wanted to come, then it would've happened then. "Why not me?" was my first answer, back when I was still pregnant with Tikva and we'd just had the ultrasound, if a hint of the "Why me?" question even reared it's head in my psyche. I truly feel that way still - why not me?
Jill: At the very very beginning of my pregnancy with Tikva, before I even knew I was pregnant for sure, I had a worried, unsettled feeling. So different from when I was first pregnant with Dahlia. Something just made me worry, and I couldn't explain why. Maybe I knew even then that something big and difficult was ahead, and that she would not be able to stay.
Lani: When I connect with Tikva, it's as if she is not separate from me. That is why I am so sure about what she says to me. In a way, the words that come out are mine, but the energy behind them is hers. It's hard to explain. I just try to keep loving her in the way I loved her when she was alive. I still feel her so close.
Just yesterday we received an independant medical opinion that is part of the process for the official complaint we are making against our hospital for the care we (did not) receive and it came back very much in our favour - that we were drastically let down and that our "care" was not acceptable/appropriate. That things really could have/should have been different. This was a bitter pill for me to swallow. It confirms what we knew all along but it leaves me riled with anger all over again. Its hard for me to find any acceptance in her death, make any meaning of it, when she should just be here, damnit. Yes, 14 months on and just 2-3 weeks away from baby number two (please let him live), why me?
I was willing to go to some extent to say that if the other pregnancies had been, Gabriel would not have been and shrug in acceptance, but losing Gabriel has tossed that notion on its side. Some days, I am angry and would demand answers, other days, I accept that it is what it is and that I am proving capable of surviving such a blow and continuing to live life. That may be all the answer I ever receive.
I strive for gracefulness, after lingering for awhile and finally feeling ready to move on from that dark space of self-centeredness. I sometimes fail miserably, and that question comes from the darkness with such ease - why me? Why not me is equally valid, but the answers to that are nearly always defensive and selfish. Maybe with more time . . .
I do sometimes think - and this may sound completely, utterly insane - that Gabriel was supposed to have been here in August. In fact, when I became pregnant with what was eventually ruled an ectopic pregnancy, that due date was August 28. I was certain, 100% certain that it would have been a boy, and once or twice while we still had some hope of a viable pregnancy, I tentatively tried out the name we'd long chosen for our first boy child, which subsequently went to Gabriel, conceived on the second try we were permitted post-treatment for the ectopic. Even though, logically, I know it was a placental abruption and that things may have turned out differently with more cautious care, in looking back I sometimes have this overwhelming sense that Gabriel believed he was to be born in August - when that pregnancy would have been due in different circumstances. So when the ectopic didn't work out, his spirit returned for the next one, but August was too early.
I don't believe that all the time, I don't know that it makes any sense at all outside my head, but I do ask sometimes, in the quiet, if that is why he came when he did, because one way or another, that was when Gabriel was supposed to be born. . .
Other questions I have asked:
-Why Gabriel? Why my husband? - there seemed little doubt early on that I fully deserved this pain, but I believed they did not. Now, I have backed away from that.
-Where are you now, Gabe? Are you all right? - sometimes there is a playful energy around me, a peacefulness that comes over me. Both my husband and I have felt his spirit near, in both those ways. Sometimes, lately, when I've been thinking of him, I find something unusual has happened - my cursor has moved on it's own, the page I was looking at has moved, a song has played unexpectedly, and I know he's nearby, letting me know he is ok.
Early on, I begged to know if he knew how much we loved him, if we fit enough love into the short time we had to last him forever and now I know we did, and he does know.
I've stopped looking. I've really stopped caring because otherwise I think I'd go insane wondering not only "Why me," but "why do other people's children leave them with goodies and mine did not?" There is no positive from this horrific negative, for me. There has simply been grief and getting through. And I've completely made my peace with that.
I like to think the person Teddy would have become, the soul he might be, would tell me he loves us and knows he is loved, that he is safe from all the awful things now. It's not an answer to why, really, but it would be enough to hold onto.
It all just takes time and practice though.