Is that Me you're talking about?
"Is she drunk?" and Alicia whispers back, "I think she was drinking in her room before dinner."
::snip::
All through dinner Lucille has been careening wildly from sadness to elation to despair . . . But as we sit down and begin to eat dessert, she breaks down and sobs silently, her shoulders shaking, her head turned away as though she's going to tuck it in under her wing like a sleeping bird.
::snip::
"What's wrong with your mom?" he asks as I carefully arrange myself next to him, trying not to get stabbed by my dress.
"She's manic-depressive."
"Has she always been?"
"She was better when I was little. She had a baby that died, when I was seven, and that was bad. She tried to kill herself. I found her."
-- The Time Traveler's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
I should probably recuse myself here because I am one of the few people on earth who didn't like "The Time Traveler's Wife." But the point remains the same: I was somehow so completely unsurprised to find out that the drunk-by-dinner emotionally vapid and over-reactive mom of the protagonist had a skeleton in her closet: a skeleton of a baby, that is.
What is it with images of mothers who've lost children in popular culture?
I'm sure in my lifetime I've run across this trope a million times between books, the movies, and the television, and yet for the life of me I can't remember many of them that I encountered prior to my own loss. Dead babies were simply a plot device or (as above) character development -- a throw-away line that explained someone's depression or alcoholism or emotional instability. "Ahhh," I can hear myself saying as I read the line, and then moved on to become engrossed by the story's main theme. Now I feel as though I'm a magnet for these storylines, and depending on my mood, and their presentation, my reaction to these literary doppelgangers has been decidedly mixed.
For some fiction, dead babies and children make great plot devices: it's a crime, a mystery, a turning point. A grief-laden springboard from which the rest of the story flows, a sometimes hidden/sometimes overt source of guilt, a crux in a relationship between parents. Recently and notably, there's been "The Rabbit Hole" (an acclaimed play which revolves around parents coming to terms with the death of a 4-year old who ran into traffic) and "Antichrist" (starring Willem Dafoe as half of a grieving couple, whose young child fell out of a window while unattended, apparently because they were next door having a moment, if you catch my drift). (Disclosure: I have not had the wherewithall to watch either of these two productions.) There's at least one recent "Law & Order" depicting a nutty babyloss mom and a few older ones with dead babies as centerpieces; and there's an MI5 from a season ago where a infant-napping goes awry and parents wind up mourning as the mystery unfolds. As many of you are now aware, the first twenty minutes of Pixar's "Up" include a poignant passing reference to either infertility or miscarriage -- a precursor to the balloons uprooting the house and the adventure unravelling as it does. I'm sure there are countless medical dramas that use this riveting ploy, but I stopped watching those two and half years ago. Too close.
Then there's child loss as character development. Think of the quiet, introverted grief-stricken father -- teetering on divorce, by the way -- who spends his life trying to travel and yet not escape the comforting cocoon of his home in "The Accidental Tourist." You just want to hug him, he looks so sad, and eventually Geena Davis does (apparently his grief just needed some fun-time crayzee!). Or another set of parents, in a movie featuring nothing but a relationship, attempting to channel their grief and save their marriage in "Ordinary People." These are "accidents" that happen to "ordinary" parents -- and we're left watching what we assume would be an everyperson, every family type of reaction. This could happen to me; I hope if it does I find a fun Geena type chick to help me out of it. Somehow circumscribing these people by grief makes all the sense in world -- or does it?
Sometimes the personality conclusion from babyloss is a real head-scratcher. In the TV series "Damages," Glen Close deliciously plays Patty Hewes, an evil lawer who eventually is revealed to have a violent streak, especially in regards to one of her young, female employees. In the waning minutes of the season one finale, the mystery explaining Patty's personality is finally unveiled: Her baby died. What are they trying to tell me here? Did she miss her dead daughter, who perhaps would now be around the age of her new hiree with whom she has an intense love/hate(/murderous) relationship? Or was she just fucking nuts thanks to grief? The camera passes over a gravestone, backs up to show Glen Close kneeling over it with tears flowing, and then cuts to a flashback in a hospital where things go horribly and vaguely and fuzzily wrong. We, the viewers, are suddenly meant to understand her -- and an entire season of her icy, bitchy, wild, calculating, sociopathic and homicidal character -- completely. Just like the mom in "Time Traveler's Wife", where with a few throw-away words we're to summarize her identity, her character writ large. And it's not pretty.
What does this all say about me? Where does society (or the literary half) think I'm headed? For divorce? A murderous rampage? The bottle? Hot sex in the woods with Willem Dafoe?
:::
Maybe babyloss is more common than I'm giving it credit for: maybe it really is widespread, hidden beneath the weeds, and all of these authors and television programs are simply stating the obvious, what happens all the time and what everyone knows. Maybe this is the publicity we all need.
Recently In the New York Times Magazine, Gina Bellafante wrote about the novels of Jodi Picoult, and how they all seem to center on children undergoing great peril. Picoult is a best-selling author whose books have spawned movies -- but why? Why does she use this outline, and why on earth are people interested in reading it?
I remarked what a miracle it is that any child survives to the age of 6, given the exposed outlets, tumbling kitchen knives and thousand quotidian threats that are, in a new parent’s mind, colluding toward an entirely opposite outcome. Picoult laughed in sympathy. “You can’t make your kids wear helmets, you just can’t do that,” she told me. The real dangers are, of course, the ones we can’t (or refuse to) anticipate.
So that's it. Point out the stuff I may not have thought of, expand my horizons. Is that what I am to everyone around me, the one who makes them realize and understand danger? To remind them that bad stuff comes from nowhere and can happen to anyone? And what does the reader take away from countless books highlighting a mother's worst fears?
“Maybe the average reader is not facing the daily challenges of a mom whose child is dying of cancer, for example, but she probably had an argument with her teenager that morning about something inconsequential that left her feeling frustrated and certain there’s no middle ground between them,” she told me. Picoult said she hoped in some sense that her books were the way to that middle ground.
Middle ground? Is that what me and my story represent to the general public? I'm wondering here if Picoult means "perspective" ("Things aren't so bad! We could be treating my kid for cancer!") or "gratefulness" ("At least my child is alive to fight about things like her skirt being too short!"). I would like to think that parents around my neighborhood think about me when they begin yelling at their teenagers, and slowly come to understand some nuance about appreciating life, and taking control of what you can. But frankly, I think Picoult is probably a best-seller because Americans love a car-wreck. They love sitting in fear for a brief moment, and knowing it's a fiction and not happening to them or someone they love. According to some of the anonymous comments on our blogs, some people like absorbing stories of woe and figuring they would handle it differently, or better.
That, I fear, is what I represent to many. Alcoholics and sociopaths.
:::
I watched last season's "Dollhouse" feeling simultaneously insulted as a woman, and mystified that Joss Whedon could come up with this stuff on a weekly basis. In short, the series follows men but mostly women who are confined in a spa-like building (after signing contracts, though the pressure to sign is questioned) for a period of years during which time their memories and identities are erased. When they're needed for a "job," (usually a callgirl-slash-adventure type gig) an imprint is placed into their heads of the person/-ality they are to be for that particular job. Tension mounts throughout the season as bits and pieces of the Dolls' past flit through their consciousness. In one episode, the Dolls retain their original identities for a a few hours, and with those some of their residual memories. And one Doll -- a female sub-character -- stumbles across a baby carriage and says bewildered, "I had a baby."
"Just watch," I immediately said to my husband on the couch next to me, "her baby's dead."
Sure enough, minutes later, we find her stumbling into a graveyard to recall the death of her child. And this is why, we are left to connect the dots, she agreed so wholeheartedly to signing over her identity and memories for a period of years, never to think of them, the baby, it. To escape the grief, to escape her. To enter a mini coma. To forget (even temporarily) that horrible day or event. To let that ubiquitous Time, pass.
Strangely, that bit of character I got completely.
Where have you stumbled across babyloss parents in popular culture? How were they depicted? Did you find the plot device or character development that ensued to be familiar or unrealistic? How did it make you feel?
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One of my close friends is an actress and she once asked if she could 'play' me if there were ever a film adaptation of my blog. I genuinely can not understand why anyone would ever think that that would make a compelling film! For me the process of grief is as tedious as it is devastating, which I guess explains why I lack tolerance for fictional representations.
I also really resent the idea that Iris' death should be a redemptive experience and portrayals of child/ baby loss often have a learning/ teaching message which falls pretty wide of the mark i.e. suffering is necessary so we don't begrudge the protagonist their eventual happy ending.
The only time I ever felt genuinely moved by a babyloss subplot was in Gosford Park which I think is a film with huge emotional depth (but maybe I just identify with it more because I'm a repressed Brit myself!)
Brilliant post as usual, Tash. There's so much to think about here. Thank you.
This post was so fascinating and thoughtful and true, Tash, I've got very little to add other than awe. This is so good. Thank you.
Shortly after my son died, I watched the movie "Steel Magnolias", one of my all-time favorites. And although it doesn't depict babyloss, the scene after Shelby's funeral where her mother is just screaming to her friends "WHY?" That entire rant is the closest I've come to being able to relate as a mother after loss.
I'm also a huge Whedon fan, although I don't watch Dollhouse. I probably would've jumped to the same conclusion as you did watching it. But if Whedon's world were plausible, I could relate to wanting to have my memories erased and replaced. I just had a conversation the other night with my husband: if we could go back in time, before meeting and falling in love of course, where I could see that the outcome of being with him would mean childloss and the so-called existence that I'm in now vs. a blissful, unknowing happiness kind of outcome with another person, that I would choose the other guy.
After four years, I'm very much still in the throws of grief (or maybe finally facing it head-on?). I saw some of the Dollhouse episodes. Interesting concept--erasing memories and such. But, the memories of the kicking, the memories of labor and contractions, the births, the deaths, the things I talk to almost no one about; that all too familiar pronouncement that I discovered was real, and not just a product of TV dramas: "Time of death...," spoken softly, twice; struggling to come up with a name--two names--on the spur of the moment because the babies were way too early; even the grief itself, as overwhelming and painful as it is sometimes...it's all I have. I couldn't do what that character did and try to erase it.
Nothing on TV or in the movies can truly depict what babyloss does to a person. I recently saw My Sister's Keeper (I had already read the book), and found myself being jealous of the time that Kate had on earth. Okay, maybe I'm just too messed up!
Recently I was watching Rescue Me and there was the chic with the box that she ran into the burning building to get. Episode after episode, they wondered what was in it. My husband wondered out loud too. Finally I said, she has a dead baby.
Sure enough. But you know, I only gauged it because I thought to myself, what would I run into a burning building to get, besides nothing... the stuff from my dead baby. I guess that makes me as crazy as her.
On Millie and Rosemary's second birthday, a review for the movie "Grace" ran in the NYT. I think the baby in this film is technically undead--I didn't go to see it-- but the review hit all of the same crazy-mama notes.
Thought-provoking, Tash. This post made me smile (ruefully, of course).
I think on some level, perhaps, the depiction of women going psycho and doing over the top things in story lines has some truth in it. In the beginning months, the craziest impulses and thoughts flew through my mind. The difference lies in the months and years after---the writers don't seem to get that most women go into survival mode and keep moving through, over, under, on top of the grief. These movie and TV characters are too one-dimensional.
I saw that episode once, years and years ago, and it's amazing how I've mulled over it in the last few weeks.
There was another one in Jericho - a show I loved greatly. I was watching it that first week, desperate for distraction which the show provided. There was a character who had placenta previa in the post-apocalyptic world. The medical facts were all effed up, as they decide to do surgery? to save her, but they also try to save the baby, but they can't (for obvious reasons) and in the end they lose both the mother and baby. The father in that situation is affected badly, but he seems to be more affected by the fact the mother dies and they were actually estranged and he was living with someone else. He goes away in the next couple of episodes so you don't see him deal with his grief directly, but you do see his parents dealing with it (though again, it's more focused on the loss of the DIL than the baby, but they both factor in). There was a lot of quiet alone time, friction, tempers, and finally a sort of coming together and peace. I think that was much more realistic (for all the medically inaccurate nonsense that preceded it).
What I dislike about most of it was perfectly pinpointed above - it's often quite one-dimensional. Loss of a child is a terrible thing, we all know that first hand. And I am still having a lot of trouble and there are times I have completely crazy thoughts and have wanted to do 'crazy' things. I know that my compassion for other people is extremely limited and very tested. I know that my temper is very short. I know that I have changed. But I also know that life has begun to go on again and that is that. Most of us do. It's not the same, there will always be a sense of loss and sadness . . . but I think you don't last long with any type of grief if you choose to stay in the moment of loss forever and ever and ever. Most of us don't do that, we continue living our lives.
I don't much care to be a cautionary tale for other people, to be labeled even bigger a freak than I already feel, to be a convenient excuse for crazy . . . that bothers me. There is accurate and tastefully done - Up seems to be a good example - and there is stereotyping. No one likes that.
Not the movie, the novel. The reason I always loved the book when I was younger was because it seemed somehow very real. Now, I can honestly relate to the end even more. After all the Bad went down and there is the wrap-up for the parents of "how do we go on from here?" I like that the story takes the time to put some consideration into that question. And it's presented in a tense and painful yet quiet way. Not all crazy and dramatic. Presented in a Real way, I think.
I feel like baby loss is everywhere now. I saw it before but now it is everywhere, sometimes even unintentionally. We were watching hellboy 2 and there was a creature holding a baby. hellboy said, "nice baby" and the baby said "im not a baby i'm a tumor" this I suppose was meant to be funny. Somehow, the humor of this was lost on me... perhaps it was because it made me think of the tumor in my baby's brain.
I used to love watching Grey's Anatomy but I swear last year was the season of dead children. It became too difficult, watching our loss played out on screen over and over. I turned to HBO instead, to a new series called #1 Ladies Detective Agency, seemed safe enough...of course not. The main character had buried a child.
I think that these images existed before, and I saw them and thought how sad it was, how sad and distant and not part of my life. I feel like an idiot now for ever having assumed that my child would be born healthy, that my life would not include loss.
I don't know that there is a right or a wrong way to depict a grieving mother. Every blogger here seems to share similarities and differences in the journey. Some exhibit strength early on and turn their pain into good for others (i.e. Carly at to write their names in the sand and so many others) and others, like me, find no energy for such efforts.
Sometimes, ironically, in my numb times, I find that I can cry more easily for the bereaved mothers I see on TV or in the movies than for myself. It opens up a door that exhuastion sometimes closes. I think it is because of the likeness of it all, the horror that I am not the only one to go through this, that there are others... so many others, hurting too. It's a terrible thing, to think of the thousands of grieving mothers (I am sure even more) feeling such pain right now.
Thank you for the insightful post. As always, it opened the floodgates of reflection.
seriously, I got nothing. you cover the whole babylost mama shorthand thing so well.
I'll have to mull this over a while...
Someone mentioned Steal Magnolias...oh. Touched my heart. That is the one thing that touched me so deeply in everyway cuz that is exactly how I felt when I lost my daughter. For a long time a few lines from that monologue were my fb status.
We all grieve differently, we all relate to things differently.
The only movie I can think of that had anything close to babyloss, and which really hit a chord with me probably only BECAUSE I lost my daughter, is The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Something about that final scene, where Kate Blanchette is holding baby Benjamin as he dies, at a ripe old age but as a baby, just got me. Maybe because I held my baby as she died. Maybe because I got lost in the idea that even babies die after having lived a whole lifetime. Maybe because, like Tikva's last breath, there was a peacefulness after a life (however long or short) of struggle. I don't know... something about it just got me, and I thought, "Did anyone else notice this?" It left me with chills. I wonder if it would have if I'd watched that scene before knowing Tikva.
One more thing about something you wrote: A very sweet friend, also a mom, wrote me recently that she likes reading my blog because she feels it's good to know that things can go in any direction, good or not so good. I was actually kind of moved by that, though it is strange being that person who reminds people that things can change on a dime toward the sad and unexpected. I guess what I appreciated about what she said is that she is willing to hold both possibilities... something not everyone is that courageous about.
The ones that get it are no easier to watch, though, even if I do appreciate them. I'm thinking here of _I've Loved You So Long_ and the way Kristen Scott Thomas breaks my heart when her character and her character's sister finally break through to one another over the subject they've never spoken of--the death of a child. _Six Feet Under_ had the bravery to show us the blood of Brenda's miscarriage and show a man's grief, too, in aftermath, and _Frida_ pays due attention to Frida Kahlo's losses and the art she created in response.
One of the most beautiful films I ever saw about the loss of a child & a high-risk subsequent pregnancy was "In America," about an Irish family that comes to the U.S. illegally after their toddler son dies of leukemia. It was nominated for a few Oscars. The two little girls in it are just adorable, & heartbreaking. I bawled my eyes out through the whole thing, but it was very cathartic for me.
So the post stuck with me. The other day at my nieces birthday party, I ran into an old friend I haven't seen since Noah died. She seemed uncomfortable talking with me. I did my very best to seem normal - to put her at ease. She knew about Noah but did not offer condolances. I mentioned Noah in relation to being the inspiration for my spals daughter Joninah's name. She nodded and changed the subject quickly. I've been there before. I'm sure most of us have.
I left being reminded, as I have thought many times before, that babylost mothers must be so frightening to the rest of the world. Like a horror story really. They should make a movie about how scarey we are. Well of course they did - "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle". A mild-mannered doctor's wife turned grief-crazed psychotic, sociapathic, homicidal babylost mother (whole-life lost really) tries to steal the baby and destroy the family of the woman she, in her damaged mind, believes did the same to her. Eventually the sweet, innocent, victimized Claire exorcises death from her home by pushing its mistress out the attic window. Good triumphs over evil.
It has been many years since I've seen "The Hand That Rocks The Cradle," - long before babies both living and lost. Even as a young clueless woman I remember feeling empathy for the crazy character with the dead baby - fear and disgust - but empathy too. Although I've kept it together well enough not to secretly nurse another mother's newborn or kill her best friend, I do wonder a lot about the thinly disguised discomfort others seem to feel in my presense. When they make movies like this, they are taking something common to the human condition and exaggerating if for theatric effect. It's there - I'm not imagining it - and it really sucks.