enlightenment
I felt holy after she died.
What I mean to say is that I felt disemboweled, ripped open and gutted, my innards in a heap before me. I, Prometheus, chained to a rock, punished for stealing a daughter for nine months. Grief swept down as I was chained to the cliff, feasting on my liver, or perhaps more like my sanity and sense of justice, as I watched desperate. But still, in that torture, not because of it, I felt holy. Holier than before her death.
It was a short-lived holiness. Anger unchained me from the rock, and became my closest companion in the days that followed. The expletives that came from me were inhuman and ungodly--a hymn of the self-pitying. But for a moment, maybe a week or two, I felt holy, and I have been riding its coattails, cursing it, making sense of it, meditating on it and writing about it since it happened.
Lucia was stillborn. I found out she was dead. And two beats later, I found out I had to birth her. Dead. I wanted them to cut me open and pull her out. No, wait, I wanted them to knock me out, cut me open, then pull her out. I wanted them to do anything to prevent me from suffering more. I squirmed at the idea of having to push. I felt definitely entitled not to push. I wept for the injustice of having a dead daughter in me. I wept for me.
"Why us?" I shrieked. "What did we do?" We have this common wisdom, or maybe it is a kind of whisper down the alley between women, that giving birth is the hardest, most profound pain you can endure. And then the other thing, losing a child, is the most profound psychic pain you can endure. I don't know. Giving birth to a dead child and then living with the fact for the rest of your life is the longest suffering experience I could imagine. I felt like I would enter into a stasis of labor. I would hold onto the pain and suffering like it will connect me with the brief time I had with Lucia.
During the time between finding out she was dead and birthing her, I was hooked up to wires, and sitting in a bed with contractions trying to make some fucking sense of what was happening. I opened the grief package they gave me. Front and center, in the middle of the page, there was a poem. I began reading it, and I recognized the words.
Where do I know this poem? I have read this before.
I skipped to the bottom of the page. I recognized the name immediately. It was written by one of my colleagues' husbands. I live in the sixth most populated city in the United States. I was birthing in a hospital that gives birth to over five thousand babies a year. And yet the first other person I encountered after finding out Lucy died was someone I already knew. Tears were streaming down my face before I realized I was crying. And I wept for her loss all over again, and for her husband.
As the waves of contractions pulsated through me, I realized that I was not the first person to go through the pain of labor, nor was I the first person to go through the pain of losing your child. I am not even the first person to go through them both at the same time. I was wrapped up in my suffering, feeling this narcissism of grief settle into my old bones. "Why did this happen to ME? What did I do? Why did MY baby die?" Me. Me. Me. And here was this person who also lost her baby. A person I knew. The fact that I knew her humanized her. I remember seeing her grief and her sorrow. It oozed into us all in the office. I remember running into her in the bathroom at work and crying with her.
Did I tell her enough how sorry I was? Did I tell her then that reading the email about her loss made me cry for the first time in my career in front of my colleagues? Did I tell her that every Mother’s Day I thought of her baby? Did I even say anything to her? Was I the person to her that I needed now?
No.
I am deeply flawed. It was humbling. I felt so completely human, and like such a complete fucking asshole too. But I felt so part of human suffering and the human experience. A wealth of compassion washed over me. And I suddenly remembered this Buddhist folktale called Kisa Gotami and the Mustard Seed. It is also about a babylost mother. I read it in many forms throughout the years, but about two weeks before Lucia died, I read it out loud to my daughter for bedtime. Back then, I read folktales and Greek mythology aloud as she fell asleep. They were more for me than her. I didn’t cry for Kisa Gotami when I read it. I didn’t cry. I didn’t see myself in her.
photo by quinn.anya
Kisa Gotami's only son died one night as there was a thunderstorm raging. Kisa knew something was wrong, because the thunder would have woke him. She ran to his bed and he was dead. Throughout the night, she prayed to all the gods, and then to all the Devils, it is written, but not one brought her baby back to life. And so she went to every doctor, chemist, snakecharmer, and charlatan in town. Everyone pitied Kisa Gotami because she was a good woman and she was losing her mind. Some told her that the boy was dead, others went along with the delusion that there was help. She finally made her way to the apothecary across the market. People told him she was headed his way, and so he was ready for her. He regretted that he didn't have a cure for her, but the Buddha, he said, who was once a physician, did. She ran to the temple and interrupted meditation. The monks grew impatient with her, as she was carrying her rotting dead son, covered with maggots, asking him to be cured. But the Buddha sat and considered her plea. He told her that he did have the cure she sought. And he said it was quite simple. She should leave her son with him, then she just needed to bring him one thing--a mustard seed. Not any mustard seed, though, it needed to be a mustard seed from a family who has not experienced death. As Kisa Gotami went door to door, each person said, "Of course, I have a mustard seed, but my father died this year." Or my wife, or my uncle, or my sister or even my son. When she returned to the Buddha, who had cremated her son in her absence, she came back humbled and enlightened. Death and suffering escapes no person. She became one of the Buddha's monks.
In my lowest moment, the poem, and moments later, that Buddhist story, took me out of my own suffering to feel compassion for another person's loss. When I left the hospital, I grieved for Lucia, but I also grieved for and with everyone in the world. I saw people as the embodiment of their suffering. Funeral homes on every corner felt illuminated, suddenly, with a kind of healing light. Every person grieved, like we grieved. When someone would offer condolences in the first weeks, I would immediately tear up and say, “No, no, I’m sorry.” Sam grew livid at that habit, as though I were apologizing for our baby dying, or apologizing for receiving condolences, but it wasn’t that. Even the anxiety and fear people had to approach me, I felt compassion for that. They were suffering. I could hear it in their voices. I could smell it emanating from their bodies. Some of those people felt genuine grief at my daughter’s death, and some had felt genuine fear at having to talk to me. I was sorry for them.
It is an incredibly healing way to imagine the world—compassionate, empathetic, vulnerable—but it was so disparate with what I had just experienced. I often thought about my sanity, and if I was sane or not. I thought of Kisa Gotami not being able to see the maggots, but only see her beautiful newborn son. I recognized that if I wanted to remain sane, I had to accept this world for what it is, not what I wanted it to be. People die. People we love die regardless of their goodness. Humans are fragile beings. In the holy days, I understood this. I accepted it. I felt this amazing sense of connection with the universe and all sentient beings because of it. This calm emanated from me, and around me for two weeks. I sobbed often, yes, but for all of our suffering. Sometimes thinking about my husband’s suffering made me cry more than my own suffering. It was one of the most spiritually profound periods of my life.
And then it I felt it slip away from my body, the same way my daughter slipped from my body, growing colder and more distant. I am actually embarrassed to write this, because I lost this connectedness with everything and everyone. I squandered wisdom. Holiness was replaced with anger, bitterness and resentment. Rather than feel connectedness, I felt only alienation. I remember my Buddhist therapist saying to me, "So, you lost your daughter and then you lost your enlightenment?"
I hadn’t thought to call it enlightenment, but I suddenly grieved for my enlightenment. So many losses, I mused. I can't endure another. I felt enlightenment's absence more after I realized its preciousness. Then I doubted it I ever touched that place. Maybe holiness, I reasoned, was really the numb of early grief. Later I realized that wisdom, like Lucy, never belonged to me.
I sit cross-legged now, tap the gong and settle into my bones. I once touched a sense of everything by having nothing. It is the koan I meditate on now. When I had nothing, I held everything. The anger falls off me again in that moment. I can only ever borrow enlightenment and wisdom, because I will always wrestle with my human flaws. It is a true lesson in wretchedness.
Did your loss help you feel connected or alienated to other people? Did it connect you with a universal sense of suffering? How did you see your suffering in relation to other suffering? Did you gain any wisdom in your grief? If so, what wisdom? Or does the whole idea of wisdom and gain make you uncomfortable?
14 Comments
Reader Comments (14)
What I gained was an understanding of despair and grief. I learned how long I could be angry at myself and be unforgiving of myself. I learned not to ask "could things get any worse" because just when I thought I was at bottom, somehow I was lowered again into a pit of heartache until there was almost nothing left identifiable as "Amy, the happy wife and stepmom." I have still not recovered 100% and have accepted I never will reclaim the Amy from "before."
I learned that sometimes there is no answer to the question "Why?" and to stop asking it.
I learned many people are ill-equipped to comfort you, and say things mostly to comfort themselves and protect themselves from their own hurt.
I learned to hate. This was the first time in my 34 years I had ever truly felt hate, and it was directed at me, for losing Solomon. I felt like a failure, that God was mad at me.
What I gained was a yardstick of how I measure the happenings in my life. I can discern what is important much better, and can let go of the small stuff. Unless the house is on fire or someone is dying, most day-to-day issues are not crises. Broken items can be fixed or replaced, wounds can be palliated.
I learned I can survive.
When you really have to look at your shit, you start to see that that is what it is, shit. It is shit to lose our beloved babies. It is not fair that babies are suffering all over the world from neglect, abuse, hunger...what my baby's death did for me was to open up my eyes to a world of suffering. And what did I find? not hate. Hate is the opposite of compassion. Grief is sometimes all encomapssing and we must go through it. But, what I need to think is that it is the path I am on and the path opens my heart, more and more and more.
Maybe I'll someday feel more compassionate towards the rest of limited humanity. I like to think I've taken steps in that direction, and I do cry more now at other people's pain and loss. But I'm too practical to see these tears as an especially good thing. Hopefully my next steps toward (maybe not enlightenment, maybe just being who I want to be in the world) will involve more doing, more helping. Or I may just get more and more irritable at human foibles, which sadly seems to be the trend I'm riding now.
I also gained an appreciation of the humans behind the headlines. News stories are no longer vague happenings to other people - I think of the person's mother who died and how she is having the worst day of her life.
Beautiful piece, Angie. xo
In the days after my loss when I got online and started reading dozens and dozens of stories just like mine, I suddenly felt less alone.
But from family and friends in my real life, I continue to feel more and more alienated every day. I don't know anyone else who lost a baby the way I did, so there is no one I can turn to apart from the wonderful women I have met through blogs like this.
Every day, I feel a bit more different from everyone I know. The chasm just keep growing wider.
Like Monique, I also hold a great deal of anger, bitterness and rage and a lot of that is directed at our caregivers, because like Monique we were failed. However I still find it hard to shake that and some days it can still spew out of me. Forgiveness and acceptance are not my strong points.
One line in your post that really hit home with me Angie was this:
"We have this common wisdom, or maybe it is a kind of whisper down the alley between women, that giving birth is the hardest, most profound pain you can endure. And then the other thing, losing a child, is the most profound psychic pain you can endure. I don't know. Giving birth to a dead child and then living with the fact for the rest of your life is the longest suffering experience I could imagine."
I still think about this often and wonder how on earth I survived and how I keep surviving each day.
I think I have gained some wisdom out of this mess. Certainly like Monique also said, a connectedness to the suffering of others, especially other mothers, but I know I would trade it all in a hearbeat just to have her back...
xo
And then as some time passed, I came to understand it better, came to feel that the loss of my son finally gave me the right to call myself human. Until my son died, I had lived this blissful and privileged life that only the top 2% of the world can claim. But now, I was part of the millions of mothers dating from the beginning of time, who grieved their children. It was my badge of honor.
And then, I lost that. I turned inward, which suited me just fine for a long time (I am 2.5 years out, with a subsequent 18 mo old). But lately, I've been searching for a way back out; I dont know where to start.
Kristin, I love that idea, that this path opens our heart little by little. I don’t know if hate is the opposite of compassion. I think I see them as parallel. Feeling hate means we have the capacity to feel love—they are extreme emotions of pain and forgiveness. I know hatred is a terrible emotion to experience, but it is the height of anger and every step from there is lessened and softened with love and compassion. Hatred and anger gives us the opportunity to examine our weaknesses and feel compassion for ourselves. At least, that is what I am going with.
Erica, honestly, I don’t think enlightenment should ever be the goal, being who you want to be the world is an amazing goal. I love what you say about feeling holy carrying you through. In some ways, these early days juxtaposed on my later anger, bitterness and hatred made me feel more damaged. I think I have come to integrate these two experiences of grief. Two weeks of holiness, and two years of bitterness.
Monique, thank you. ABSOLUTELY. Forgiveness, in my humble opinion, has to be a form of enlightenment, because it brings a sense of peace. And I think that way of seeing the news is so powerful.
Sally, your comment I think really encapsulates why I always hesitate to write about this experience, because I would trade all the wisdom in the world for Lucy, if I could, in a heartbeat without second thought. And in some ways, is that wisdom at all? I have no fucking idea. But I think, perhaps, what you say about the babylost blogs and community also encapsulates what compassion is about. We read stories and have such forgiving, loving approaches to others in our same exact position, because we have experienced those emotions. Ultimately, we can apply the same kindness to ourselves that we apply to others. That is so incredibly healing and necessary. But I don’t know. I agree with you. I feel so damaged and unable to connect with non-babylost anymore. It has taken me two years to get back to that place where I can say suffering is suffering is suffering. And not ranking suffering based on some warped scale.
Cynthia, thank you for your kind words. That is an amazing realization too. I am still trying to find my way back too.
Missy, thank you. Forced and awkward pretty much describes it for me too. Though I have to say if anyone started a conversation with,“So, death is a bitch.” I would feel so relieved. I think what you wrote has so much wisdom in it. It is really hard to be the ones to do the incredibly hard work of trying to feel compassion and sympathy for people who haven’t grieved the death of their children when we are the ones suffering. It feels like the onus of hard work falls on our shoulders. I fell and/or fall into the stubborn place of not wanting to do that and make it easier for others, but I have been isolated in that place too.
Missy - it is not always this hard. I am approaching 11th anniversary of Solomon's death and birth. The winter months are always hard for me when newly married and newly pregnant, only to have it all end. I'm no longer angry or bitter, it took awhile. After the birth of my daughter I let a lot of the grief go, with my son a little more. By the time he turned 5, the anger had physically left and I did forgive myself. I can't pinpoint the moment, but did recognize a feeling of lightness that had eluded me for 5+ years. Then there were days I didn't think about Solomon, and that freaked me out. My grief counselor told me that was normal and positive. Took me awhile to digest that too. He is with me every day now for the most part, in my kids mostly and I think about what he is missing and who he might be. It never ends, but it does change and get easier.
monique i feel the exact same
i learned a lot about compassion
i wish this lesson didn't come at the price of my firstborn
thanks for this thought provoking post
I have gained a new sense of self that has lead me to reach out and help others who are also suffering the loss of a baby. Connecting with these men and women online and in person helps me heal every day.
Beautiful post, Angie xo
Oh yes, I found the idea of being induced totally absurd. I'd been scheduled for a c-section and didn't bother learning how to birth a baby. So I learned everything on the fly while under heavy sedation and in shock. Physically, it was probably an easy birth and I don't regret laboring. It was the silence after, the feeling of physical emptiness and the odd flatness of my stomach that haunt me. A nurse broke the silence by sincerely saying "he's beautiful." I'd happily erase all of the things that happened right after from memory, even her kind words.
I feel alienated at the moment. Maybe that will change, I'm not too far out. I'm not uncomfortable about gaining insight from this experience. I've always been an introspective person, very aware of my flaws. I noticed an instant internal shift. I don't sweat the small stuff anymore, I'm more patient and empathetic. My partner is more spiritual and philosophical (he selected our son's middle name- Jāti) so while I find it to be a random occurrence, a stroke of bad luck, he's found some kind of meaning in it. I don't think I will ever find peace or meaning- it's senseless. I do however think it's made me a different person, in some ways better.
I am still finding my place in this world. Almost all of my immediate friendships have dissolved, or morphed, however you want to look at it. I am trying to have the courage to make new friends but don't know who this woman is, who I am, yet. I am leaving a trail of what feels like broken promises behind me and I feel so far from enlightenment as I look back.
I realize I am traveling the Dark Night of the Soul and this is what it looks like. I am in the process of a transformation that feels like alienation but I think it is drawing me closer to a truth I am not able to understand yet.
After Mika's death, I read the story of the Mustard Seed and felt a belonging for a moment. This is how I feel everytime I visit your blogs, Angie. It is our new place in this world and we can find our comfort in each other.
Loretta
As to connection: I think I have said this before, but grief made me selectively compassionate for a long time, which is to say much less compassionate than I had been before. I had empathy for people who were suffering for what I considered to be valid reasons, and I was very angry at people who were suffering for reasons that I considered to be less valid than mine. I felt connected to this community, and fairly indifferent to the trials and tribulations of anyone but the babylost. It has taken me quite some time to get back to a place where I have empathy for people in pain regardless of the source of that pain. It is only very, very recently that I have heard people around me say "What I went through (breakups, early miscarriages, not having a partner) is nothing compared to what you went through, and not been inclined to agree with them. Realizing- or rediscovering- that other people's pain is real pain, too, is actually a huge relief.