open letter
In late July, an email came into the contact form in the Glow in the Woods email inbox. I respond to those requests when we get them. It was from a woman who hadn't lost a child, but whose best friend had. She thanked Glow in the Woods for giving her a starting point in the piece How to Help a Friend through Babyloss--a section where we hope to guide friends in the right direction. (We urge you to add your own experiences with what was and wasn't helpful in the comment section of that post.) She asked if we knew any blogs for the friends of babylost parents, or if we could direct her for support. I suggested she post the question in the forum, and I posted the question on my social media sites. But the depth of compassion and love for her friend was so palpable. Conversely, the compassion and love this community showed her strengthened my conviction that conversations about friendships and child-death need to continue happening.
She wrote again in December, thanking this community again, telling me where she and her friend found themselves now in their grief and their lives. I found her insights so valuable, I asked her to consider writing a guest post for Glow. In the earliest months of Glow in the Woods, Julia's friend Aite shared her thoughts on abiding. Today, I am honored to share Rachael's open letter to Glow in the Woods. -Angie
Dear Glow in the Woods,
You don’t know me, but I feel as if I know you. I have been a visitor, each and every day for the past seven months. I have read your stories—every word. I have followed those stories to your blogs to your spoken word videos. I am a lurker, because I don’t exactly belong. I am on the outskirts of this club, the one that you never wanted to join. I don’t know yet if I am the only one.
I am here because seven months ago, my best friend gave birth to a beautiful, full-term baby girl who had mysteriously slipped away from life a few days before she was born.
We had spent the weekend together, my friend and I. I had invited her to spend a few days with me and I relished every moment of it. We ate wonderful food, took dozens of pregnancy photos, listened to music, and reminisced. We floated for nearly two hours in an outdoor pool and I cackled uproariously at the sight of her schlepping her pregnant body into an inner tube. We sat in the warm July sunshine and excitedly discussed her impending motherhood. It is hard to believe how quickly life can turn its back on you, how fast everything can change, how tragedy strikes in the blink of an eye.
The doctor said that the baby died sometime during that weekend. I have drug myself to hell and back since the moment I heard the midwife say, tentatively, “Saturday, maybe.” Why didn’t I ask her if the baby had been moving? Why didn’t I put my hand to her belly, as I had done before? Well, because I was having fun. Because it wasn’t the last thing on my mind, it was something that had never been on my mind. Because in the world I used to live in, babies didn’t die. Oh, maybe in third world countries, or in cases of extreme prematurity, or later, to SIDS or something else, but not here, and not to my healthy, well-deserving friend and without any warning whatsoever.
Like many of you, I have desperately wished for the impossible—the chance to rewind time. I’m not asking to go back and retake a Biology exam that I wasn’t well prepared for. I’m not asking to go back to my teenage years, when I made all of the wrong choices. I’m asking to go back and try to save a life. And not just any life—the life of a child. This should be possible. My dreams try to convince me that it is. They play like a movie reel, where I am transported back to that weekend and I say, nonchalantly, “Hey, let’s go to the hospital and make sure everything is okay.” Or maybe even further back than that. To the day we spoke on the telephone and my friend told me that the baby had been quieter than usual. To when I said, “Babies do that when they’re getting ready to be born. It’s the calm before the storm!” I laughed when I said it. It was funny then. It’s not funny now. Not funny at all. Allowing myself to go back and think of that conversation immediately brings forth a feeling of guilt that is so ferocious I can feel it stinging my throat, like bile. It forces me to examine every moment of that weekend, to ask myself if anything I could have done or said would have produced a different outcome. My mind refuses to stop multiplying and examining an infinite amount of scenarios.
And then, there was the morning that she called me, just twelve hours after I had dropped her off from our weekend together. She was having contractions, but I didn’t believe it could be active labor just yet, and I was slow to get ready and drop off my children with my mother. She arrived at the birth center and an examination revealed that she was seven centimeters dilated. I did not make it to the birth center in time for her to hear the horrific news that there was no heartbeat. She was completely alone. The midwife had another laboring woman at the birth center, with no backup or assistance of any kind. So as a result, my precious, heartbroken friend was left to labor through transition with the knowledge that her baby had died. And she was all alone.
Meanwhile, I was driving like a bat out of hell, selfishly hoping that her labor had slowed down just long enough to allow me to witness the birth. A bright, sunny morning had transformed itself and as I drove, the clouds were darkening. Sparse droplets of rain became a torrential downpour, the entire sky opening up to warn me of what was to come. I didn’t see it then, refused to acknowledge that it could have been an omen. And so, I arrived at the birth center, stupidly full of giddy excitement. What transpired in the following hours all crowd together into one big, jumbled smorgasbord of shock, anger, fear, guilt guilt guilt, adrenaline, trauma, disbelief, empathy that became physically painful and so, so much sadness.
The next morning I had to force myself to say goodbye, to my friend, and to the baby that she still held in her arms. I was expected to resume life as normal, to come home to my four rambunctious boys and my schoolwork. It didn’t happen to me, after all. I could see it in the eyes of those who tried to comfort me. They said, “Just be grateful for the children that you have,” which is a condolence that not only assumed I was ungrateful to begin with, but tried to diminish the grief and loss I felt for a child that I wanted and expected to be a part of my life. I tried to sit with the boys and be present and shower them with love, but my mind was somewhere else, and their needs were too great. Life itself felt surreal, a thick fog lining the edges as I walked aimlessly through the supermarket, lost. I was consumed by grief, and by an insatiable need to fiercely protect and care for no one else but my friend. It was here, on Glow, that I found solace, and how I discovered that my own words could bring healing as I filled up pages, previously blank.
So now you know. I am here. Not with my own story, but as a keeper of someone else’s. A story I cannot forget-- one that, at first, tried to destroy me. A story that still begs to be heard, that unfolds each day and continues to reveal so much—about loss, about grief, about the power of friendship, and about healing. And it is through your stories that I have learned how to be present for my friend, how to begin to understand just a sliver of her experience, how to nod at my own guilt and then let it slide on past, and how to allow myself to remember and love a little girl lost, one rainy day in July.
--Rachael
If you are here, feeling like a lurker, consider this post an invitation to introduce yourself. Whose story are you keeping? And for the babylost, how does it feel to read of the grief of a friend? Do you have a friend who keeps your baby's story? Someone who bears witness? How does that relationship feel? Has your child(ren)'s death brought you closer or pushed you away?
36 Comments
Reader Comments (36)
I feel like I can empathize to the very core of my being... Yet it's a world that's not really mine.
If I believed in intuition, I would say that, somehow, I always knew what was going to happen.
I can't pretend to imagine what their grief is on a daily basis and what they must be going thru. How do they function? How do they still care for their living daughter and grieve the loss of their baby? How do they feel seeing our twins? What are their thoughts? How do they go on?
In regards to our friendship, I think it's going to take time. Honestly, we haven't seen them much. We tried but I think seeing our babies only made their pain raw...over and over again. I would hope to say that our friendship isn't ruined and we're just on a 'break' but is it? We have stayed away to give them space. But did that space place a wedge in our friendship? Both my husband and I love our friends dearly and if we could anything to bring their daughter back, we would. But that's not a reality. So in the meantime we lurk in hopes we can get 'glimpses' of what their feeling. We mourn for their daughter. Their daughter would have been 1yrs old on March 24. This day is now filled with pain, loss, and the what ifs.
The night Collin was born, all of our lives changed. And I've viewed life differently ever since.
The thing that bothers me the most is when people act as though there should be some kind of expiration date on grief. That now, because it's been years or because she is the proud mom of two other little boys or because Collin wasn't my child, that we should all be "over it" by now. That we shouldn't still be affected.
And yet, sometimes, I see the similiarities in her boys and wonder how Collin would look now and for a moment, I can see him running around chasing his brothers and I can almost hear him laugh. And 18 months ago when I had my first child, I cried for her knowing she'd never get to meet him. And on his 7th birthday this past summer I spoke with his mom who felt guilty that she got her boys up and dressed and fed them breakfast before she realized the date and she felt like she was losing him all over again.
These moments, they don't ever expire. The loss of the children we love doesn't ever go away. And the love and pain we feel for their parents, that doesn't go away either.
I had to pull over and immediately called our dad,who was with her at the hospital hearing the news with her that no heartbeat could be heard. That Friday and the days after were just a rollercoaster of emotion. I wanted to cry my eyes out for my sister, to scream and yell ...but I had to put on my brave face for her and her husband.
She was induced Friday and had my nephew Saturday 2-19-12 @ a little after 1am
8lbs 21inches and adorable! He resembled his older brother who just turned 2 a few weeks earlier. The cord had wrapped around him sometime Thursday or Friday morning.
Seeing my sweet sister trying to be strong....leave the hospital without her baby broke my heart. She is so strong and beautiful... And my heart is filled with so much emotion for what she is going through.
She aches,our family aches but we will see our sweet baby one day.
Forever in our heart he will be, our little Cooper!
At any rate, all I can do for my friends is to try and be there for them- talking, asking questions about where they're at, and grieve little m's death.
So last month, when I got the news that my sister's son had died at 32 weeks, I felt prepared. I remembered what I had read. I told her to hold the baby and take pictures. She knew about this blog because I asked what other advice did you have to offer. I wrote to let her know how much I loved her. I wrote a letter to her son James.
Still, I know now, that it is impossible to be prepared for this. It is impossible to have the words and do the actions that make pain go away, or even ease. I call her on the phone and I want to scream "How can I help you!!!" But I can't, because I can't help her.
I have asked her if she has come here yet, and she said she is not ready. I come here every day and read through old posts looking for the magic words. Every post hits my heart dead center. It makes me nervous for when she finally does read the words.
I can not thank the writers/readers enough for sharing their stories and so beautifully giving themselves to others to help others who are grieving. To me, it seems so brave, and so selfless. I hope you know what you mean to others.
Thank you.
All of your responses have been so beautiful. You honesty means so much. Thank you for trying. I'd like to tell you about the support my friends have given me, in a later comment (luckiest unlucky girl in the world, right here), but I had to address one comment specifically:
Mary's Christy: I'm sorry that there aren't more people in your physical life that speak to you about your daughter, but you are not alone. Please come and share with us over on the message boards. I have friends who I talk to everyday about my son but this is the one place where I know my grief is truly understood and shared.
The same goes for any other mamas lurking out there.
XXOO
Emma, Ellis's Mom 8/16/11 - 8/19/11
And she has no children of her own, either.
An acquaintance of mine -- we ought to be just casual friends whose kids happen to share a birthday. Checking in every so often, exchanging photos, occasionally feeling a little nervous or jealous or excited because one kid walks or talks before the other.
but my little girl is fine, and her little boy died the weekend before. it is still not fair.
I try to help in little ways as best I can (especially as we don't live close to each other right now). Cards, FB messages...but they all feel so inadequate. Although she might not realize it, I still grieve everyday with her. And I am so very thankful that she has found a community like this and others to help her.
Very soon after I lost my daughter, Rachael shared Angie's post, "The Smallest Jar," with me. I can't express how much her (your) words touched me, and how I felt that my feelings had been expressed by another mother grieving the loss of their beautiful, perfect, cherished daughter. I shared that piece of writing at Zoë's memorial, crying as I read the line "her name is Light and Peace and all things too beautiful to hold." That is how I felt. "It is God whispering. It is the wind through chimes and trees when no one is listening. It is Nature crying." My daughter's name means Life. A life I so wanted for her, and still cannot understand why it is not here. She exists in the wind and the rain, in the dragonflies that came to me every time I set foot outside after her birth. But I still want her here, where I can touch and hold her, sing to her and change her diaper.
I feel so blessed to have had the support of my friend, and that she and all of you care enough to seek out resources and information, that you want to share your experience and raise awareness and create something out of your loss, even if it was not your child. To know how my daughter is missed and loved, and how she touched the lives of those around her, it's hard to express - but it brings me some kind of comfort. It acknowledges her, her life, and the love that we all have for her.
As for the things people say - well, I understand how hard it is to know what to say. It would be nice if everyone had exactly the right, supportive, comforting comment at all times, but I don't fault them for not knowing. I do prefer sort of cliche, "I'm so sorry" or "I don't know what to say," comments to "this must be for a reason," or "this experience is going to change you/teach you something/make you a more [fill in the blank] person." Luckily, I did not hear any comments like that in the beginning - it was more like, 5 or 6 months after (which are really difficult months anyway) when people started saying things like that.
Thank you so much, all of you, and to Glow for being here, and for raising the level of awareness, love, and compassion. And to Rachael, for being there, always.
Robynne, Zoë's mom
I relate strongly to Rachael’s desire for blogs for the friends of parents who have lost their babies, and I will try to find her threads in the forums. Just as there is nothing that can compare to the losses that you have all experienced, there is nothing that can compare to grieving with and for the death of your friend’s child. The information and advice that I have found (much of it here) is certainly very helpful in meeting our primary and overwhelming need, which is to support our bereaved friends in any way that we can. But I think that we, the lurkers, would benefit from the opportunity to share our own stories and experiences in a place where our grief would not be a burden or intrusion on the infinitely greater grief of the parents. As Rachael said in her letter, there is fairly universal surprise that we are so affected by your loss, which isn’t particularly helpful.
Our friends lost their son less than two days after he was born, full term and perfect. I vividly remember the moment when we received the news that he was born, the joy we felt, and the anticipation of all of the moments we would all share together as he grew. And I will never, never forget the moment my husband told me Ellis had died. I will never forget that day, the frantic rush to get packed up and in the car, to get there. The 4 hours in the car, the endless crawl through highway traffic jams, the hours spent groping for understanding, quizzing each other on how we could help, what we could do when we got there, knowing that it was all pointless because all we could do was get there and see what they needed. I will never forget the look on Emma’s face in the moment between when she walked into the room and she was in my arms. I will never forget the way Cory’s body felt when I hugged him, will never forget the things we all said to each other that weekend, will never forget the faces and voices of those days after Ellis died. Those days are an integral part of my heart and soul now, and all I have been able to do in these 6 months that have passed since he died is to try to make sure I am present, and that my friends understand that they, and their baby, and the death of their baby are a daily part of me and while I can’t touch the agonizing grief and loneliness they are living with, I will not just move forward and leave them alone with it.
So, then, what advice can we, the lurkers, offer each other? I have no idea, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing any more than anyone else does. I’m lucky (although it seems ridiculous to use the word “luck” in reference to any of this) because my beautiful exraordinary friend has sent me a book she felt expressed her feelings, has sent me links to blog posts, and has shared with me what she is feeling and thinking and has encouraged me to share with her. You see, it’s a terrifying thing to bumble around as the friend. I agonize over the best frequency of phone calls (I want her to know I am thinking about them every day, but I don’t want her to feel she has to either constantly dissect her feelings or to put on a cheerful face). I wonder how much she wants to know about how I feel about her baby’s death and their subsequent struggles and traumas. I worry when I’m talking about Ellis that I’m intruding and I worry when I’m talking to her about anything else that I am giving the impression that I’ve moved on or expect her to have moved on. I feel heartbroken and guilty when I talk about my daughter but feel I need to respect her determination to ask about and spend time with Zoe. I feel sad, and furious, and inadequate and scared. And I feel stupid verbalizing those feelings because what they are living with is so much more enormous and impossible. And mostly, I feel astounded by their courage and grateful for their presence in my life.
Thank you again for this post, and for inviting us to introduce ourselves. Now you all know, we are here. We can’t fix anything, but we are not going anywhere, and we love you.
I have no advice for the friends of bereaved parents. I've merely clung to my friend in these six months because I love her, I miss her son, and her strength is contagious. The past year has given me some wonderful gifts, and one of the most important is a closer friendship with Emma. I wish we had gotten here any other way.
Like a few of you have commented until that moment babies didn't die in the world I lived in and if they did they were "just miscarriages" or tragic SIDS events, etc. I couldn't comprehend how they were alive in so many ways, physicals, dreams, hopes, futures and gone the next. And I certainly didn't know how any mother ever got out of bed again.
I've been through and learned so much in these five years and I honestly do believe it started that night because it let me knew that I had it pretty good because my girl was alive and she was all that mattered. And I realized how marginalized so many aspects of conception and birth are and how complicated grief is. It is true in so many avenues in life that we get so wrapped up in causes, rights, methods that we forget we are all human.
Like Rachael I felt compelled to educate myself but also wanted so much to understand how to get out the word about stillbirth, that each and every child dreamed about is someone's child and that parent's grieve that loss even if we never knew that little soul.
I still worry that I don't belong or that I might say or do something to misconstrue someone's story as somehow mine but I also know the understanding I've learned from this site and those of the storytellers have helped me honor situations I didn't know I was preparing for (best friend's miscarriage after insemenation, premature birth ending in death (coworker's family), death during labor (mother from the community).
I also learned after 30+ years what I think I might want to do with my life (bereavement counseling/hospice).
I owe much of what I am today to these babies and their incredible parents who bravely shared their stories and demanded more from us: Birdie, Thomas, Jack, Sam, Persephone, Niobe's twins, Callum, Hannah, William, Ava, Alex, Travis, Natan, Maddie.
Yet I am a lurker, someone who stands in the sidelines. My loss not so great, not so profound. And as a lurker the memory of all these words came to be so important when the worst happened. I'm at the board of a community of single women trying to concieve. And even how much you want it never to happen, it will. And it did. And in some way, I see now that my words were somewhat guided by my readings. So I threw myself into it, took a deep breath, and wrote her. Knowing that no words will be right - but not saying anything would absolutely be wrong. Instead saying that - if I way freaky things it's because I've never had to say these things before and no words in the world can actually express what I want them to express (but sending a blank e-mail would be stranger). In my mind knowing that she's never done this before either and would be absolutely at a loss in telling anyone her needs at that moment.
One e-mail turned into dozens, pondering through funeral and burial, flowers and practical arrangements. As time turned going over the possibility of registring the girl as her daughter (not automatically done in this country) as well as thoughts of what afterlife would be like. And me continuing to speak her daughters name when we met, never forgetting that not speaking it would not meen she had forgotten. Her journey through this land of grief has only begun and I can in some way feel grateful to be able to share it from the sidelines.