Healing Words

As many of you know, this is not our first loss in pregnancy. Before Sophia, we experienced another, dramatically different loss. In November of 2005, I found out that I was pregnant about three hours before I was in surgery to remove an ectopic pregnancy (an embryo that implants and grows outside the uterus).

We were shocked at the depth of our grief over a child that we had never known about or anticipated! With that loss, our grief spiked early and hit us like a ton of bricks. This time around, it was a slow march to an inevitable black hole. I stifled all feelings for weeks. Grieving this loss has been a much larger challenge in itself than our previous loss. This process doesn't "look" the way I feel it ought.

I guess the truth that I have found nestled in this drastic difference is that grief cannot be predicted. I kept expecting to have some sort of dramatic end to all the waiting. I thought my d&c would leave me devastated and finally able to feel. Quite the opposite. After coming home, I felt even less than before. I comforted myself that it was due to the pain meds, but it was really just emptiness. Emptiness that I have to live with.

Along with the difference in circumstances surrounding this loss, is the fact that we are different people. In the intervening 3 1/2 years, we have experienced much life - both beautiful and dreadful. Sophia is one very obvious change in our lives. While her presence has changed our grief, I can't say that it has made it easier. We no longer grieve the fact that we are not yet parents, but now we know from experience the unparalleled joy that is embodied in holding an infant that moments before was kicking me in the ribs. We grieve also for her in that she will have to continue to wait to know the joy of being a big sister.

This loss is different, certainly, but not easier.

Both times writing has helped. I write to process externally. Sometimes it's good, mostly it's just me. So if you like me, you like my writing. If you don't, well....

In 2005, I wrote often to cope with our family's first loss. Here is my favorite:

Yahweh, Hold My Baby

Yahweh, what do you call our baby?
Please, come whisper it in my ear.
I know that it cannot be heard aloud
At least not while we're still here.

Yahweh, can our baby see us?
Please let her sit by my side.
I don't need to see or feel her
Just to let her know we tried.

Yahweh, will you hold our baby?
She needs love like every child.
Please hold and kiss her now and always,
And tell her it's only for a while.

Yahweh, I'm so sad and lonely.
Won't you please come and stay?
I try to have hope for tomorrow
But all I want is yesterday.

Yahweh, you know all the pain.
You've seen mine and every other's.
With broken hearts and empty arms,
Our greatest desire, just to be mothers.


I am still sad when I read this, but the grief is just a shadow of its former self. Three months after my ectopic pregnancy, we found out we were pregnant with Sophia. Knowing that her life would not be possible had I carried this first child full term does not make that grief any less real or important in our lives. I think people want to move so quickly to what we have and what our loss makes possible that we miss the entire point.

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I have written while grieving our current loss as well. Something that is interesting to me and is evident in the words below, is that I am less personally invested. I am writing to a general audience rather than to God or our baby. I think this is the difference in my grief, and this will be the main obstacle to truly grieving the loss of my child. I have to say that out loud to myself far more than I did in 2005. This was my child.

On Sunday I felt for the first time in over a month, at least as it concerned our baby. I had long lost hope of a healthy pregnancy, although I hadn't admitted its truth. So I went to the cemetery next to Grant Elementary on Broadway. It drizzled, and I was finally alone. I was desperate just to feel something. I did.


-I came alone to the quiet cemetery where my tears could be understood. By whom, I guess I'd rather not know. My jeans got wet from the rain on a bench marked 'Windmiller.' I feel sure that Eugene's wife would forgive my intrusion. I assume she would recognize the posture of one needing rest. There is no grave of my own loved one to sit near and mourn. The tree in bloom between me and my car will have to do. Our baby was too small to merit a resting place.

It's too soon for peace. That is certain. But as I look around me at all of these monuments - some old, some new - meant to mark life and death, I feel an odd relief that our baby will never come here to cry alone. If a monument would help, I would put one right here, but it won't make my love more true or my loss more tangible.

Some may seek a cemetery to find God. I came here to escape him. Today's rain may very well be God's tears shed for my baby's unfulfilled promise. I know in my heart that my god did not have this loss in his "larger plan" for my life or this child. But I still cannot seek his face. It is too soon to experience the peace that I would find there.-



If you have written to move past your own grief and would like to share it, please do.