But it wasn’t him or the expectant mother. It was her
neighbor Laura’s voice on the line. I recognized it right away. My heartbeat
picked up pace as she greeted me quickly. “Did you hear about Amanda’s baby?”
“No. What? Why are you calling from her phone?” I choked out,
panic rising in my throat.
She hesitated with her answer, “Her baby died. Well, he was
born Monday night at the birth center, then they took him to Riley’s in Indy
and he died there about 8 hours after he was born.” Her voice sounds heavy and
her words are clumsy.
“No! Oh my no!” I yelled into the phone. I might have let a
few swear words slip too, I really can’t remember.
I was so shocked.
“We are all here at her house- (she preceded to list off 4 other
neighbor ladies I know from birthwork) the viewing starts in half an hour. Actually,
everything is ready and we are leaving to go home now. You should come and see
her. You should come now before the crowd.”
What we didn’t say, and both were thinking is of the two
other neighborhood women, who had also lost their baby at or soon after birth.
Two other funerals that Laura had helped prepare for and that I had attended,
all within the last 3 years. These women now bound by a most miserable reality
all within view of each other’s homes. Across the pasture or out the kitchen
window, they have each other in sight always. She explained that the baby was
born with a genetic condition that made it impossible for him to survive out of
the womb.
I knew she was thinking about them when she said, “And here
I go home to my baby- my three healthy
boys. I feel so guilty.” Her voice drips with the pain of it.
“Laura, please….” I tried to cut her off.
“I know I shouldn’t feel bad, but I do. Each time I see them
I feel it. And I see them a lot.” She confessed.
“Thank you so much for calling Laura. I would have found out
too late if you hadn’t called. Now I have a chance to come and see him before
he is buried. Go home and be with your boys.” I hung up and in the rearview
mirror made contact with the gaze of my worried five-year-old.
“Her baby died, mom?” he asked, wise beyond his years. “That
is not supposed to happen. Mom’s need their babies to stay with them so they
can take care of them and nurse them.”
Through my tears I nodded in agreement.
The next 40 minutes passed in a haze. Before I knew it, I
was standing in the doorway of the garage where they held the viewing. On a
round side table set a small walnut coffin and three flower arrangements.
Coffins should not be this small. The parents, David and Amanda, were seated on
a love seat beside the table. Amanda, having given birth not even 48 hours
prior sat dressed in black and covered with a blanket. The rest of the family
formed a receiving line of sorts, all in black, all seated on benches, all trying
hard not to look at me.
 |
| From the viewing |
I expected the most difficult part to be viewing Joshua’s
little body, grey and purple. But it wasn’t. The hardest part was the
expression on Amanda’s face. Pure grief embodied. Her face was still puffy from
the pregnancy and pale white. She reached for me and pulled me down to her. As
we embraced she sobbed. Her hot tears fell onto my neck. Words passed between
us, I can’t remember really what we said. She released me. I took one more look
at her son. He resembled his mother.
It was too much, too wrong.
I excused myself, not able to face the rest of the receiving
line, hoping that my non-Amish status would excuse my rudeness. I walked as
fast as I could to my vehicle and left.
The grief scratched across my mother’s heart, leaving a slow
thin opening from which it bled. As a birth worker, I struggle to segment my
professional and personal lives. I carry the weight of this loss. Just like the
joy after a victorious birth can energize me for days, so too the grief follows
me. It is unaware of the boundary between my professional and personal selves.
For me, each new loss is a trigger for past traumas. Memories resurface creating
a vortex of fear and anxiety with it. This loss is now, is today. But it is
also the loss three years ago, and the year before that, and five years before
that.
I find myself working over my theology of grief, turning it
like a smooth stone in my hand.
Why did this happen?
Where is God? Is this a punishment? Is this a part of a plan, the higher
purpose, a lesson to be learned?
I am not alone in the asking and seeking for answers. I’m
not alone in the desire to understand, to make sense of it. What I come back to time and time again. What sinks in
deeper with each of these losses is that God is not the instigator, the distant
planner, the harsh teacher. God does not wish a mother to bury her child in the
ground.
God does not wish for us a grief so deep, isolating and
lasting. Illness, pain, loss
and suffering are things of this world, part of our human experience, not of
God. So if God is not those things- distant, punishing, plotting- where then?
GOD IS WITH US. God is here in the mess, here in the
suffering. God’s heart breaks with ours. God feels the pain of our loss and
grief with us. God is holding us so we can actively mourn. God is big enough
for our anger, our sadness and our tendency to get lost within ourselves. God
is in the times where there are no words. God is in the days where anger,
jealousy, pity control our hearts. And we may not acknowledge it, may not look
for it, may not even feel it- but yet God is there.
This understanding is what I held to as I lived through two
miscarriages. It is my heart’s prayer for each mother I know that is dealing with
the loss of a pregnancy or baby.
Grief’s scratch across my heart will turn into a thin ribbon
of a scar. And although pulled closed with time, it will always be with me. My
pink ribbon of a scar will remind me that Amanda will always be Joshua’s mother.
It will burn with the knowing that it isn’t fair, or easy, or right
that he died.
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