I drive my husband to the train and wave at my neighbors as they deposit their kids on the bus. The neighbors smile and wave back, but their smiles are tinged with sadness. Instead of thinking, What a sweet young couple!, I’m sure they’re thinking, That poor, poor sweet young couple.
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Those who have been gripped by the cold hand of grief are facing each day with compassion and resilience. They are focusing on the little things, on the things they can control, doing their best to wring any joy they can out of these strange days in history, and giving themselves grace on those inevitable days when they simply cannot.
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The recent outbreak of the novel coronavirus has been surreal and rattling, even to the most battle-hardened psyche. There's nothing like an invisible enemy to strip away any remaining shreds of your sense of security and ease. Wresting the words from an already trauma-addled brain to explain this in any coherent format is more than most of us can likely bear at this point in time.
And so, instead, I offer you a haiku:
Never fear, they said.
You and your baby? Low risk.
Definitely low.
I lie in bed and watch in contented silence as the clock turns over to midnight, two cherished living children asleep in my arms, and a gaping wound just as big as ever but which curiously few can still see. The ocean spits me back out and I heave a sigh of relief. Another round of grief's fury, survived. Eight months to recover before it begins again anew.
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At first the bag is thin—only a membrane, really. You go home from the hospital clutching it in your bloodied hands, gasping at each stinging slice as the glass shifts and stabs with every pulse of your new sack-heart. The pain is astonishing in its intensity. It literally hurts to breathe. It hurts just to exist. And you wonder: how am I ever going to survive like this? How does anyone live with a tender heart filled with razors of glass?
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This is the consolation prize awarded to every bereaved parent: the mind’s ceaseless spinning, conjuring all the myriad ways your baby could die, backed by the hard-won knowledge that it most certainly could happen to anyone at any moment, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. Of course, this is a truth universal to all parents. This is why the horror genre has always been so effective: at its core, a thriller is an allegory for raising children in a world where, in truth, we have absolutely zero ability to keep them safe.
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
: for one and all
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: not ttc | infertility after loss
: parenting after loss
: on the bookshelf
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: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
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