046 - No Two Are Alike (comment)

My husband is a Catholic, we had a priest come to offer us words of comfort from the bible after our son died. I believe he felt that comforting presence, although I was so far into grief I couldn't feel it. Today, he is coming to peace, I think he's had that moment of clarity you speak of. I wish I had it, even for a brief moment. I have the hope I will get it, eventually.

048 - Stung by the Thorn of a Rose

She was so perfect but too small to live."

photo by dysonology

Assalamu aleikum, peace be to all of you.

Two days after we lost Sarah we buried her on the Islamic cemetery close to us. It was such a horrible event. I wanted to be buried with her—how could I leave her in that hole by herself? How could I dare to go home? I felt my heart breaking in parts and I wished for death, may Allah forgive me. Then depression followed. I closed shutters and doors and stayed in the dark room all day. I didn’t eat, didn’t drink, didn’t sleep. I just stared at the walls and cried.

People outside lived their lives like nothing was going on, I thought that they were very rude. I thought the world had changed and everybody was in grief, but it was only me who had changed. My husband and I cried every day.

When I knew I can’t do it by myself, I was lucky to find a muslim therapist who had lost five babies herself—she knew how to deal with me. I am always thankful to the One and Only God that He connected me with her. She showed me this saying of the last prophet of God, Muhammad (peace and blessings upon him):

The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings of Allah upon him, said, “Indeed the miscarried fetus will confront his Lord if He enters his parents into the Fire. So it will be said to him, ‘O fetus which confronts his Lord! Enter your parents into Paradise.’ So he will drag them by his [umbilical] cord until he enters them into Paradise.” [Ibn Majah]

She showed me my religion all over again.

I was born muslim but I didn’t practice the way I should have. We talked about how faith in God was important and how patience plays a big role in life. We went over the story of Mary and how she got pregnant through a wish of Allah—in a time when it was a catastrophe to become pregnant out of wedlock. Mary left her home to have little Jesus (in Arabic his name is Isa, and in Islam he is a prophet only, not son of God) all by herself and return with him. No one believed her until Jesus spoke from the crib. Allah made her the most pious woman of all time. She managed her trial with strength and faith in Allah, not fearing anyone.

I have grown since then. My faith in Allah has grown—I feel His presence every day. Just having passed my 5-year anniversary of our loss, I see now how much I have changed. I think of her with such joy, and thank Allah for blessing me with my two living girls for this life, with my little Sarah at my gate to Paradise, God willing. My little Sarah is with Abraham and his wife Sarah, being taken care of.

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In Islam, religion is not part of our life. Our life is part of our religion. Allah tests our patience and our trust in Him. Are we going to have faith in Him and get over it quickly and accept it? Or are we going to challenge Him, be mad at Him?

The believer is like the grain crops—the wind continually beats it back and forth. And a believer continues to be afflicted with trials. We have to bend with our trials—not be like a strong tree that would break with a stronger wind. Trials cleanse our souls from past sins, as the saying goes: we are not stung by the thorn of a rose without some sins being forgiven for the pain.

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We are allowed to grieve for three days. We can still cry after that, but must get ourselves together and go on with life. Visitors come every day with food and drinks, and to talk. You are never alone. If we have a strong faith in Allah, we know that everybody has to leave one day and that this life is not what we are here for to achieve. We are here to work for the next life.

Still, it took time to heal. I went through the same things that might be familiar for you—I saw pregnant women and newborns all around me, remembered the foods I used to crave, had milk leaking from my breasts, suffered postpartum contractions and had baby clothes at home but no baby.

Many years and two children later, I feel blessed with everything that has happened to me. There is wisdom in losing my child. It was a loss for this world, but a gain for the next.

May God heal all of you who are in pain. May He give you patience to move on with life, amen.

050 - The Inescapability of Karma--Maybe (comment)

I sat through a (Unitarian Universalist) sermon yesterday, about the Universalist idea of salvation - that everyone is equally loved by some higher power and that that love isn't dependent on how 'good' we are - almost the opposite of karma. I wanted to really like that idea, but I had trouble placing the other half of what that means. It doesn't matter how good we are, so my son didn't die because of some wrongdoing on my part - but what does that leave me? Did he die because the universe is cruel and random? Because that higher power that loves everyone so much just does things like this? I think it would be really comforting to find a world view in which this made sense, but I just haven't.

052 - The Inescapability of Karma--Maybe (comment)

We are now, finally, after much deliberation and discussion, seeing a therapist. nothing spiritual. All practical. I'm not looking for philosophical reasons - looking for ways to make me not want to punch people in the face. All the time. Even when I'm smiling on the outside. I think she is definitely a good thing for us right now. Don't know for how long, but right now, yes. It is working.

Luckily, my spiritual crisis happened long before the loss of our daughters. But I am a little sad that their death caused some spiritual shaking for others that we are very close to. There are many, many times that I wished I had the comfort of a church or shared belief to usher me through grief, but I won't let serious issues with my former religion slide, not even if I crave the scent of incense and the release of singing hymns off tune.

I too have heard the maybe the short life was all the life they needed. Sometimes I like to believe that. Sometimes.

053b - Searching (comment)

As Sally put it, physically, Katie's ashes were interred in a wall niche in a cemetery about a 15 minute drive from our house. Even after 13 years, we still visit just about every single weekend.

In a spiritual sense, she is always with me. Always. There is not a single day & maybe not an hour that goes by when I'm not thinking of her in some way. She's with me when I see pregnant women, babies in strollers and young teenaged girls giggling together (she would be 13 this fall and starting Grade 8 next week). She's with me when all her cousins are together and I think about the one little girl who will always be missing from the pictures. She's with me in my blog and in this whole online community. She's with me whenever I meet up with my friends who are also bereaved parents. She's with me when I visit the farmland my ancestors lived on 130 years ago, and the cemetery where they are buried, and I wonder whether she is with them all now, in another place, waiting for me to join them someday. As the Beatles sang, Here, There, Everywhere. : )

055a - The Inescapability of Karma--Maybe (comment)

I really lucked out with therapy -- I called a grief counsellor within a week of Maddy's death, and kept going for almost two years (still trip back if I have some IL to pound out). She was patient, intelligent, supportive without being sticky (especially regarding parenting Bella through my grief), and a wonderful sounding board to everything. I think mostly I had to process shock for about a year, and then I could get into philosophy. We had a few ups/downs -- for a while it was extremely draining and I would often feel worse afterwards. There was one session where she pissed me off because she latched onto a single word I used and I felt it was really "Psych 101" -- and I told her so the next session. But looking back on the whole, it was extremely helpful. I would say extremely helpful *in conjunction with* six months on antidepressants, blogging and finding this community, returning to running, etc.

I used to be an atheist who leaned Buddhist, but then I got clocked with suffering and decided that while I'm not a sunny positive "screw the suffering!", I'm also not big into using it as a life force that shapes me. I also decided the end of the journey does matter, and that these scholars probably didn't know much about being an infertile woman. I found myself getting more cynical so I let it go. I even let go a seven year yoga practice because I couldn't even stand the minimal stuff the instructors would say -- it would just make my skin crawl, and raise my ire and make want to shout "No!" and shake the peace.

I'm also very much in the minority here in that I really had no guilt to begin with, so my personal introspection on my responsibility was extremely minimal and short. For that I'm grateful. I did for a while want to find some "positive," some lesson or something I could take from her death, but I'm kinda over that too: I guess it just reaffirmed that Mother Nature is a cold-hearted bitch sometimes. I don't think there really should be a positive to take from that ugly mess, frankly. I love, I miss, and therapy gave me a toehold from which to do this without spilling over the edge.

056a - The Inescapability of Karma--Maybe (comment)

I know that I am extremely late coming to this tread but I wanted to put in my two-cents and to share some thoughts on karma that have brought me comfort since losing my son just over 3 months ago. (Ellis was born, perfect, at 39 weeks and stopped breathing 32 hours later, we do not know why and do not expect to ever get a medical explanation.)

In the first week after our loss my prenatal yoga teacher came to check on me. She shared the following: In the Hindu tradition, the belief is that you are born over and over again until you have burned off enough of your accumulated bad karma to reach enlightenment. Once that happens you become one with universe and never need to be reborn again. When a baby is born, and dies so quickly, it is because they only needed one more short life to burn that last bit bad karma so they could reach enlightenment.

I would like to believe that that is what happened with my Ellis. That he was a nearly perfect soul and only needed a short time on Earth before he could become one with the universe. He chose me to give him that life. He died, not because of my bad karma, but because his was so good.

057 - Enlightenment (comment)

Alienated: To cause to become withdrawn or unresponsive; isolate or dissociate emotionally. This was me for several months. Disengaged from every one around me, as if watching life go on from behind a glass wall.

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.

059 - I just want to hold him again

I also argue with myself about an afterlife... I don't know whether there is one or not, at least the way that we identify and recognize each other in this life, but love the idea of seeing my little girl again. I sometimes talk to her and imagine that she is in a good place, that she can har me and know how much I miss her and love her and that if she could, she would tell me, "Don't worry Mama, I'm doing fine. I see you and the family every day and I love you too. Try not to be too sad for me." But it's so, so hard. I cry just writing this.

060b - Visiting Kaleb

I was also not that very spiritual person before. Now I have to belive in existance of spirituality to somehow survive the lost.
Similar signs happened to me too. First, couple of days after delivering Eszter I woke up in the middle of the night (my husband would say that I was on the border of awake and sleeping but I know that I was awake) and a child called me loudly - she said: "Mom, come!" (I have a 4-year old daughter too, but it wasn't her). I knew it was Eszter. I replied that I couldn't go, it was not my time.
On the funeral the weather was windy and clowdy. After the grave was done and all the girdles and flowers were put on, I placed a small angel in the middle of a girdle. In this moment a cloud'd just went away from the sun and the little angle was lighted. It sounds corny, I know, but at that moment I felt something.
The lactation had stopped after 2,5 months, and it was yesterday when I realized it. Yesterday I dreamed with Eszter. She was alive, and she cried and I could not feed her. (We have a quote in Hungary, that the babies who die before birth, cry in the dreams of her mothers and the mothers could not feed them.)
Yes, maybe I like to look for signs. I sometimes think on conversations that I would have with Eszter. Where is she, how she feels, is she happy... I know it's only me and myself, who're chatting, and I know it would sound crazy for those, who did not loose their baby, but you at least might understand this.

062 - I just want to hold him again

I understand. Like Em, I do believe with all my heart that God is real and that Heaven is very real--even though I dont understand it all. Thinking of my precious baby boy in Heaven gives me peace (it doesnt take the heavy crushing weight of sadness away, but it does bring peace in the knowledge that I will see him again one day). Oh how cruel death is--looking forward to heaven where there will be no more death!

064a - The Meaning of a Life (comment)

thanks for writing this post. i agree whole heartedly. the sentiment that these things happen for a reason is very subjective... and i know that some blm's also subscribe to this philosphy, and i don't want to hurt them or to belittle their beliefs or coping process... but for me, yes, there was no lesson, or good, or deep meaning to be found in my children's deaths.

at first, i felt this very same way. but then, hearing and seeing that people do, in fact, believe that there is some kind of meaning or direction or greater purpose involved, i tried to be fair and consider this possibility. i thought, hmmmm. what if god is building a big army of goodness, and s/he needed innocent babies to fill the ranks, sort of along the lines of the virgin birth. was my coral rose taken for this higher purpose? should i feel honored instead of bereaved?! well, no... this did not feel right. what could it have been? i racked my brain, and searched my soul. unfortunately, like the crazy 8-ball, all signs pointed to NO. there was no meaning or purpose. unless it had something to do with a vengeful god, doling out punishment. i rejected that premise as well. because... fuck that!! no one deserves to lose a child. no one. and no child deserves to be made some TOOL in some grand master plan to make us see or do or live better, by dying.

then, when my anton died, it sort of shattered a lot of people's suppositions that all this was happening for a reason, a greater cause, a bigger picture. wtf... where was the deep meaning in his death? because then, all it could mean was, either, life just sucks, or my husband and i were fucking cursed. i choose to think that it is the first case- life can SUCK, big time, and there is always something worse and more horrific to prove this.

having said all that, i do sometimes fantasize about god's great army of innocent babies, ready to nix evil in every hidden corner, my coral and anton holding rank and fulfilling their "purpose", and i think of how proud i would have been- if this was not anything but a wish or a dream. wouldn't it be better and easier if it all made sense? and their was some kind of equalizing justice that made it OK for babies to die? i need this break from reality sometimes, because it feels so lonely, and stark, to have babies die. to bury babies, or live with their ashes, only, or, in general, to be without them. to be without. it is so tempting to make shit up, about why. why?!! 7 years later, i don't lose as much sleep over this question as much as i did in the first few years. for me, i have come to accept that the answer to 'why?' is... because it sucks. life sucks, and there are no clean, clear cut, easy answers. it just is. not fair. no reason. no blame. no culpits. or, even- culprits, yes... but no justice.

and, lastly, i also feel that there was some beauty to be found, even in the murky shitpile. i admit that some enriching things may have come as a result of the grieving process. but, i admit it begrudgingly... which one of us would not trade our newly-found empathy and understanding for our babies to be alive instead of gone? this kind of 'back-door' beauty, i am not all that happy to have experienced it. i don't wear my badge of survival with much pride or honor. i wear it with a solemn understanding that life includes death. even the deaths of my children. yes, even their deaths. life is one big, messy package. it doesn't make sense, and although we try to make it fit into nice tidy boxes, all organized and ready to make sense in the end, the fact is, for me anyway, it just is non-sensical. and that is a lesson i learned early, for the most part... because my babies died out of the order of things- i was supposed to die first, right? wrong. their deaths broke that bubble of expectation & priveledge. now, i relate to atrocities happening in africa, in south america, in, well, everywhere else but my middle class american lifestylle. nope, no meaning in the end. people who find a greater meaning for my children's deaths, all i can think is that they just havn't learned MY lesson as of yet... just wait until they have an unfair loss, too great to bear. and then, they will understand better, how hard it is to accept the unacceptable.