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Someone just said the same thing to me last week. ["God only makes perfect, so my daughter must not have been perfect and He knew it. That is why he took her."] I am two and a half years out and I still didn't know what to say. What I wanted to say is that if God only makes perfect, how could she be anything but, despite her death.

This may sound horrible, but I'm maybe especially ill-equipped to deal with more "normal" losses now. My grandmother died last year, and I found myself surrounded by relatives talking about miracles and faith and about how beautiful her death was. I had a hard time grieving for her with my family because I was a) jealous of her death - why couldn't my son have a peaceful death after a long and full life? and b) very conscious of and sensitive to the use of the word "miracle." I had to keep holding back the snarls, which meant I wasn't much help to my mom and family for a while.

A friend (an ex-friend?) wrote to me in the winter of 2008 about how she was trying to forgive me for not writing and talking to her more. I wrote back, explaining that I wasn't not communicating with her because I was mad at her (after several years of not communicating at all, I hadn't thought much about her at all) but because my baby had died. I was nice about it even though I didn't want to be.

She sent me almost an identical message - "Why don't you talk to me anymore?" - a couple months ago. And what I wanted to write back was this:

Baby angels and, more especially, sentimental baby angel poetry, drove me absolutely up the wall the first few months after Teddy died. Partly because I didn't and couldn't buy into the idea that my baby is an angel, and partly because deep grief isn't a time for bad poetry. It's a time when you bring out the good stuff.

So many of these thoughts are familiar to me. I've been struggling with my faith and my ideas about who and what God is (if there is a god) since my son's death, and it's just constantly hard. My entire worldview has changed. The faith that was such a big part of my life is not there anymore, and I'm not sure yet what will be there in it's place.

This post was something I really needed to read - it helped to read your perspective and soak up your thoughts - I think for many of us coming from faith communities, there's the implication that we are supposed to learn & grow from loss. Even when things aren't said, sometimes they are felt.

I think, for me, the last year was about connectedness, which is ironic because I felt so alienated from so many of the people in my life. But I felt a deep deep sense of connectedness with suffering and grief in people around me. It was a beautiful, sad, overwhelming feeling of having a very human experience of loss shared by many in so many different ways. At some point, for the immediate weeks after Lucia died, I would see people as their suffering. I think it helped open my eyes to how vulnerable we all are.

I paint my face like a calavera. I don't know what I am trying to achieve, making myself look dead, but I do it. I am alone. It feels like I am doing something wrong, and in that way, I am excited. I put a base of white onto my face. It reminds me of high school and listening to the Cure and being a punk rocker. Then I pull out the black face paint crayon and draw a joy there, a swirl here. Some flowers and decorations. I am more beautiful with the mask of death.

I search through the cases of milagros. Through silver hands, patina-ed trucks and copper lungs. Medals of disembodied legs and small praying men with hats held in hands. I settle on a sacred heart, flames rising from its fold, and, at the last minute, point to a pair of eyes for Santa Lucia, for my daughter. I seek ritual now. The repetition of the familiar helps me touch my childhood, reminding me of comfort. When I get home, I dig out my antique wooden Virgen de Guadalupe. I place her over a handwoven fabric, light a candle and pin the ex-voto to the cloth.

For a couple of months after my daughter was stillborn at 38 weeks, my husband and I saw a grief therapist recommended by the hospital and our midwives' group. She served a purpose, mainly by helping us answer the thousands of questions we suddenly had:

How do we tell everyone that our daughter died?

What do we do with the nursery?

Is it okay to tell people that we would prefer not to receive flowers?

How do I eat breakfast in the diner where they fussed about my pregnancy?