Point of Connection

As of the 29th, it has been nine years since my baby slipped beyond the veil to God.  Most of the time, it's not hard to let the buffer of time hold the pain back.  It's not that time heals all wounds so much as time allows for distraction, for forgetfulness.  It allows me to hide from the feeling of the immediate, gut-wrenching pain of fresh loss.  

As I watch my nephews and niece and others around them deal with the fresh loss of their mother's departure beyond the veil, I feel those connections.  I can understand their pain--at least as we share the common connection of loss.  I will never understand exactly what they're going through, even were my mother to die, because I don't have their exact background or emotional constitution.  But I can reach out for an embrace, distancing myself from their pain to protect myself from having to dive into my own.  I imagine many of us do this.  We feel their particular pain through their lens from a safe distance.  As the memorial went on, even as they read an essay I wrote of their mother's loss, I clung to this protective barrier.  I hate funerals because they always want to drag me back to the whirlpool of my own exposed and naked pain.  But I hold back.  I keep the distance alive and well.  

Then, we come upon the month of her angelversary, and the distance starts to shrink.  Nine years feels a lot longer, somehow, than nine marks on the calendar, nine times I've had that scab peeled back as I stare into the bloody pulp, which is all that is left of my heart.  And suddenly, I start feeling the connection.  The distance means nothing.  The differences mean nothing.  Yes, our experiences are different, but the addresses of the pain are next door to each other.  At these times, it's as if nine years never happened, and it feels like fresh loss again.  We can embrace as one, pray for healing as one, as we experience the healing power of understanding and love.  The Lord will see us through.  He knows where our loved ones are, that they are happy and continue to love us.  He will hold them in his love until we can meet them again. 

One of Two

(Alli new)

Well, we made it through one of two major hurdles that come around every year.  March is my angel's birthday.  June is her angelversary, her death date.  Those two dates still feel way too close together.

The worst part of her birthday was just before, when I wrote the last post, and then the morning of, when it was quiet, and people were writing and calling in sympathy.  I wasn't thinking about it until then.  After that, it was all I could think about.  Fortunately, it was a short day at school.  After I picked up kids, I was swept up in the reality of mommying, especially when I also ended up babysitting my sister's kids.  Then we all went out to eat to make up for not being able to have my girl's party that night.

(Playing with Alli)

At the end of festivities, however, it was time to eat our angel food cake and go through Alli's pictures.  The tears flooded in again.  It's always a pleasure to feel her back with us as I'm looking through those pictures.  The worst part is always when I get to the funeral pictures with her waxen face and, almost worse still, when the pictures run out.  I always feel so empty when I get to that point.

(Viewing)

It made me sad that the kids said they don't really remember her at all.  It has been eight years.  I guess that's a very good reason to go through those pictures at least twice a year, so they can remember her and feel like she's a part of us instead of just a memory.  Sometimes, it's hard to feel like she's more than a memory for me.  I know she's with us as often as she can be.  I know she's still real, an angel watching over us.  But I've gotten so used to the pain that it can be hard to remember the joy.  Some years, her birthday feels more like a celebration of her brief life.  I guess that's the way it should be every year, so she knows we still remember and love her.

Finding a Kindred Souls

A year or two ago, I met a woman who had grown up in the same area in which I'd lived and worked for a year and a half.  We made that connection, and we've chatted occasionally since.  Recently, I talked about my losses.  That's when she mentioned she, too, had lost a child, and recently, too.  I had had no idea.  I gather she figured my losses were so intense that her one second-term miscarriage didn't compare.  She just never brought it up.  We never know who may be a member of the empty arms/mothers of angels club.

I never wanted someone to feel somehow of a lesser rank in that club or that her loss was any less painful.  There really shouldn't be any ranking at all.  Yes, some of us have had more losses than others.  Some of us have had later losses than others or more recently losses.  But we're all members of that club of loss, a membership we wouldn't wish on anyone because the dues are too high.  It's a membership that teaches empathy and understanding that can't be taught or learned in any other way. It makes me feel bad that she somehow feels awkward mentioning her loss with me.  We should all be brothers and sisters in this club.  We all understand what real pain is.

I'm thankful that she did share with me.  Sharing implies trust.  When you're a person in mourning, it's hard to know who we can trust because some people respond in more supporting ways than others to our professions of grieving.  We often walk around like everyone else, saying nothing about our loss for fear of painful words.  When we do say something, we're hoping for the right words or touch or contact of any sort that will make our pain feel that much more bearable.  I would wish that all around me who have suffered loss would feel I was a person with whom they could share their hearts without worry that I'd cause them added pain. I pray the words I say to someone in mourning are the words that will help them feel loved.  Always.

Faith and Healing

Morning is Unique

Mourning is an individual experience.  For each person, grief takes different forms.  A lot of people tout the virtues of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief.  When my baby smothered herself in a pillow six years ago, the support groups I joined each handed me a copy of the five stages as if it were a guide book to the experience of mourning.  Yet my experience and those of others around me seem to defy one single process, one single experience.  The five stages did not help me in my personal search for healing.  They did nothing for me except set me up for a confusing and incomplete definition of healing. 

False Expectations:

            Before my baby passed away, I lived in the illusion of safety, that just because no great tragedy had happened to me, it couldn’t.  It felt like a kind of protection that shielded me from the worst the world had to offer.  Then when my baby died, I was unprepared.  I had taken a class on trauma writing.  I had also written my master’s thesis on how reading fictional accounts of trauma and healing can provide a safer, somewhat removed space in which to deal with tragedy.  But none of this prepared me for the actual experience of loss. 

            I had heard time heals all wounds and was set up by that “guide book” I was handed for an expectation that all I had to do was let time pass, and Kubler-Ross’s five stages would happen to me.  As soon as they were done, I’d be healed.  I’d go back to how I was before my tragedy had punched a big bloody hole in my heart.  I wanted something to make it better because it hurt so much. 

The Reality

I knew, based on my experiences with child development classes, that stages meant states of being that would happen on their own in a normalized sort of order.  But in reality, I found myself going through a crazy mix of emotions, only a few of which matched up with Kubler-Ross’s stages of shock and denial, anger, depression and detachment, dialogue and bargaining, and acceptance, all of which were supposed to lead to a return to a meaningful life.  I didn’t see a lot of anger or detachment.  I couldn’t really deny anything.  And there were so many more emotions that weren’t on the list that I faced.  I discovered I could go through all of these emotions and more in a month, a week, or even an hour.  I’d skip from shock to acceptance and back to depression or hysteria then eagerness to share my story and back to depression again.  There was nothing stage-like in any of it. Even on days of acceptance, and even after returning to a meaningful life, it still hurt.  My heart still felt like it had a bloody, nasty, painful hole in it that wouldn’t go away. 

As time passed, I found ways to not think, to keep busy, to look at anything but my baby’s pictures or other triggers that sent me into fits of hysteria.  Basically, time allowed me to grow scabs over the big, bloody, painful hole, so I wouldn’t have to feel it.  But a scab is not nearly as comfortable or sensitive a tissue as regular flesh.  All it took was a nudge or poke at the edges of the scab, and I was in pain again.  

Research

So I started to look elsewhere for guidance in the healing process.  I picked up Robert Neimeyer’s book, Meaning Reconstruction and the Exerience of Loss, that debunked Kubler-Ross’s stages as unscientific.  He pointed out that Kubler-Ross’s original theory was based on the experience of dying, not on grief at all.  And he also pointed out that her theory had no scientific foundation or basis in fact, that the “stages” she defined were not stages at all.  I merely learned what I already knew, that grief involves “highly individual processes.”  What I didn’t find in either text was a useful idea of what healing would feel like for me, what it even meant.  Both texts defined healing as, basically, a return to normalcy.  I had returned to some kind of functionality, which meant by either definition, I was healed.  But I certainly didn’t feel healed.  Memories of my loss still hurt acutely even years later. 

 I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so another kind of guide I was given and studied was a variety of books by other LDS people about their experience of loss and healing.  Almost across the board, they set up a model of prayer, reading scriptures, and above all, having another baby, a rainbow baby to fill the arms even if he or she couldn’t replace the baby lost.  So we tried.  We spent years trying, only to have a total of 15 losses in a row before we walked away from trying, one baby death and 14 first term miscarriages.  All the testing brought us no answer as to the source of our problem and no rainbow baby.  We’ve recently come to terms with the idea that my body just will not carry babies to term anymore for whatever reason. 

Turning to the Source

So instead, I have turned to God for answers, and I have come to a greater understanding of the healing process than I ever did through science or pseudoscience.   Just after my baby died, I turned intensely to faith.  I prayed harder, studied scriptures more closely and with the guide of the Spirit, more than I ever have in my life.  I felt the best, the most at peace, when I sensed other people’s prayers and when I was full of the influence of the Comforter, also called the Holy Ghost.  God doesn’t want us to suffer.  If we turn to Him, he will bring us comfort.  I felt the best when I felt wrapped in His arms. 

Being healed for me is not just about being functional.  Someone could be dying inside but still live what looks like a normal life from the outside.  The best definition I have heard is that a person who is healed is able to look at a picture or other reminder of the loved one and smile over the memories and blessings more than ache over the loss.  Six years after my loss, I am not there yet, but I’d like to be.  I have moments of peace like that, but they don’t last.  However, this portrait of a healed heart gives me a goal to work toward above and beyond just the goal of functionality.  I met someone recently who has bouts of depression but otherwise, arrived at the emotional state I’m still striving for within hours of delivery of a stillbirth.  The Lord sent her spiritual experiences that immediately brought the peace and joy that have been hard-fought for me.  Everyone is different, so everyone’s experience is different.  True healing is a gift the Lord can give in His time and in His way if we earnestly seek it and pray for it.  

The key is applying the Lord’s atonement.  When Jesus suffered and died for us, he didn’t just suffer for our sins.  He also suffered our pains.  He understands what we suffer.  He understands loss, sadness, and pain.  We need to reach out to him.  We need to seek His peace through obedience, through scripture study, and through bringing the Spirit into our lives so strongly that there is no more space for pain.  He will buffer us from agony.  He will bring us joy and peace.  

One of the general authorities of the LDS church, Elder Shayne Bowen, told the story of how his toddler choked on chalk and died.  Elder Bowen went through pain, anger, frustration, and guilt.  He rejected the comforting words of those who tried to reach out to him.  But as he focused more on gratitude for what he had rather than on his pain and loss, he began to find peace and joy.  The Lord “gave him a new heart," a heart full of light rather than “darkness and despair.”  He did warn that “you will never completely get over [grief] until you are once again with your departed loved ones […or] have a fullness of joy until [you] are reunited in the morning of the First Resurrection.”  But we can still have joy, love, and peace.  We can, as he says, “continue with good cheer.”  The Lord can heal our hearts when we seek Him in sincere prayer, service of our fellow man, obedience, love, and gratitude. 

We will never be the same person we were before.  But we also don’t have to suffer for the rest of our lives, either.  Each person has a different journey, but we don’t have to make this journey alone.  We have our fellow travelers here, but most of all, we have the Lord who loves us with all his heart and wants us to find peace and joy.  

I Believe Gratitude is the Key to Happiness

After Alamanda died, I longed for another baby to fill my arms.  It made sense that if sadness came from empty arms and the absence of baby warmth, cooing, and the smell of fresh baby breath and even the sour smell of tiny baby diapers, all it would take to make me happy was another baby.  I knew another baby could never replace Alamanda, but he or she could fill the empty spaces and relieve the pain.  But instead, I had to learn the hard way that the key to happiness is not from getting what I want but from gratitude for what I have been given. 

When my baby died, the loss left a massive, bloody hole in my heart and my life.  I wanted to get my smile back, but in a world plunged into darkness, my smile was hard to find in a way that wasn’t fake.  Looking at babies, pregnant women, and ultrasounds caused nothing but agony, and in Utah, they’re everywhere.  I kept reading LDS books on healing that showed all you had to do to find healing from the pain worse than any I thought possible was to study scriptures and pray.  Both of these brought peace, as did prayers of friends and family.  But above all, the formula in these books demanded I have another baby for my healing and happiness to be complete.  However, as much as I studied scriptures and prayed earnestly, my rainbow baby never came.  Pregnancy after pregnancy for 13 in a row, I met with more heartache, sometimes a quiet ultrasound with no heartbeat, a hospital visit or other medical intervention, but no baby.  Each time, we bought another porcelain angel for my kids to name, so we could put him or her on the shelf to help them feel the connection and to help them understand the reality of their siblings.  But despite testing and medication from the doctor to prevent another loss, there it came.  I started buying porcelain angels in advance because I figured chances were I would need them.  Every time I prayed about whether to keep trying, I felt like it was not yet time to quit. I have come to believe the reason I was guided this way was because I needed that time to hope in order to heal.  I emotionally needed that crutch, so the Lord let me have it. 

Eventually, I started noticing a pattern in the scriptures and in spiritual thoughts, LDS General Conference Talks, and other places.  Again and again, I heard that joy came not in the getting such as getting a baby but in the gratitude for that which I’d already been richly blessed.  I did not need a baby to complete me.  The Lord would heal me and make me whole, or as whole as I will be until I hold my angels again.  Elder Bowen’s talk from the October 2012 General Conference Really struck me.  He told the story of his journey of healing after his baby died.  He talked of the joy I can have even in spite of the pain, the healing that comes when I realize “How grateful I am to my Father in Heaven that He allows us to love deeply and love eternally. How grateful I am for eternal families. How grateful I am that He has revealed once again through His living prophets the glorious plan of redemption.”  I realized healing is a gift from the Lord, and it comes, in part, through gratitude. 

The Lord has given me so much.  I was blessed with four blissful, though sometimes challenging, months with my angel baby, Alamanda.  She was a truly special spirit who will be mine forever because of Heavenly Father’s plan for families.  I have also been blessed with an army of guardian angels who will watch over me until they can come again and fill my arms.  I have been blessed with a loving husband and two wonderful, warm, vibrant children I can hold and love.  We have been blessed with several pets to fill my days when the kids are in school, including a cat sent specifically to be a hug from Alamanda to my little girl, who still misses her sister.  I have been blessed with talents and opportunities to bless other lives through them. 

I will likely never hold another baby of mine until the Lord comes again.  But I can still find joy and happiness because of gratitude for my blessings and the knowledge that the separation isn’t forever, just for now. 

Empathy (or what not to say)

Learning from Mistakes:

I remember with some pain remarks I made to someone who had miscarried several babies.  I had not entered the angel mommies’ club.  I didn’t know what it was to experience real loss.  I said things like, “So when are you going to have a baby?”  I knew this couple had issues with keeping babies, but it seemed like I had been able to have babies without trouble.  What was wrong with them?  I was insensitive when I needed to be kind and understanding. I have since run into the same kind of hurtful behaviors when I was most in pain. When one has lost a baby, it’s hard for others to know what to say.  It’s easier to say or do the wrong thing than the right thing.  So let’s go over a list of the things not to do.  This list is by no means exhaustive.  I've based it on things I wanted (or didn't want) when I suffered my losses as well as a few things I've heard from others over the years.    

NOT to do list:

1.  Avoid.  Some avoid the mourner because they don’t  want to be reminded it could happen to them.  Reminders of mortality can be hard.  But it's harder on the mourner to be treated as a contagion.  

2. Assume.  Never assume you know how the mourner is feeling.  Even if you've lost a child, every mourner has a different experience.  The phrase, "I understand" is rarely a good choice because sometimes, even a husband doesn't truly understand what his wife is feeling and vice versa nor even may a sister know what her sister is feeling.  There are often commonalities, but everyone's specific experience is unique.  Even a hug without permission is an assumption.  It's usually best to let the mourner lead.  Offer a hug, and they often will accept.  Just don't assume.  

2b. False comparisons.  This is more a follow-up to not assuming.  Although those who have never lost a child assume it's comforting to say, "I know how you feel because my cat died once," it's often best not to make a comparison between one's own experience and someone else's.  We can still draw on the feelings of loss we've felt through the loss of a house or a cat or whatever is precious to us to empathize without verbalizing that comparison. Pets can be precious to us, but I have lost pets of many kinds.  There is no real comparison between the pain of pet or possession loss and the pain of child loss.

3. Tell them how to feel.  A lot of people think it's reassuring to tell a mourner, "You should feel better because your baby is with God" or "You should feel better because this is part of a bigger plan" or "You should feel better because you'll see the baby again."  Although all of this may be true and may be understood by the mourner, it does not help or ease the pain of the mourner to be told how to think and feel.  Even leaving off the "You should feel better," this is implied by the rest of the statement.  Sure, I know I'll hold my baby again, but when I'm suffering so badly I can hardly hold my guts inside, so badly I feel like I'm going to explode, to be told I shouldn't be suffering makes the pain worse.  It makes me feel like I'm doing the wrong thing in feeling pain.  And we all must understand grieving is a natural part of the process.  Even though the one attempting to comfort isn't really thinking about it, they're often saying these things to make themselves feel better.  It hurts to see someone in pain, so they are essentially trying to shut the mourner up, control them to stop their own discomfort.  This is not true of everyone trying to use these phrases to comfort, but that's how they may be perceived.  

4. Imply a child can be replaced.  First off, usually anything following, "Well, at least" is a really bad idea.  "Well, at least you can have another child" is one of the worst.  It implies a new child simply replaces the one they lost.  Although for many, a new child can take the edge off the pain in some ways, there is no replacing a child.  "Well, at least you have other children," is almost as bad.  It implies to the mourner that this child doesn't mean anything, that their loss doesn't count because they already have children.  Any "Well, at least" phrases are likely to make a person feel less rather than more comforted.  

5. Try to force your expectations on them.  Expecting someone to get over it devalues the person's loss and implies judgement, that another person should have control over the mourner's grieving process.    

6. Add more responsibility than can be handled by a recent mourner.  A lot of non-mourners think showing up without much warning would be comforting.  The day of my first miscarriage, my sister wanted to drive all the way up from her home to mine.  In her mind, this should have been comforting to me.  In my mind, I just wanted to be alone with my kids and my husband.  I didn't want to be expected to smile and perform for others when all I wanted to do was cry.  Sometimes, such a visit is comforting to the mourner.  Once again, don't assume.  As an added note, a lot of people seeking to comfort brought me live plants for my baby's funeral.  Some people may find this comforting.  I found it painful to watch the plants die but didn't have enough energy to take care of them.  Sometimes, it's all the mourner can do to continue to breathe.  Don't add to their burden.  

To Do List:

1.  Offer.  Offer to be there, to watch kids, to hug, to donate money, to make food, whatever.  Offer so that the mourner knows you care and are willing to help in whatever way you can.  This can help relieve the person's stress, but don't assume it necessarily reduces the pain.    

2.  Respect the mourner's lead.  As mentioned before, it's usually best to let the mourner dictate the pace.  If they want live flowers, a visit from family, a hug, etc, they can let the comforter know.   If the person declines, respect that without trying to insert your own emotions on the subject.  You may be disappointed they don't want your help, but let it slide.  They're suffering.  Don't expect them to react like you want them to react.  

3. Pray for them.  I could feel the prayers even during the worst of my pain.  It felt like a warm, protective bubble.  If you tell them you're praying for them, they know you love them.  

4.  Support them in whatever way they need to mourn.  If they need to cry, let them cry.  If they need to talk, let them talk.  If they need silence or privacy, give them what they need rather than what you think they should need.  

5.  Love them, no matter what.  It's a good idea to let them know this, but don't use it to control them.  Unconditional love is the key.  Sometimes, a person in their deepest pain is not very lovable.  Love them, anyway.  

    Conclusion:

Mourning is a hard thing for those suffering as well as for those watching them suffer.  We want to help them feel better.  And feeling better will happen with time.  It's critically important that we be the helper rather than the unintentional inflicter of wounds.  Don't hide.  Don't make things harder.  Just be there.  Love.  Healing comes with time.  If we're there for the mourner in times of need, they may one day be there for us.