It has been 10 years since Kristine and I lost our
first child to miscarriage. It has been 4 years since we experienced our
third miscarriage. It has been 2 years since I wrote a book that I
thought completed my miscarriage journey. After all, if I wrote a book to tell
a story, doesn't that mean the story is complete?
In Letters to My Unborn Children, I wrote to
my children about a narrative of hope. Kristine and I would speak into
the darkness of death and shattered dreams that the miscarriages represented.
My life today is full of new-ness. We have 3 healthy, lively
children. We just made an intercontinental move to the UK. It
fulfills a decades old dream to live in the land of my father.
Yet in the midst of it I feel empty. Against
all of these dreams, a defensive antagonism rises up within me. These
dreams are not the ones that ended when my children died. But my
antagonistic response is somehow tied to their deaths. Instead of redemptive
beauty, woven into the fabric of our family's life, I see only a dark blot.
Like the dark blot of miscarriage, these new dreams are obstacles to be
overcome; not adventures to be experienced.
I am unable to face them with hope or gentleness. Instead, I face them
with hostility. When I try to think about it, the hostility takes me back
to a guttural cry of agony after our third miscarriage.
My child
died. The world was silent. The cosmos were silent. I am
alone.
This despair brings me to Derby Cathedral on a
Saturday afternoon in May for the Saying Goodbye service. I wonder if
facing the miscarriages again will help me face this deeper sense of
despair that is so powerfully linked to them. I am encouraged by the
information about the services: they are for anyone who has lost a baby,
whether the loss was yesterday or 80 years ago. It's been 10, so I guess
I qualify.
I am here alone. Kristine and I discussed
whether I would bring Elise and Charis. We decided not to. We are
open with them about the miscarriages. But attendance at services like
this is a new experience, so we decide to let them stay home. I take a
seat alone in a pew, and find that my solitude is not unique. No pews
have more than 4 or 5 people in them. Some are families with children.
Some are couples. Some are individuals.
The opening hymn is a tune I know: Bunessan, or
Morning Has Broken. The text is new. I cannot sing through the
first line before I break down in tears.
Fleetingly
known, yet ever remembered,
These are
our children now and always.
These
whom we see not, we will forget not,
Morning
and evening, all of our days.
I take a deep breath and try again on the second
verse. Still the tears come.
Lives
that touched our lives, tenderly briefly,
Now in
the one light, living always,
Named in
our hearts now, safe from all harm now,
We will
remember all of our days.
I try one more time. This time I am able to
whisper the words.
As we
recall them, silently name them,
Open our
hearts Lord, now and always,
Grant to
us grieving, love for the living,
Strength for
each other all of our days.
Safe in
your peace Lord, hold these your children,
Grace,
light and laughter grant them each day,
Cherish
and hold them till we may know them,
When to
your glory we find our way.
This is not a gathering of people who have overcome
their grief. There are no celebratory songs of victory. We are not closing
the past into a space from which it cannot touch us anymore. The lives
were real. The loves and hopes were real. Their absence hurts.
We can be honest about that.
I find that being here alone gives me freedom to
cry. I see couples exchanging embraces,
and I wonder if others are also crying. I
need these tears. The tears enable gentleness to become present in my
grief. They dissolve some of my angry defensiveness as I listen to the
gentle narrative of hope offered by the songs in the service.
You were
just a small bump unborn for four months then torn from life. Maybe you
were needed up there but we're still unaware as why (Ed Sheeran).
A voice
is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel is weeping for her
children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are
no more ... there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: They shall come
back from the land of the enemy. There is hope for your future says the
Lord: your children shall come back to their own country (Jeremiah 31:15, 17).
I pray
you'll be our eyes, and watch us where we go, and help us to be wise, in times
when we don't know. Let this be our prayer when we lose our way.
Lead us to a place; guide us with Your grace; give us faith so we'll be
safe (the arrangement by Celine Dion and Andre Bocelli).
The homily closes with the words of this Easter
hymn.
When our
hearts are saddened, grieving or in pain,
By Your
touch You call us back to life again;
Fields of
our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is
come again, like wheat that springs up green.
Part way through the service, the Saying Goodbye
volunteers offer a chance to ring a bell in memory our lost babies. I
close my eyes and ring three times.
Baby Collins, died in Hartford, April 2004
Baby Collins, died in Hartford, September 2004
Baby Collins, died in Indianapolis, March 2010
The service concludes with John Rutter's
arrangement of the Old Testament Aaronic blessing. The Lord bless you
and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious
unto you. The Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give
you peace. Amen.
The voices from the small choir swell to fill the
sanctuary. I am reminded of the creation myth from Tolkien's Silmarrillion.
Melkor sought to change the creation by introducing discordant music.
Iluvatar sang a creative, redemptive response to Melkor's chaos.
The discord was loud. At times it felt overwhelming. Yet
Iluvatar's creative response was not silenced.
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