Thursday, April 23, 2009
“A Thief in the Night”
Greg Martin
April 2009
“What are you going to call the baby?” I asked my 19-year-old son who had learned a few weeks prior that he was going to be a daddy. “We don’t know the sex yet” he informed me. “I know”, I said, and went on to explain how his mom and I had felt uncomfortable referring to our firstborn as “it” when it was too early in the pregnancy to ascertain their sex. So, instead, we simply referred to the new baby as “Pony”. “It” was just too impersonal. “Pony”, on the other hand, was asexual (allowing us to avoid a predisposition toward either sex) and somehow easier for us to tolerate. As I write this now, I am tickled that we did not worry about a predisposition toward giving birth to a member of the equine family, but it all seemed to make sense at the time.
“So,” I asked again, “what will you call the baby until you know the sex?” “I don’t know” he replied, “It kinda looked a little like a dinosaur on the sonogram so I guess we could call it ‘Dino’”. So, “Dino” is what it became, at least for my wife and me. I am not sure that the name stuck with my son or his bride, but for the next several weeks this was how we referred to our first grandbaby growing inside our daughter-in-law.
I was not expecting to be a grandfather at 48. I frankly had not given much thought to at what age that news might come, but I was fairly certain that I would have envisioned hearing this news when I was in my mid- to late-fifties – certainly not 48. Life has a way of getting in the way of our best laid plans… So, after adjusting to the shock of how this news made me feel (it’s all about us isn’t it?) initially (which was old), I got really excited about the thought of having a grandbaby.
All of a sudden I found myself being drawn to other expectant moms and infants and toddlers that I would see in church, or in the grocery store, or at the park. I realize that that doesn’t sound very manly. (Somewhere after 40 I found I quit caring whether the things I thought, did or said fit anyone else’s expectation of what is masculine or not). I am proud to tell you that I thought that the itty bitty outfit my wife brought home to give to Dino was way cool. She and most of the family pegged the baby to be a boy, so the outfit was appropriately in blue.
In our family growing up there were lots of kids. I am one of 6, we are or were all married, and each family has been blessed with multiple children. I am an uncle to 14, and now, a great-uncle to I’m not sure how many. Great-uncle’s were ancient when I was a kid. I was a great-uncle at something like 40 years old (I was the last of six and there are 21 years between my oldest sibling and me – and yes, the math all works out). I told my niece I would be a great uncle to her child, but I never wanted to be referred to as a great-uncle…that little line between the two words just made me sound too old.
One of the games we played with my nephews and nieces and that my wife and I later played with our own children was a game our family called “stinky feet”. The game is very difficult to master…you grab a baby’s feet, make a big show of sticking their bare feet up to your nose, inhale deeply and then make a face like you just smelled something that came out of your paw paw’s underpants, while saying “peeeeee eeeeeewwwwwww…stinky feet”. I don’t know why, but I have yet to see a baby who doesn’t laugh when you do this. When we first learned that we were going to be grandparents I texted my son and wrote “Cool! New piggies to play stinky feet!” Now that’s damn manly, I don’t care who you are.
A few weeks later we had a young couple who are on the mission field with our son and his wife stay at our home for a few nights. Derrick and Jackie have an 18-month old boy named Elijah. Elijah, rarely hit the deck as he was passed from my wife to me to our daughter. We all went to church together and confused many in the congregation who thought somehow that they had missed a memo and that this was our grandbaby. Elijah helped us to rediscover what it means to deal with a baby. About the time that Pastor Tommy was hitting his stride in his Easter Sunday sermon, Elijah was untying my brand new yellow bowtie and thought that it would look better if he sucked on it awhile. That would have made me really irritated when my kids were Elijah’s age, but for some reason it was a lot of fun with this Dino proxy.
The bottom line here is that we were “all in” with the thought of the new addition to our family. The writer of Proverbs had a pretty good handle on this from a grandparent’s perspective when he wrote: “Children’s children are a crown to the aged”. Not to be outdone, the Psalmist penned a few memorable verses for parents as well:
Sons are a heritage from the LORD,
children a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them.
Dino was on his way to becoming a crown, a reward, an arrow, a son (or daughter), an heir, a nephew (or niece), a cousin, a grandbaby, a great-grandbaby, an in-law, a member of our tribe as Seth Godin might put it, a person, a living, breathing, thinking, loving, precious child of God. But, life has a way of getting in the way of our best laid plans.
William Shakespeare put it this way: “Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er-fraught heart and bids it break.” My son called me at the office last week. He was incoherent. His o’er-fraught heart was breaking and all he could do was groan. I waited for the words to come. After what felt like an eternity, and through a voice wracked with sobs he managed to choke out the message that every parent (and now I know every grandparent) hopes never to hear: “We lost the baby”.
While my wife and I were anticipating the arrival of our first grandbaby, my son and his wife were making major emotional investments into their relationship with each other and this new being that had almost instantly become the axis around which their world revolved. And, as a globe whose axis is removed rolls about without direction so, for a time, did our family.
It was not my son’s or his wife’s grief that took me by surprise. I expected that. It was not my wife’s grief that caught me unaware; her “tears come down” easily as my African friend Antonio once observed of her. It was my own grief that came like a thief in the night and took the axis off of my globe. I just didn’t expect that this news would affect me as it has. After all, I’m a man and you hear of this happening all the time. Besides, I had not actually played stinky feet with Dino. I never met him, nor held him, nor bonded with him in any way. I never smelled him after his bath. I never touched that funky soft spot on his head. I never compared the size of my body parts to his. I never felt his whole-hand grasp around one of my fingers. I never comforted him when he cried. I never gave him a horsyback ride. He never fell asleep in my arms. I never laughed over his losing Cheerios in the folds of fat on his legs. I never saw the funny face he made when he tasted his first pickle. I didn’t get to find toys, food, and other fun treasures in his diaper when I changed him. I never gave him a piggyback ride. He never pulled my ears or mussed my hair while riding on my shoulders. He never puked on my suit. I never…he never…we never…they never…so, why the grief over the loss of a child I never knew?
The answers for me have come through the lives and stories of friends and family. And, there are a lot of them. More than I ever would have imagined. Middle-aged men whose voices would crack as they were reminded of their own similar loss over 25 years prior. Women - loving, caring, compassionate women - who burst into tears at the mere mention of our hurt and who shared heart-wrenching stories of their own loss and grief. Grandparents who have grieved over their lost grandbabies. Adult children who testified that one of the only times they ever saw their dads cry was over the memory of a child lost through a miscarriage.
Most of the articles I read on miscarriage grief are from a mother’s perspective (no surprise there). But, the observations, advice, and insight from and for grieving moms can serve as a healing balm for anyone touched by this form of loss. One writer put it this way: 1“…you can never really stop grieving. It's never quite as overwhelming as it is in the beginning, but it remains a part of you always. You may still remember the date of the loss and the due date of the baby who should have been born, and every time that date passes, you remember. You can go on to have plenty of children, and still you remember.”
Another writer summed it up this way: 2“Miscarriage involves a number of potential significant losses and is a complex grief that can involve an additional kind of suffering that is not necessarily present with other types of bereavement. Not only have we lost our baby, we are suffering from the effects of a birth and a death and we usually do not have a baby to bury. A funeral normally gives others their cue of how to behave appropriately and when there isn't one they are often at a loss themselves and may not even realize we are grieving. This adds to our stress as we can then feel we need to explain this, whereas with a still-birth or loss of a child, everyone is aware of the devastation and expects us to grieve. People may not want to talk about what has happened and it's the only thing we can think of.”
3James Woods, director of Obstetrics and Fetal Medicine at the University of Rochester and author of Loss During Pregnancy or in the Newborn Period says, “The veil of silence that our society casts over the topic of miscarriage makes it very hard for women and families to get the information and help they need when they go through this surprisingly common experience. I think it's important for people to realize how devastating this can be emotionally, far more so than they ever would have imagined."
Many of the resources mention that healing and closure can be helped with something that memorializes the life that was to be. Funeral services help us to heal when we have lost someone but, to me, the traditional funeral service fits a miscarriage like a shirt that is a couple of sizes too small.
My 11-year-old and I have been working in our back yard to divide a huge patch of daffodils. Daffodils are bulbs that bloom in early spring. The flowers are among the most popular due to their unmatched beauty. I like them because they are about as easy to grow as weeds and they truly are stunning. The “experts” say you are supposed to wait till early summer to divide them…the bulbs didn’t get the memo…stick ‘em in the ground whenever you want and they’ll grow.
So, it occurred to me that this Daffodil garden we were working on might serve as a suitable memorial for Dino. “Dino’s Daffodils” has a certain poetic ring to it don’t you think? Daffodils blooming life is anywhere from six weeks to six months, sorta like Dino’s was. Daffodils are perennials serving as a lovely, recurring reminder of this life that was. Daffodils symbolize friendship. And, unlike a tree planted as a memorial, Daffodils can be shared with friends, particularly with friends who know the loss of miscarriage. In the 41600’s Daffodils were taken out of the weeds and put into the garden, sorta like Dino was taken out of the weeds of this life and placed in God’s Garden of Eden. Whereas a funeral didn’t fit as a memorial, I think this little patch of flowers fits like a favorite pair of jeans. I hope my family thinks so too.
In 1804 William Wordsworth penned “Daffodils”
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed - and gazed - but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.
My desire for my son and his wife, my wife and our family is that when we are in a “vacant or pensive mood” and Dino flashes upon “that inward eye” that our hearts might with pleasure fill and dance with the daffodils.
*************
Footnotes:
1http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art34075.asp
2http://www.miscarriagesupport.org.nz/grief_issues.html
3 http://www.mothering.com/articles/pregnancy_birth/miscarriage/solitary-sadness.html
4 http://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/mostpopularflowers/morepopularflowers/daffodil
Additional Resources on Dealing with Miscarriage Grief:
· Resources on miscarriage from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=miscarriage&x=0&y=0
· Grief Unseen: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1843108054
