There’s been a death in the family, sir.
Between the time it took
To read a news article and fry the sweet potatoes
A child slipped out
And was lost.
Did we put a notice in the local news, you ask?
Call the police?
Spread the word around Facebook?
No…how could we?
We didn’t even know the child’s name.
***
Last blog post, I wrote about a heavy subject. This time I write about another. Yes, we have had good times in between the sad times. Follow me on Facebook or Instagram to see the joyful pictures I post of Annalise.
But this week I want to tell you about a miscarriage I had almost a month ago now. The pregnancy was very young. I hadn’t even taken a pregnancy test and didn’t know for sure I was pregnant until I miscarried.
I swung between a sort of noncomprehending nonchalance, amazed at how simply and easily life could form and then slip away–an amazement I tried to express in the poem above–and grief at the fact that a child–our child–would never be known this side of heaven. I don’t even feel sure he will be known in heaven. (An afterlife doesn’t always feel real to me, and for a child never formed, even less so.) But I choose to think he will be.
I wrote this letter to our child that perhaps expresses my emotions best.
Dear little one,
I didn’t know your name. I didn’t know you were in my body. Maybe that is why I feel a surprised sort of sorrow. You can’t grieve, really, a person you never knew existed. But I know it now, after you already left us, and I grieve a sort of pseudo-grieving for something I never had, like a child born without a father. Only my grief is not that all-encompassing. A father missing leaves a father-sized hole in the world. A child the size of a grain of rice leaves barely a blip. I grieve the fact that there is no hole as much as I grieve the hole, grieve the fact that we will go on with our lives and will not miss you, the child we never had. I do miss you though, for all that. I was bright with hope and expectation when I thought you might be in my belly. Please know that I wanted you very much. I am sorry you are gone.
Love, your Mom
I tell Ivan I feel bad for not grieving our child more. He tells me I grieve it fifty times more than he does. A nonexistent child barely registered on his emotional radar–if anything he feels relief that we won’t be having another child by the time Annalise is a year and a half. He wonders if something is wrong with him. I tell him there is nothing like having the bits of a pregnancy slip from your body, nothing like seeing curled reddish flotsam there in the toilet to make the pregnancy seem real. Of course the baby didn’t seem real to him. It barely did to me.
And yet…I think of Annalise, of how she came from my womb so full of life, a will to live, and personality. I found it hard to believe a complete human being had been floating there in a dark place beneath my skin that whole time.
A little person was floating there in those bits in the toilet, too–just not developed yet. In a blog post I wrote while taking a genetic biology course in college, I described the likelihood that any unique individual comes to be as one in over 70 trillion. And that explanation is only the simplified version of the complex miracle of reproduction.
To honor the personhood of our unknown individual, Ivan and I wanted to give it a name. We named the first child we conceived, a child I also miscarried, Misty Love. Misty because her life was fleeting as a vapor. Love because she was loved though still unborn. Her name reminds me of that verse that refers to the coming perfection and wholeness of love: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
This third child we conceived we’ve named Sky Hope. The name reflects the living hope we have through Christ–a hope I was reading about in 1 Peter over the days that I miscarried. Even though an afterlife is too other for me to wrap my brain around, I believe in God. I can’t wrap my brain around him either, but my heart feels him near to me when I’m in need and my eyes see the miracles he has wrought on the earth. Miracles of life and conception, of sunshine beamed 93 million miles through space and the glint of a bird’s wing in air and the curling tender sepals of a wood violet.
And God is eternal. Where God is, there is no death. I believe in this God passionately and because I believe in him, I have hope. Hope not just for my unborn child, that its tiny life has meaning, but hope that the wide suffering eyes of a child in Ukraine who sees his house bombed away, hope that a little girl in Hitler’s Germany whose small parts are desecrated by a large panting man–hope that these things will one day be made right.
A living hope, Peter said.
God said he gives justice to the fatherless and widows. He said where he is there is life and not death.
These things I believe, and I remember that belief when I remember our child’s name: Sky Hope.
***
Feature photo by Kathy Zimmerman.
Beautifully said, Luci! I share in your belief in that living hope and certainty!
I’m sorry to hear of your little one moving into Heaven so quickly! This tugs on my heartstrings… n feelings that go with duch experiences… Rest in Jesus living arms..
Sorry to learn of your loss. May Sky Hope’s memory be eternal! That means, even if we don’t grieve or remember enough, God will! He never forgets anyone he has created. Memory eternal for Misty Love, too!
I like that thought, Katherine. Thank you.
I sometimes read the obituaries in the paper (when I happen across one at work). I’ll see the deceased as having done something I also enjoyed, and I’ll think, “I would have loved to have asked them about that…”, but they’re gone, and I never shall ask them about that, at least not here.
That act reminds me that we’re all here on a string, that the earth is no one’s eternal home. Every day is a gift and every day is one day closer to when we’re called home to be with Him.
Misty Love and Sky Hope? They got there early.
You? Ivan? Annalise? You three all represent the miracle that is life given to us by Him. Everything has to be just right for conception and birth. It’s a miracle that it does happen. Let us not take that miracle (that each one of us is born at all) as our right. Healthy babies are a miracle.
My wife and I thought we were pregnant with our first…then we had a miscarriage. I write “we” because we both felt that we had so much to give to that baby. We didn’t realize at the time that we had to “Trust and Obey”. That, and three healthy boys, came later.
Your body gains strength through your labor.
Your mind gains strength through your focused study.
Your soul gains strength through your suffering. Life is all about suffering. Life is all about faith and your soul and your trust in Him. Live. Love. Suffer.
Trust and Obey.
Thanks for your blog posts as always.
You are a wonderful writer, for you bring a sense of wonder from your words into my eyes.
Keep going.
Blessings.
Amen. Life is such a miracle and a gift. And suffering brings strength… thank you for that. That makes sense and brings some clarity to some of my questions about the reasons for suffering. Thank you for your encouraging words.
Yesterday we celebrated our rainbow baby’s 14th birthday… I don’t often think about the tiny life that slipped away before I hardly even grasped the fact that there was one there. Her birthday often brings it to mind and your word here sharpened the memories. It is a strange feeling to grieve a life that barely was and I don’t think there is any one “right” way to do it. Hugs ❤
Yes Bethany, “a strange feeling to grieve a life that barely was” describes it well. Hugs.
I wish I could give you a hug now, Luci. Thank you for sharing this. I felt so alone after my miscarriage until one by one women I knew shared they had been there too, and now your story will do that for others. My prayers will be with you and Ivan and Sky. We gave the baby we lost the middle name Hope too.
I’ll take your thought-hug, Sarah, with appreciation. I am sorry for your own loss. That is neat that you also named your little one Hope.
Thank you for writing this. I’m at the other end of child-bearing from you, with eight living children, one who died as a teenager, and now ten we never got to meet waiting for us–six in three pregnancies in the last year and a half. Those tiny ones who departed before we were even very aware of their presence still make a huge impact in our lives.
Yes they do. Thank you, Emma, and it’s good to hear from you on here.
Thanks, Luci, for sharing hope and turning our minds toward God. It is hard to hold onto hope, especially in our world today, especially when bad things happen, like the death of a tiny baby. But you remind us that God is worth trusting even when we don’t understand Him.
Hugs,
Gina
Thank you, Gina. And thank you for all the times when you’ve reminded me of that very thing by your faith and hope in times of suffering.
Life is a precious gift and I thank you for sharing thoughts about your loss. I also grew up in a Mennonite church in Garrett County Md. my wife Greta and I escorted our daughter Krista to heavens gates over 26 years ago. She was diagnosed with a brain tumor when she was 3 and went on to meet her friend Jesus when she was 11- God was so much a part of our Krista “God package” that He asked us to carry! Blessings and I appreciate your blogs!
Thank you for sharing this difficult and beautiful bit of your story. I’m so glad to hear from you!