Miscarriage. When There Isn't A Grave...

It was the saddest day of my life. You cannot ever prepare yourself for the heart-gasping sadness of a miscarriage. Michael and I were married less than a year but had just begun trying to get pregnant. We were extremely excited for the arrival of this baby and had just told our family and close friends. At 10 weeks, we lost him. And although we barely had opportunity to dream and plan our lives with him, something about his short life changed us.

I just read this article about the Duggars miscarriage and was appalled that there was negative feedback concerning how they chose to grieve their loss. I'm certain those who so arrogantly feel they can comment in disrespect have not experienced the pain of a miscarriage or still-born baby. Everyone should have the right to honor their sadness in whatever way they choose. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that is extremely narrow-minded about grief.

I discovered something very tragic and heart-breaking, hypocritical and mean about people as I grieved our loss. People don't put their money where their mouth is. Evangelicals who are staunch pro-lifers, would not allow me the same time-off as policy gave those who "lost a child." The space and comfort needed to be sad was rarely granted. I guess when there isn't a specific framework for a certain kind of loss, time to heal isn't necessary. I guess, when it comes to days off, life doesn't really begin at conception.

After many months, with the help of counseling and, let's be honest, the pregnancy of Nico (2 months post-miscarriage), I now realize this is one of those situations that is neither one thing or another. Meaning, a first or second trimester baby isn't considered a baby, medically. It can't live outside of the mother and so it's considered a fetus: tissue and organs and a beating heart. To grieve it like the loss of a child therefore, in this culture, seems dramatic and attention-seeking.

But for those of us who believe differently, that the life of a baby begins at conception, we need to find ways to bring honor to death. And that's the challenge. Because for us, he was more than tissue and organs and a beating heart. He was our son. A dream. A hope. Something and someone to be honored. Without a "funeral" or a body to cremate or bury, how is that grief made tangible, justifiable, excusable? Even people who believe like us, that his life mattered, didn't know how to process this, how to honor baby and parents.

In the end, I wrapped his tiny bloody cocoon-covered body in tissue and Michael planted him under our weeping cherry tree. It seemed appropriate to us - a weeping, living home to honor what he could have been...happy, growing, thriving, beautiful.

As a mother of two children, I can appreciate the difference between the baby I miscarried and the lives of my two living babies, like, the older my children are, the more love I have for them. I feel like my heart grows with my children. But I fail to see how the grief of my tiny baby is somehow less valid, because I grieved it less than I would grieve the (God-forbid) loss of one of my living children.

I guess I just want to say, there should be more "room" in this society to grieve this kind of loss; the kind ceremonies and graves can't mark. After all, a divorce, an irreconcilable difference that divides friends, a miscarriage... these have elements of death, some more than others. Because something is gone, forever, that could have been.

I'm sorry for the Duggers. And I'm sad for me, for us. I'm sorry for the many, many parents who have miscarried and I pray they find comfort in whatever means seems right to them, to honor their loss and their broken hope. I pray we as a society begin to allow the expression of pain (in friendship and in policy), even when there isn't a grave.