My Story--Saying Goodbye

On the day before my due date, the hospital called to remind me about the pre-op instructions for the next day.  I was driving down the highway when I received the phone call and I had to kindly tell them that I wasn't coming in because I had had a stillborn 2 months earlier. Apparently my OB had forgotten to cancel that appointment.  That was another one of those caught off-guard moments on what was already a tough day for me.

It was tough due to anticipation of how I was going to handle saying goodbye, but also tough because I was trying to decide how the day was going to play out.  We had already decided that Whitney would not be allowed to go.  There would be too many questions that I didn't think she was ready to have truthful answers to, and both Andy and I wanted to have the freedom to break down emotionally if we needed to.  Neither one of us wanted to have to be strong in that moment.  Andy wanted it to be private, as in just the two of us, but I wanted my parents there as well.  After all, it was their granddaughter too, and my mom had been my emotional support for the past two months.  He had agreed the night before that they could come, but only if they would stand in the background and not be with us when we spread her ashes.

Right before I received that phone call from the hospital, I was at our temple, meeting with my rabbi to try to find something appropriate and meaningful to say.  I knew the mourner's Kaddish wasn't right, because she technically was never alive.  I wanted something that was looking ahead with promise and looking back but not in a mournful, grief-stricken way.  My rabbi found a few passages and prayers from a modern reformed book specifically written to address stillbirths and miscarriages.  He made photocopies for me to take home.  He even offered to come and say a few words during our final goodbye, but I declined.  I knew Andy really wanted privacy, but more than that, I wanted Miri's goodbye to come from me.  This was the last loving act I could do, and I wanted to be the one to do it.  He also asked me if I had decided where we were going to spread her ashes.  It was going to be on the temple grounds, but I hadn't yet found the perfect place.  He offered a suggestion that that we spread her ashes at the center of their new labyrinth, right at the base of a tree that had been planted for him when he became our head rabbi.  He showed me where it was from his office window, and I said that I'd think about it.  At the end of our conversation, he asked me if I had ever seen ashes before (which I hadn't).  And he warned me that sometimes there are still remnants and pieces of bone mixed in with the ashes.  He did say that in her case she was so young and her bones were so much cartilage that he didn't think there would be many pieces, but he wanted to warn me ahead of time so it wasn't one extra bit of unexpected stress.  I thanked him for that and I left his office very emotional from thinking about what was coming up tomorrow.  I walked around the entire temple, and the spot that I had been thinking of ended up not being as great or as private as I had imagined.  I found another place that was nice, and I checked out the labyrinth.  I couldn't decide between the two, so I figured I'd give Andy some ownership in the "where".

Later that evening, after I put Whitney to bed, I went through the passages and came to the conclusion that none of what these progressive male rabbis wrote was what I was feeling.  Their words seemed empty and the solemn tone seemed as if they were imagining what it felt like rather than knowing what it felt like.  And when I thought about it, of course they didn't know...they were men.  They can't experience the loss in the same way.  They can't feel the responsibility or the sense of letting your child down.  So, I decided to just write my own letter to her, expressing what I felt and telling her what she meant to me.  I wrote and thought for a long time and I hit on this idea that made everything okay...I found purpose and meaning to her little life and I summed it all up in this short letter:

Miri,
I believe that people come in and out of your life to teach you lessons, and they stay until all the lessons they were meant to teach you have been learned.   You have taught me about deep sorrow, compassion, strength, and courage.  You taught me that I can do things I never thought I would be able to do.  You showed me how much love and support I have in friends and family that I didn't know was there.   You also taught me not to take a healthy pregnancy for granted, and that a second child's milestones should be just as exciting as they were for the first child.  You brought new friends into my life.  And you did all that for me in just 7 months.  And so your life, even without a taking a breath, had meaning and served a purpose.  And for that I will always be grateful.  As painful as it is, knowing you and losing you has enriched my life in so many ways.

I could have elaborated so much and described each point, but I knew that I wanted to read this letter to her, and I knew that it would be one of the hardest things I'd ever have to do, and I didn't know if I would be able to find enough of a voice among the tears to even get through one sentence.  Short and to the point was what I needed, but the thoughts behind each statement would be forever in my heart.  And upon the realization that her life had a meaning and that I am forever changed for the better somehow made it all okay.  That was the moment that I turned my grief into gratitude.  I felt better about how the next day was going to go, and it was late at night, so I settled in and went to bed.

The next morning, I was met with a wave of anxiety as I knew what the day would entail.  Andy and I showered and got dressed.  We both decided to wear something nice, a rarety in our house.  I printed the letter I had written and placed it next to the box containing her ashes.  My grandmother came over to watch Whitney, and Andy and I gathered our courage, the letter, and Miri's ashes, and we headed out the door.  We still hadn't decided with certainty where we were going to do it.  There were two spots I had in mind, but when we arrived at the temple, there were gardeners tending the plants at one of the spots.  I didn't want to ask them to stop, so by default we had chosen our spot.  It was going to be in the labyrinth, under our rabbi's tree.

A few minutes later my parents arrived, and just as we requested, they stayed back and watched from the entrance of the labyrinth as Andy and I walked toward the center.  We took a deep breath, with tears in our eyes, and we knelt down at a spot right next to a rock big enough to sit on.  I opened the box, with a bit of trepidation, not knowing exactly what the ashes would look like.  They were light gray, and very fine.  No bits or pieces, like I was worried about.  And very matter-of-factly, I asked Andy if he was ready because once we did it, she would be gone, and he nodded, so we both held the bag and sprinkled them in a small clearing we had made in the ground cover.  I tried to mix her in with the dirt and mulch, because I didn't want the gardeners to move her when doing their maintenance.  My hands were dirty, my eyes were filled with tears, some had streaked down my face, but I didn't care.  I got out my letter, and I read it.  The tears were coming out so fast, that the words looked blurry on the page, and at one point, I couldn't even read what I had written.  It didn't matter, though.  I knew it by heart, as the sentiments came directly from my heart.   I managed to speak every word out loud, and I told her I loved her.  Andy cried.  He said that it just wasn't fair.  He told her that he loved her, and we hugged, held hands, and walked back.  I put the letter that I had written in the box where her ashes were, and I held it.  It was lighter and empty, and part of me was sad that we let her go out of our hands forever, but most of me knew that it was the best thing we could have done.  It was the final step in achieving closure.  My parents gave us a hug, and a remarkable thing happened as we walked to greet them.  All of a sudden, my dark haze that I had been living in lifted.  Just like that.  It was over, and I felt happy.  It was the first time in months, and I felt like I was going to have a good day.  My mom asked how I was, and I said, "Good.  I'm really good."  I told them that if they wanted to go and pay their respects, they could.  And they did.  I could tell that it was really hard for them too, but they did it.  I took a deep breath, enjoyed the warm fresh air, looked up at the beautiful blue sky, and I knew that I was going to be okay.

Over the 9 weeks I had just lived through, I did a lot of thinking, feeling, and introspection, and this was the first day for me to move on with my life.  I needed to get back to a normal routine.  I needed to be a mom to Whitney and take care of her.  And I had a few months ahead of no stressing about a baby.  My life could be mine again.  And it was a relief in a weird way.  I no longer had to worry whether or not I would make it through spreading her ashes.  I no longer had to play the scene over and over in my head, where I just fell apart, where my legs buckled underneath me and Andy had to catch me because I just couldn't handle it, where I cried so hard I could barely breathe.  I did it.  I made it through.  I had a voice, and I used it.  I said goodbye, and I was proud of myself for finding that strength.  You wouldn't think that the day you say goodbye would be such a happy day, but I couldn't stop smiling.  I forgot how good it felt to feel happy, and it just felt so good.

Andy and I decided to take the rest of the day and spend it together as a family.  We took Whitney to the zoo and were having a lovely afternoon.  As we were walking to see the hippos, Whitney's favorite animal, I got a phonecall from Joy, wanting to know how everything went.  And I told her all about it with no tears or anything.  I was really relieved and really happy.  It was a good day.  Then her news once again rocked my world...Gabby was taken by ambulance from her pediatrician's office to the hospital.  They didn't know for sure what was wrong, but her blood oxygen was only 68%, and Joy was so distraught.  As it turned out, after a day or two of tests, Gabby was missing her pulmonary artery and a valve in her heart, and she had a hole between her ventricles.  Officially, she has Tetralogy of Fallot with MAPCAS.  And she needed to have open heart surgery as soon as she could.  After I got off the phone with her, I told Andy, and we were both in shock.  She was living through one of our, "It would be worse if" scenarios.