This is perhaps the worst holiday ever. It makes me wonder how the first people who celebrated Memorial Day felt. It wasn't all barbeques and family gatherings then. Sorrow from the tragedies of recent war called for a collective day of mourning and gratitude.
Once one hits full adulthood, one cannot help but know people who have lost children through infant death or miscarriage. My own mother lost her youngest son within days after birth due to birth defects from some medicine she was on. She carried that sorrow forever -which does not even mention the miscarriages. I remember the last time she was pregnant, I asked her if she was happy. She said, "I love our babies, but I'm scared about this one. We are talking about it too soon." And that wee one didn't make it to birth.
My amazing sister in law lost her first son so close to his birth, as well as others. Her other healthy and sassy 6 heads around the table disguise the fact that pregnancy is both gamble and sacrifice.
No one wants to talk about the babies who left the world so much sooner than we dreamed they would. This leaves too many people hanging in the shadows on different parental holidays.
Last Mother's Day, I went to Mass with my dear friend, Lori. After the Mothers Blessing was said over all the standing women, she sat down, leaned over and said, "You have the right to stand up. Your babies count, too." I felt quite proud for not bursting into tears.
I am the mother of miscarried babies. I haven't met any of them in person yet, just felt them growing under my heart until a rush of blood took them away. I've known since I was 18 that having children isn't really in the cards for me, but even though the circumstances were never great (unmarried, not particularly stable) the hope that defied logic was always there.
Most of the women I know who have buried children have gone on to parent their rainbow babies, and I know that isn't my future, either. My mother was told to not talk about her lost ones, put it behind her, look at the gorgeous kids she has right in front of her. What I have that my mother did not in her day is the ability to share these sorrows with friends and people who love me.
Still, the sorrow is so personal, I have never shared this publicly before. Part of this was not feeling that I, unmarried, practicing Catholic, had the RIGHT to feel sorrow for babies that weren't supposed to be here anyway. This is, of course, complete nonsense, as my dearest Lori pointed out, yet so many of us think that way, even if we don't admit it.
I don't know much about my kids but I think about them. I've woven stories in my head, and given them fanciful names that befit great adventurers. I'm looking forward to meeting them in Heaven, where all the answers are.
So even though this is the worst holiday ever, I hope we all reach out in peace and love and tenderness today, and learn to listen with our whole hearts to words that have been unsaid too long. My great wish for this day is that a few of these words I have written reach another woman standing in the shadows, that she knows I'm right there holding her hand.
...and even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my tongue
but Hallelujah...
-Leonard Cohen, Broken Hallelujah
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