Gravity- the story of a loss Mom

Spoiler alert: I describe many key parts of the film Gravity in my post below.

The Chaplain at the hospital where my daughter was stillborn told me about the movie Gravity when I saw her at the annual service of remembrance last October. She said that yes, it takes place in space, but that ultimately, it's the story of a grieving Mother. I finally saw it on a plane on my way back from California a few weeks ago, a few weeks before the 7-oscar sweep the film made. I watched it with my 4-year old on one side of me, my husband on the other, and our 8-month old rainbow baby in my arms asleep. I knew what I was getting into, watching a movie that I'd been warned was really about loss, not space, in the public/private location of a plane cabin. I figured there would be some crying, and I was right.

As someone who has lost a baby, I see parallels between my grief journey and the journey through space that Sandra Bullock's character makes. I can relate to what she's experiencing at so many parts of the film:

-she comes "untethered": the disorientation that grief brings is like this. You no longer feel connected to your everyday life and the world. You drift.

-she is physically pummeled by space debris: facing grief again day after day is like banging into space debris REALLY HARD, over and over again. The pain comes at you, out of nowhere, when you least expect it.

-she talks to herself: grief, and the story of your grief is always running in the background of your mind, sometimes the foreground as well There's a lot of talking to yourself, a lot of reworking the loss, reviewing your child's death over and over from every perspective. Wondering if some small change could have led to a different outcome.

-she is not afraid to die: I felt this way after my dad died and even more so after losing my daughter. I can't begin to imagine what happens to us after death. But maybe, just maybe, there is this possibility of reunion with our loved ones who have gone before us. That prospect is a balm to all of us left behind. It makes me much less afraid of dying.

-she decides to live: she overcomes her desperate situation and makes a decision to survive. After everything, she decides to live. She has no plan, there is no promise that anything will be OK, but she does everything she can to survive and then at the very end, she crawls out of the capsule, through the water, and onto land. She has nothing, but she steps towards her unknown future.

Gravity is a powerful allegory about grief, and what it takes to overcome it and survive. As a traveler on this path, I was grateful for a film that captured so much of the experience. See the movie, it's worth it for so many reasons. If you're a babylost parent, see if it speaks to you about aspects of your grief. I'll be curious to hear.

New Year, Same Grief

My daughter weighed 6.5 oz when she was stillborn in August 2012 at 22 weeks gestation. She was tiny. She's now been cremated and the ashes are in a plastic bag inside her urn. If you held the bag in your hand, you could close your fist around it almost all the way. Even though she's just a couple tablespoons of ash and bone at this point, she takes up a lot of space.

It's the new year. You're doing OK: eating right, fitting in the exercise, being late to work less often, getting things in order. And then, suddenly, the grief appears, it grabs your ankles and pulls you under. 17 months later and it is still raw. You are still reduced to a sobbing puddle. You repeat, "my baby, my baby, my tiny love". It's the song you sing to her, it's all your brain can produce when the grief comes on strong like this, when you get pulled under. This does not happen every day, but it happens more often than you'd think. It renders you helpless, exhausted. You are adrift.

No matter that I have read enough articles and books to know that grief is not linear, the suddenness with which it can run me over like a freight train is still surprising. I get into this space where I think I'm me again. I feel like a normal person. And then whoosh! Nope. You're a person with a baby-sized bag full of ashes on a little altar. A precious, tiny bag. In there are what's left of your dreams and hopes for this daughter, perhaps for any daughter.

The new year has brought a lot of sadness with it. Lots of hope, lots of joy, but still the sadness, the missing, the wishing things were different. I will always wish things were different.

Capture Your Grief: Days 6 and 7

Day 6: What NOT to Say

I've been pretty lucky. People have been mostly kind. The worst thing that's happened to us is that a colleague I ran into 2 days after losing our daughter said NOTHING. She acted like nothing happened at all. I was shocked. She'd signed the office card. I knew she knew, but for whatever reason, she couldn't acknowledge our loss. It was very painful. We were in a public park, taking a walk before a support group meeting. I went under a tree and cried, and thought, so this is how it is going to be: people will pretend it didn't happen. I'm pretty sure that I knew this before, but now I will never forget: all you have to say is, I'm sorry for your loss. How hard is that?

Day 7: What to Say

My friend Tania said this. It was over a month after Chiara died, and as she said it, she burst into tears. Then I burst into tears. It was the most beautiful, kind thing that someone has said to me. I will always be grateful to her for being brave and sharing my grief. 

Say Her Name

A friend emailed me last week to say that she had had a dream about Chiara (sounds like: Key-are-uh). I was so grateful to read her name: Chiara. We don't say it often. When I do say her name, it makes me cry. It opens the wound. But still, it feels so good. It is proof that she was here with us, that someone else besides us remembers her. I am so afraid anytime someone asks her name, I have to muster my strength to reply, and it always comes with tears. It makes me feel very vulnerable.

But I do love it when someone says her name to me. I love it when Justin and I use her name with each other. Stellan, our 2 year old, doesn't know her name yet. We have not been brave enough to tell him, have not progressed beyond "baby sister". I just haven't been ready to hear her name on his lips. We have weathered the questions about where she is, does she like to eat blueberries, does she drive a car, and why can't she be with us. I have watched his face, which used to light up with the mention of his baby sister, used to shine with the wonderful secret of her impending birth, change to reflect the confusion he feels. Why no baby sister? She wasn't growing. Why not? Why not, indeed. I want her, he says. I want her too, I tell him.

This coming weekend we'll attend a walk in remembrance of lost babies and I think that's where we'll introduce her name to him. I'm really looking forward to seeing other couples and families and being able to just be who we are, be sad, and to remember our beautiful girl: Chiara.

Integration: the work of grief

I'm 41 years old. I've had some grief in my life. I lost my Dad at 56 years old, 2 uncles, 4 grandparents, numerous friends and classmates. I've sought counseling when the going got hard. I hadn't heard about integration, though. Now I hear it from my therapist, from the support group leader, in books and videos about losing a child. Integration: this is a familiar word that I am now learning has another meaning.

As time passes and the weeks as a babylost mom add up, the starkness of the situation fades a bit. If I'm not paying attention, it can seem so normal, so much like life before, at least in the macro sense (and if you don't count all the wailing and sobbing). I am checking off tasks each day. Some mundane: laundry, groceries, mother our son, go to work, feed the dogs, pay the bills. But then, some things that we are only doing because we lost our baby girl: confirm the minister for her memorial service, go to the post mortem meeting with the maternal fetal medicine specialist, book a room for the service and dinner afterwards. Next I'll be searching for readings and finding a suitable invitation for the service. All of these I am glad to do. They are all I can do for Chiara now. But as I click through the list, feeling somewhat productive, it occurs to me how awful it is, that these are the tasks I am focused on this fall. In between the therapist appointments, the support group, the acupuncture, the doctor's appointments, there are all these little details borne out of wanting to honor her memory.

I see that charting my path through these tasks begins the work of integrating her loss into the fabric of my life, of my being. This means accepting her death, while still craving her presence inside me.