TW: Miscarriage
1.
Some preliminaries.
2.
Why now? ...And reflections on being in the Church after the miscarriage.
3.
The miscarriage / “Requiem at Seven Weeks.”
________________
Some Preliminaries
In what follows I will be recounting the experience of
miscarriage that Laura and I suffered a few years ago. This might lead to a few further reflections
being written, so I want to start out with some preliminary disclaimers.
1.
Everyone experiences loss differently. Nothing I write should be construed as a
claim about what “normal” should look like.
2.
In the course of my writing, I will make claims about where I felt God’s presence in the midst of suffering. In doing so, I am not suggesting that my experience should be normative for everyone who experiences a
miscarriage. I certainly do not wish to
imply anything that could be construed as “if you suffer more than I did, your
faith is/was not sufficient.” If something
of my experience of God in the midst of suffering is helpful, I will be
happy. If someone has experienced
miscarriage or another loss as a time of God’s absence—or if someone makes no
reference to God at all in her or his experience—I do not wish to imply that the person has a lesser belief or that he or she have somehow failed in grieving.
3.
Nothing I write should be construed as pointing
to an opinion on elective abortion or claims about the personhood of a fetus.
Also, I strongly suggest a request for your consideration: after reading this, please do not respond with anything along the lines
of:
·
“The fetus was only seven weeks old.”
·
“Y’all now have your son” (which is like “You
can always try again.”)
·
“God wanted another angel.”
·
“I’m sure God had His reasons.”
These responses are not particularly helpful things to
say to grieving parents, and they will not be received well. I'm now in a place where I can handle these responses and answer them, but let us both not expend that emotional
effort.
Why am I writing
this now?
Well, one reason is that I have meant to write about my
experience of the miscarriage since the event.
There is not very much out there for fathers who experience
miscarriage. Additionally, anywhere from
10-25% of clinically recognized pregnancies end in miscarriage. That is to say, they are incredibly common, and
the silence around the loss is unhealthy for those who suffer the loss in a
pseudo-imposed silence. As the above
warning also suggested, the loss invites people to comment in ways that attempt
to minimize the discomfort of the one who hears about the loss at the expense
of the one experiencing the loss. We are told we should not feel the loss as
deeply as we do, either because it is not a big deal in the grand scheme of
things, or there is something divinely inspired/fatalistic about the loss. The emotional work that has to be done in times
of loss and grief is difficult; many of us stay silent to avoid the additional
emotional work of sifting through others’ opinions about whether we deserve to
feel our own emotions.
So, I’m writing to share the journey of going through
grief. The miscarriage still has effects
on me, and some of those effects lead me to write about the miscarriage in this moment. This first blog post will tell the story of the weekend the miscarriage occurred.
Other posts may take up talking about residual effects.
_______________
Maybe it’s the remnants of the masculine ideal of
“boys/men don’t cry” that still occasionally haunt me, but I am uncomfortable
with crying in church. I should be
clear, though, that I’m fine with anyone crying in church. Anyone else—including men—could cry and it
would not bother me at all. The Church
should be a safe space for emotion to be expressed, particularly when these
emotions point to realities other aspects of our dominant culture deny or
suppress. I’m fine with people crying in
Church—everyone except me.
Like I said, some of it may have to do with residual
patriarchal notions of what a man is supposed to be like; but in my case, as an
Episcopal priest, I also find myself in leadership within the church. Nowhere is this more evident or visible than
in worship. I see my role as being one
of moving worship along, of maintaining the space for people to pray—to safely
admit emotion and express themselves(!). But in
performing this role, I have to give up a little bit of my own ability to fully
enter prayer so that I may hold the space open for everyone else. I do not think I am suggesting anything too
terribly controversial by admitting that worship leaders must strike a balance
between being in worship as a participant and distancing ourselves to make
worship happen for others.
There are moments in the life of the Church and the
Church’s worship that evoke great emotion.
One example is Holy Week, which we are now starting. This is the week that we enter and live into
the drama associated with Jesus’ last days before the Resurrection. From Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem
to his death on the cross. The emotions
vary widely: excitement, turmoil,
betrayal, confusion, abandonment, apathy, deceit, injustice, rage, cruelty, corruption,
loss, grief.
And Easter—Hope.
Before loss, there is the surface-level sort of admission
that the death of Jesus was the death of a man who had familial
connections. It’s a matter of historical
(or at least scriptural) record. Jesus
had parents and siblings. However, the
emotion now runs so much deeper. I feel
the loss of Jesus, like Mary, as the loss
of a child.
And in the Church’s worship both Lent (including Holy
Week) and Advent bring these emotions and resonances to my mind. Lent, the death of the savior, but now more
so the death of a son. Advent, the preparing for the birth of Christ
and the knowledge that Christ would die.
Any hymn that mentions both Christ’s birth and death hold the
possibility to reduce me to tears (“A Stable Lamp is Lighted,” “Lord of the Dance,” etc.). I’m still discovering
other things that trigger emotions that may not have anything to do with
miscarriage on the surface, but something within me connects the whatever it is that I am doing and the
memory. The stripping of the altar on
Maundy Thursday can be triggering.
Blessing children at the Communion rail can choke me up (I love doing
this, but the emotion is there).
It should be no surprise that pastors have baggage, like
everyone else in the world. The
difficult thing is for that baggage to show up while trying to hold open the
space for other people to be present to their own emotions and to God’s work in
their life. I have occasionally wept in
Church, but I do not like to do it. I do not want to be a distraction.
So, I’m writing this because I want to give a reflection
about loss from a father’s point of view.
I want to be an example of honestly expressing and admitting that loss
occurs and has an impact, even years after the fact. Sometimes, we are fighting to hold ourselves together because we think other people need us to do so.
I suppose the irony is that I am so hesitant to give that
same permission to myself. At points, writing this blog post felt like a way of saying “if I break down
in sobbing during services this Holy Week, here’s why.” I am writing an explanation I would require
of no one else who would sob in church, but I feel like I need to explain it
for myself.
At least I do not feel like I’m making an apology.
Maybe that’s progress enough.
_____________________
I remember the joy I felt and the tears that I stealthily
choked back when the ultrasound technician maneuvered the probe to show us our
child at 6 weeks old. Holding the tears
back was harder when the technician turned up the speakers— a strong heartbeat
at 119 beats per minute. The technician
printed out a few pictures for us.
That was Friday, June 8th, 2012. We left the OB/GYN office happy. Celebratory.
Laura was worried about some spotting, which did not seem to be a big
deal by the end of the visit; some of our fear was put to rest. We talked about the future and how it was
difficult to wait to tell everyone about it.
We hadn’t even told anyone we were trying to have a child. We decided to wait until July 4th
to tell everyone.
Laura came home from work the next Wednesday and wanted
to tell our families. We bent our rules
a little. We called our parents and
siblings, and then swore them to secrecy until after our reveal on July 4th. Such wonderful phone calls to make!
Laura woke up that next Friday, June 15th,
sensing that something was wrong.
Murphy, our cocker spaniel, seemed to know something too. Thursday night, wide awake, he howled at
Laura. Friday morning, he barked at
her. He never barks at her. By 9am, while teaching, she felt a rush of
blood. She called me.
“I think I’m having a miscarriage.”
I told her not to come home—to call the doctor’s office,
follow their directions, and let me know where to go. Calling her back five minutes later, I found
out she was headed to the doctor’s office. I called a cab, and beat her there
by a few minutes. In my rush to find
her, I immediately went to the receptionist; Laura had not checked in. Going to meet her, since she would be
arriving soon, I must have been on the elevator going down while she was in the
other heading to the 5th floor.
At the first floor I saw her car, but not her.
Getting back on the elevator I rode it to the fifth
floor. The door jammed. I was stuck in this elevator. After trying a few floors—at which the door
did not open—I pushed the call button only to discover that I could hear the
person who answered the call, but they could not hear me. After futile attempts to talk to the person
who answered my call, I took the elevator back to the fifth floor and forced
the door open. Walking into the OB/GYN
office, I told the receptionist to inform maintenance of the elevator.
Laura was sitting close to the door. When I saw her, the first thing I noticed was
her eyes, red and puffy. She would later
tell me that she had gotten the worst of the crying out of the way at the gas
station at which she had to stop if she wanted to have enough fuel to make it
from Milford to New Haven. I sat down
and took her hand. We were called about
five minutes later.
We were immediately directed to the ultrasound room. The same room from a week earlier. The technician was quiet as she worked, and
as we watched the screen the large gestational sac we saw last week was nowhere
to be found. She looked everywhere, and
I wonder if she was trying to find some hope for us—to intentionally prolong
the search. Minutes passed.
“There is a lot of debris here,” she finally said.
She honed in on a small blob that looked a lot like the
embryo we saw in the gestational sac seven days earlier. The sac was gone. Turning up the speakers, there was only
silence.
I didn’t cry. I
focused on Laura, giving her my hand and passing her tissue.
“I’m so sorry,” the technician said. The technician left the room so that Laura
could get dressed, and I passed Laura the clean underwear she asked me to
bring.
In my training as a pastor, I’ve worked as a hospital
chaplain. Chaplains are used to shocks
like these drowning everything else out.
We know that sometimes we need to ask questions of doctors for the
family, to ask doctors to repeat things to which the family may
uncomprehendingly shake their head in false understanding. I reverted back to some of that training, and
tamped down my emotions as far as I could, except for the sadness that wouldn’t
drown and the empathy which would benefit Laura.
We were moved into an examination room, and a nurse who
probably had not read the chart came in to take Laura’s vitals.
“So you are having some bleeding?” She asked in a voice
that would seem too chipper to our ears on that day. Laura just shook her heard yes and tried to
smile.
When the nurse left, Laura said, “I lost a pound from
last week.”
In the next five minute wait, Laura commented that she
felt very cold. I offered her my
over-shirt.
“No, it wouldn’t help.”
The next two midwives/doctors to come in were consummate
professionals—quick to reassure, and willing to sit in the room for as long as
was needed. We were told that this
miscarriage would not mean that we would have an increased risk of
another. Laura was to rest this
weekend. Call if the bleeding was too
bad. Be prepared to pass the lining of
the uterus. We could try again once
Laura returned to a normal cycle—when the hormones common to pregnancy had
passed. Laura would need a shot, which
was to make sure that her body would not develop antibodies that would attack
another embryo.
In the waits between the doctors’ visits to the room,
Laura said that she wanted to go.
“I want to eat something terrible for me.”
I agreed to take her somewhere with very fattening
food. I also told her that I’d handle
talking to family later in the day. On
the way out, we stopped at a downstairs lab for a blood test, and left. We stopped at the nearest Arby’s before we
went home.
Friday and Saturday were quiet. I cancelled my involvement hosting a workshop
that weekend. We continued the struggle
of navigating Laura’s grief, and my own.
Since we had not told anyone except immediate family, only needing to
inform them was easier. In fact, that’s
why we were waiting to tell people. We
did not want to tell everyone in the world Laura was pregnant only to have a
miscarriage happen and people months later ask her when the baby was due. I made calls to family members.
The difficulty I was running into was that the people I
would lean on in this situation didn’t even know we were trying to
conceive. Laura and I were keeping that
quiet, too. But the absence of any type
of support system nearby was eating at me.
It didn’t help that on Saturday morning, I ran into a number of people
from the divinity school on Orange Street, and had to front like nothing was
going on. I’m fairly certain one woman I
talked to—a friend—immediately suspected miscarriage.
Laura was uncomfortable with this development, and that I
had told the person I would have helped run the workshop. I felt justified because I could tell my
classmate exactly why I was leaving her to run a workshop by herself, and I
also knew that she had once miscarried at seven weeks. She would know exactly what was going on.
After taking Saturday off, I felt like I needed to go to
my parish on Sunday. I’m a deacon, and I
had a role in the liturgy. On top of being
involved in the life of the community, as Friday and Saturday had gone on in
terms of other matters and work I was involved in, I needed to go make a change
to all of the service leaflets. I got
up, got dressed, put my collar on, and went to Church.
I arrived in time to change all of the service bulletins
with time to spare. I deflected the
people asking me how I was.
Smiling as best I could, I said “I’m fine.” Fine.
It stands for “Fucked Internally, Normal Externally.”
But, twenty minutes before the service, I remembered that
as a deacon my job in the service was to lead the prayers for the
deceased. I knew of one woman in the
parish who died this week, but I didn’t know if I could name my child
aloud. We never named it. Then I knew I wouldn’t be able to pray
without breaking into tears in the middle of church, collapsing to the stone
floor. I immediately began to cry, and
walked out into a deserted garden. I
called Laura. I told her I was coming
home. I told her I had to tell my priest
why.
Laura said she was okay with it.
And I realized what had happened to me. For the past two days I had spoken about this
as “we,” “us,” “you.” I had never left
chaplain-land (even though I was in husband-land too). This was the first time I said “I.” As in, I
can’t do this. My child died. Yes, it was our child, but within that, it was my child too. And I cannot stand in church, read the names
of the dead, on Father’s Day, in the week of my wedding anniversary, and just then be willing to call the deceased
child mine. And I certainly couldn’t
expect to not collapse in tears. The
very thought left me breathless.
I found my supervising priest, and told him I couldn’t
stay today. When he asked why, I broke
down again, there in the parking lot. He
was incredibly gentle with me even as he seemed a bit surprised that I was at
church with what had happened to Laura and me over the past two days. He asked me what I needed. I recovered enough to say that I needed to go
home.
On the way home, I thought about what I had been learning
about myself. It turns out that I can
keep other people’s secrets and pain all the day long. My pain needs to be public. Laura is a very private person and has her
support network in place, but there are people I needed to tell. People I trusted—who I cannot keep telling I
am fine without it being a lie, and a lie that I cannot even pull off
convincingly.
When I got home I set down my bags, my papers, and my
collar, and collapsed into Laura’s arms.
Wailing. I have never made that
noise before. She guided me to the
bedroom and I wept in her arms as I told her what had been seeking expression
over the past two days.
“I have a support network,” she said, “and now I see that
you don’t have the one that you need.
Tell who you need to.” There is a
proviso. Laura wants no condolences
coming from others outside of her own support circle. She did (and does) not want the entire
divinity school and church constantly reminding her of the loss.
After a rest, I got up and came to the computer. Writing is how I internalize things. I can’t start grieving, really, until I
write.
As I sit down to type this, my eye catches the first
ultrasound’s printout, face down. As I
turn it over I see that Laura had added a caption.
“We’ll miss you.”
I add the date.
“D. 6/15/2012”
O God, who gathered
Rachel’s tears over her lost children:
Hear now our sorrow and distress for the death of the child we longed
for; in the darkness of loss, stretch out to us the strength of your arm and
renewed assurance of your love; through your own suffering and risen Child
Jesus. Amen.
2 comments:
Thank you, Robert. You have no idea how many of us have experienced this. I'm glad you shared it.
Thank you for sharing, Robert.
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