Good grief

I’ve had a struggle convincing myself to post anything to the blog this week.  I wrote half a post about John Edwards and then I wrote a post about Kim Kardashian and then I just left them both in my files without posting them. 

I have nothing to complain about.  Overall, I have a pretty good life.  But this week I’ve been thinking of my close friend who lost someone so important to her.  The person she lost isn’t someone that it hurts me to lose, except that it hurts my friend so deeply that her pain makes my heart ache with hers.  There’s nothing I can say to fix this for her, and I’m desperate to just fix it.  There’s not much that I can do to make it better.  I wish more than anything that I could erase this last week for her and her family and the person that was lost to all of us. 

Recently I experienced a similar writing block.  My cousin’s fiancé lost someone important to her too.  Again, this isn’t a person that it hurt me to lose but it hurt them so much.  My cousin and his fiancé are at a crucial point in their young lives and a loss like the one they experienced hurts worse now than maybe it could have at any other time.  Then again, maybe it would hurt them exactly the same no matter what.  But the circumstances just crushed me as I stood back at a safe distance. 

I guess the real trouble for me is that when I try to put myself in the shoes of my loved ones, I can’t bear it.  I don’t know how they get out of bed in the morning, how they don’t ask themselves the most crippling existential questions over and over again, how they don’t doubt every single thing they were ever promised in life. 

But now I realize how they did it: FAITH.  I’m not trying to get religious; I don’t necessarily mean faith in God.  I mean, simply, faith in life, faith in the act of living and breathing.  Faith that tomorrow isn’t promised but if we don’t have the strength to get through today, we’ll never see tomorrow.  Just one more breath, in and out, leads to the next breath, in and out, and it’s not okay but it’s bearable.  Livable. 

And despite the excruciating fact that these two are lost to all of us, I truly believe that it’s enough for each of them to have existed and to have touched the lives of my friend, cousin and future cousin.  Sharing even one fleeting moment with someone else is enough because it’s another lesson learned, another breath of life, no matter whether it ends in heartbreak or happiness. 

I wish I knew something more to say than, “I’m sorry.”  I am sorry, truly sorry, to see anyone suffer the pain of loss, to see anyone taken from us too soon.  I want to say so much more in that moment when I hold my friend in my arms.  Hopefully my loved ones feel my love surrounding them, hopefully they can let go of what they feel for those few seconds and hold onto me and allow me to absorb their pain.  I would take it all if I could. 

The beauty of all of this loss, for me, is that the ones that I love are still here.  For now.  It’s enough for me to breathe and breathe again and with each breath reassure myself that soon I’ll see each of them again.  It’s enough for me to selfishly take tomorrow for granted because we’re all here today.  As long as I hold onto faith, basic human faith, I can put off tomorrow and whatever it may hold in store. 

The biggest lesson I’ve learned from all of this is that there’s nothing that can show you the effect of community than when you support a friend in their grief.  I showed up at the first visitation and ran into my friend’s dad.  Then I saw my friend’s dad at his son’s visitation.  In all of this, the most important thing that’s come to light is that you never know how far you’ve reached until you can walk into something sad and heavy like that and come out feeling that there’s still light for all of us to share.  There’s still clean air, there’s still hope. 

I’ll never give up this faith, so long as I live and breathe. 

WAYT: Miscarriage

In case you haven’t heard, Beyonce and Jay-Z’s baby girl Blue Ivy Carter was born a couple months ago.  Everybody wants to criticize Beyonce’s diva delivery and speculate on whether she was ever pregnant, but I want to talk about the miracle of this birth. 

Blue is something more than her father’s bundle of joy because she is the answer to a second prayer.  Here’s what I’m talking about, found in a few lines from Jay-Z’s song Glory inspired by Blue. 

“False alarms and false starts

All made better by the sound of your heart

All the pain of the last time

Prayed so hard that it was the last time…

Last time the miscarriage was so tragic

We was afraid you’d disappear but no baby, you magic”

In this song, Jay-Z is sharing with the world that before Blue, Beyonce suffered a miscarriage.  Just yesterday, (pseudo-celebrity) Bethenny Frankel revealed that she too lost a baby through miscarriage.  More and more, those with a platform are speaking out about their losses. 

For some reason that I can’t comprehend, miscarriage is kept a secret by so many women.  Is it shame that silences us, because we weren’t able to succeed at this defining “woman’s work”?  It is fear that speaking up about our loss will jinx us the next time?  I want to know, what are you thinking, Jay-Z, letting this cat out of the bag?    

I hope that he included this revelation in the song so that he and Beyonce can tell us more about their tragedy someday.  Not so that I can be a voyeur – certainly not – but so that many women out there, myself included, can find comfort in our losses together.  It would be such a weight off of the shoulders of so many to be able to come together in grief and sadness, to feel hope that we can overcome shared tragedy. 

I very much admire female advocates like Giuliana Rancic.  She has very publicly endured and discussed her attempts to conceive.  She is so brave and undoubtedly so scarred by what she’s been through.  Yet she keeps trying for a baby and keeps talking about her experiences.  I became familiar with Giuliana after my husband and I lost our first baby after a miscarriage, and she continues to inspire me in all she does. 

I recently told a relative (MW) that babies are so hard to get because they are such a gift.  I believe those words to be true.  I cherish every single thing about my son, even his dirty diapers, because I could have lost him too.  In fact, I nearly did.  Surely just like Jay-Z and Beyonce, Bethenny and her husband Jason, Giuliana and her husband Bill, my husband and I were afraid, but God was faithful to us and delivered our baby safe and sound. 

Personally, I don’t care what she paid, who she inconvenienced or what she demanded – Beyonce deserves the right to celebrate her baby, her precious blessing Blue.  Every mother does, no matter how easy or how hard it was to arrive at that defining moment of bringing baby home. 

 “What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined - to strengthen each other - to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories.”  -George Eliot