Finally, Sunshine

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, on my last day of being 52 years old, I went to both Kroger and Smallmart– because even before the pandemic supply chain issues, in my small town, neither store ever had everything you needed. (I told shoppers in the dairy section yesterday my new joke: Where is the buttermilk? Not at Kroger!)

In Smallmart (I know–I don’t like the nickname either), there was the usual trouble on the spice aisle.

The spice aisle in the grocery store, particularly near a holiday, is a hullabaloo, a team-building exercise–and, sometimes, a missionary field. People who have never bought sage desperately search for it; those who left their shopping lists at home murmur, “Do I need celery salt or celery seed?” and frantic bakers rifle around for the last vial of McCormick Pure Vanilla.

So, if I encounter someone steering glassy-eyed at the rows of bottles and packets, I always ask, “What are you searching for?” And I stop and help for a minute. (Sometimes, I negotiate: “You find the pink Himalayan salt for me, and I will find the paprika for you.”)

Tuesday, there was a short older woman with a nearly empty shopping cart staring up at the spices. She said she was searching for food coloring, so I joined the quest.

I found it on the top shelf. It wasn’t McCormick–it was disguised in an odd little Great Value box. She said, “I only need one color,” so I grabbed a tall bottle of red, thinking she planned to make red velvet cake for Thanksgiving.

She corrected my assumption: “I need yellow.” I told her there wasn’t a single tall bottle of yellow. She replied, “Well, then, I will need three boxes,” and I handed them to her. (I briefly considered opening them to fill one with just yellow.)

Her shopping companion rounded the corner, and the woman reported that there were no single bottles, so she planned to get three boxes, although she didn’t like the price. “We might have to go to Kroger,” she added.

“Oh, don’t go to Kroger!” I told her.

“Did you just come from there? Is it busy?” she asked.

I told her it was and suggested we look in the cupcake section because sometimes things hide there.

We wandered down the aisle–there was yellow icing but no food coloring. She resigned herself to Kroger.

I opened my wallet and folded a bill the way my grandmother always had. “Here,” I said, explaining, “I had a hard time for a long time.”

She got teary-eyed and started thanking Jesus. And we both stood there in the spice aisle, each of us thanking God.

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The words I spoke echoed in my head as I shopped for cat food and eggs and buttermilk. I heard them as I exchanged pleasantries with former students–and again as I loaded my car.

“Had.”

Our family had a traumatic 21 years. Our marriage had a difficult six. I had lost my granddaughter, my father, and my husband–the three of them dying horrible deaths.

“Had.”

I focused on the word as I drove home. Something about having said it struck me–maybe because it was on the eve of my birthday, just before a chronological break, maybe because there might be hope for 53 to be a peaceful year.

“Had.”

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That afternoon, my elder daughter dropped by so I could see my two-month-old grandson, The Cutest Baby in the World. We decided to take him to see my aunt, who had yet to meet him. At eighty, she reminds me more of my grandmother every time I see her, and in a small way, it was like introducing the baby to Grandma.

They took to one another–I have photographic proof. The baby lay in my aunt’s lap with placid satisfaction, his eyes the calmest I have ever seen them. He was satisfied to be with her, surrounded by portraits of his great-great-great-grandparents and photos of the great-greats.

Then, my uncle came home (he’d been, of course, at Kroger). He put the groceries down and came to meet the baby, who stood on April’s lap. (The baby loves to stand.)

Uncle B— approached the baby from a distance, like you would a strange scared dog. He stood with his hands on his knees, considering baby P—, calling a gentle, “Hey, there!”

And P— stood staring at back. The baby was transfixed.

It was a long moment. A two-month-old and an 84-year-old, considering one another. From across the room, I took pictures–my uncle’s back, the baby’s intense gaze, April’s smiling face.

And I thought for a moment that it should be my dad hunched over his moccasin-clad great-grandson; that Greg should be in the room, in the armchair beside me; that both of these men deserved to meet and hold this little boy, this bright sunshine after two decades of drenching rain.

And I just left it, grateful for the people in the room, all of us quietly delighting in the sunshine.

Unashamed–Amid the Beams (Rejoicing in the Babies)

The views expressed in this blog are, of course, my own and should be taken as such.

My grandmother is with me in my daily life. On the days when I do not want to do good–offer the ride, buy the meal, wave someone on at the four-way stop–I can hear her gentle voice, “Thereby some have entertained angels unaware.” If I decide to skip sunscreen or Neosporin or a blow-dry, she reminds me to.

Stephanie Saussy’s desire to celebrate everything is with me still–thirteen years after her death, I find myself thinking, “Time to get out the Valentine’s bowl fillers.” I remember the thoughtful absurdities: she would hoard the banana Laffy Taffy so we could eat it in her bed while watching Little House on the Prairie; make us all dress in luau garb just to sit beside the wading pool and sandbox while our toddlers played; leave no-reason presents on the front stoop.

In Seattle, we lost over twenty friends, people who did not see their children graduate, marry, launch small businesses, people who missed futures that I lived to see, who have left me a legacy of awareness: this is what I have; here is my treasure.

Twenty years of hearing them, of remembering, left me prepared to hear my father–to have my days interrupted by memories: the way he sang “I love a parade” while waiting to turn at the corner of Seminole and Central; the times he’d moan, “Spare me/Why me/Oh my god!” over idiocies both large and small; his spontaneous speeches about men that were his heroes.

I knew he would be with me.

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What I didn’t expect was the haunting of suicide, the additional burden that survivors must bear (and one suicide affects up to 135 people), the weight of anger and sorrow and shame.

I didn’t expect to be cleaning a litter box and think, “Well, everyone [in this small town] thinks my dad is in hell.”

I know, I know, I am not supposed to type those words–or even admit to thinking them–even though you think them when you see me in the grocery store, whisper them to your children. Even though you perpetuate the stigma, I am not supposed to admit that I see it.

I am supposed to live in your denial.

I am supposed to go quietly away, to take my agony and drink in a corner.

Good Lord–why didn’t I learn to be feminine? Or at least subdued?

You want me to live in shame–to take my trauma-filled childhood and even more incomprehensibly traumatic adulthood and go away.

Because that is what shame demands–that people put their troubles in tightly-lidded boxes, that people like me, with troubles that are particularly unsightly, duct tape their boxes shut, then cover them in black tarps–that our pain remain, always, completely covered.

But there is a place where pain cannot be covered, where it must be unmasked because there is no mask large enough, no make-up thick enough, where it must be seen, even in the face of your judgment.

The thing I want to show you, the thing that I hope my blogs point out again and again and again is you can make people’s lives okay. You can make the unbearable bearable. You can come alongside. That is Christlike.

Why, then, do we choose shame???

Why does society–even Christian society–choose to heap on the pain???

Last Sunday was Sanctity of Life Sunday. People lined roadways bearing “Choose Life” signs–this always profoundly moving to me since my daughters and I–and even my granddaughter–could have all been aborted: hydrocephalus, suspected birth defects, unplanned pregnancy, anencephaly–all were crisis pregnancies carried to term.

We were loved–even en utero–as babies should be.

It’s really that simple: babies are worthy of celebration, fearfully and wonderfully made, known by God in their mothers’ wombs.

But any veteran high school teacher–or anyone who works with young women–can tell you that the cultural stigma against unwed motherhood is still strong, particularly within the church. The shame some of these young women feel is deep–and church-sanctioned.

I’ve witnessed it for three decades–the same church that says, “Don’t abort,” can refuse to open its arms.

The women apologize–to the church, their grandmothers, all of us–as they don their scarlet letters, shamed for the babies everyone demanded they save.

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I began this blog because my own daughter was twenty-one, unmarried, and pregnant and all the Christian resources I could find said things like, “Gather the children to discuss their sister’s sin,” and I just could not do that.

I could not heap shame on my daughter, couldn’t slap my grandchild with an “unwanted” label.

I was broken, overwhelmed, and lost–and I failed,in some ways, utterly–but I could not choose shame, even if that’s what “powerful” Christians told me to do.

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Putting people in boxes, policing their behavior, judging on outward appearance–it’s all so exhausting.

Shaming and mandating and chiding–telling others, always, how wrong they are–exiling and alienating and punishing–the words themselves are wearying.

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I have heard decades of sermons about specks and motes and beams in eyes–and spent my lifetime either hiding beams or removing motes–and I am here, now, with ruins all around. I have nothing to show, nothing to hold–it truly stuns me, still.

But there is value and redemption in this: you and I can see my beams–somehow, raised as I was, in the Church, married as I was, in the Church, having seen all I have seen in the Church, I am still here, among these broken beams. You and I both see that my world is not beautiful: impacted by cancer, anencephaly, suicide, and divorce. There is nothing tidy here.

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Here’s the thing: I don’t have a heaven or hell to put anyone in. I could spend days saying that. It is a life-changing revelation.

I don’t have to decide.

I don’t have to judge the sins, weigh the merits, see the dark black smudges and hunt for the bright white. I don’t have to wonder about anyone’s salvation or think too long about whether their long walk to the altar at age thirteen will still save them at forty-three.

It is their salvation. It is God’s heaven. I am totally out of the equation.

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Once you realize that, once you see that it is you and God and them and God–that you are not the chairman of any heavenly committee and your mansion in Glory may be right next door to Ted Bundy’s–once your eyes are open to your complete lack of power, in that realization is your freedom–to rest and rejoice–in God’s grace.

(And all those babies.)

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A Slow Walk to Wonder: Anencephaly, and Love

On the day that my daughter April found out that the baby she was carrying had anencephaly, we weren’t terrified. We didn’t know enough to be. Even the baby’s gender was still unknown. We weren’t given sonogram pictures to obsess over, and we certainly didn’t know anyone else whose baby suffered from it.

Our friends, likewise, had never heard of anencephaly, and several googled it–and saw things they wished they hadn’t. More than one friend said, “You should have told us not to look that up.”

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On the day of her birth, for just an instant after delivery, life felt like Ripley’s Believe It or Not. It was not until we saw her that we learned Stephanie Grace’s anencephaly was brought about by a severe case of Amniotic Band Syndrome,  in which bits of the amniotic sac’s lining somehow tangle around the baby.

Our world had shifted once on diagnosis day; on her birthday, those amputations and alterations we did not know could even be–horrors so great no one talked about them–changed our world again.

But the wholly-engulfing terror and loss lasted only a moment–a millisecond where the roller coaster plummets, the stomach goes–and then everything settles, the breath returns. The terror is gone.

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In 2016, on those early-summer afternoons when I stared at the Drake elm in my backyard, I was lost. We all were. And people were scared to try to reach across our chasmed grief, since, as a cousin in New York confided, “They don’t make greeting cards for this.”

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I’m not easily soothed. I can’t soothe, either. From the outset each school year, I tell my students that I will not pat them. They will not get daily compliments from me; praise will not be flung like confetti. I stand there and say some sweet things, “Honey, I love your jacket” or “Your hair is lovely,” and even though they do not know me yet, they agree: it sounds fake.

Then I talk about alcoholism, privilege, and pain. I talk to them about self-doubt and pregnancy and wild parties–things on teenagers’ plates. I tell them that I know that a teacher is just another problem in their lives; I know they pay their parents’ water bills, and Mom sometimes does crack before school. I acknowledge their pain.

I sound real.

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It was not until four months after Stephanie Grace’s birth that we found the Facebook support groups Anencephaly Info and Anencephaly Hope. April, by then, was a thousand miles away living with her birth family, and I suppose my initial thought was that Facebook could provide her connection–a virtual peer group.

My initial Messenger exchange with Info’s founder was twenty-three words. It hardly seemed life-changing.

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In those days, I listened to Shane & Shane’s “Though You Slay Me” on a loop during my planning period. Over and over I listened to John Piper declare, “Of course you can’t see what [your affliction] is doing . . . It’s not meaningless . . . do not lose heart. But take these truths and focus on them. Preach them to yourself every morning . . . until your heart sings with confidence that you are new and cared for.”

I saw no meaning in my granddaughter’s horrific death or my daughter’s anguish.

To even consider the possibility of a singing heart was absurd.

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But on a quiet Spring morning, on the day of what should have been a sad stillbirth, my family instead had witnessed the hand of God. In that little hospital room, we felt the splitting of time, we glimpsed the eternal, we lived a Truth that most do not. And I will say it always, testify forever: I didn’t know Time could freeze like that, that Solitude could descend, that Love and God could wholly fill a space.

I shake my head as I type those words. I marvel still.

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I imagine God chuckled, looking down at me that day–broken, willful, and impulsive on my best days–and said to Himself, “She is going to tell everyone what she sees Me do,” as He wooshed into that room.

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Because that’s what you cannot fathom on the dark diagnosis day: you cannot fathom that anything good will come; you cannot see any option other than pure pain. You see loss, loss, only loss. Such an abundance of loss.

And there is no room for joy in the words “incompatible with life, ” because, for parents, their children’s lives are their joy–the cuddling in the bed on Saturday mornings, everyone warm under the covers, safe and together; the first walk in the muddy backyard in the pouring rain, reveling in the toddler’s joyous splashing of his rubber frog boots; the simple pleasure of looking at cows.

On diagnosis day and in the shell-shocked weeks that follow, when so much is newly ruined, to imagine any possibility of redemption is almost impossible. To suggest it is nonsense.

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But that’s what comes. After the funeral home, with the tiny Moses basket; the coffin so small a mother can carry it; the urn smaller than a child’s fist. After the months spent in the dark on the sofa–or in the rocker on the patio staring at silent trees. After the memory garden is planted and the headstone with its tiny angel wings arrives. After the first Christmas is survived, the Mother’s Day endured. After all those tears.

After all that, redemption slowly comes.

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When I was younger, at church youth group, we had testimony time. We would stand in front of everyone, the microphone tightly gripped, and tell each other: this is what I’ve seen God do. This is what I know for sure. And there would be applause.

Truthfully, at that point in our lives, most of us had endured very little.

But I am thankful for that seed, for the understanding that it is important to say to others: I have done this hard thing, and I am standing here–because your standing implies that if they, too, have to walk that route, then they, too, will also stand.

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That’s how I spend several hours a week now: testifying into a Google phone, talking to women in England and New Mexico and Belgium. Telling them how terrified we all were, how April didn’t think she could bear her sorrow, how I wanted to run from the room,  how we all thought we would collapse, but instead, we saw God.

I reassure them their babies are going to be beautiful, that their lives’ best worst day is coming. I tell them to try and believe me, despite the pictures on Google.  I ask that they instead look, really look, at the anencephaly family pictures posted in our Facebook group–the bonneted babies held by truly proud parents, their tiny fingernails painted like their mothers’, their footprints pressed into the family Bible, their beaming siblings bedecked in “Big Brother” and “Big Sister” shirts.

I tell them of the Love in the room.

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Last week, two moms had their sweet babies. Born alive. Miracles, both.

And their moms’ first report was, as I promised them it would be, of all that Love.

 

 

https://www.gofundme.com/grimes-family-cancer-fund

213 Days: Waiting on a Faithful God

I am a rambly high school English teacher. Like my own high school teachers, I talk frankly about life’s joys and losses. I talk about hindsight and heartbreak. I preach constantly about choices. My students know the things I have survived. I tell them that it may someday be helpful to think, “Well, if Mrs. G survived that, I can, too.”

A few days ago, a successful, happily-married former student messaged me out of the blue. She  said, “If you ever need an anonymous guest post on your blog . . .It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but I felt the need today . . . it goes along with the feel of your blog and what all your readers have seen . . . I’ve thought of you often while going through this.”

I was heartbroken by the honest words below. Read on for a reminder of a young mother’s heart–and then, in Paul Harvey fashion, read the rest of the story, and marvel at our ever-faithful God, who uses sorrow to transform. Who gives hope. Who reminds. 

March 9:  The day, my baby should have been born, I thought I was over it.

After all, I have had 213 days to “get over it,” but I’m not.

30 weeks and 3 days ago I had to have what should have been my baby removed from my body.

Just a week prior, I had been told, “We can’t find a fetus. Maybe you’re not as far along as you thought.” I knew how far along I was; I knew exactly when I got pregnant eight weeks before because we had been trying for a few months already.

I will always remember that day.

I had started bleeding just a few days before my first appointment, so I was already worried that something was not right. After the nurse confirmed that my test was positive, we talked about what was to come over the next several months. I was handed packets of information on the hospital, medicines to take and not to take, what to expect at each appointment, etc.

We then went into the ultrasound room where the bubbly ultrasound technician let her trainee perform the sonogram. I was quickly reassured that my bleed was nothing to worry about–it was just a subchorionic hemorrhage that would need to be monitored. I was put on pelvic rest for two weeks. She then kept looking and looking, with an expressionless face.

Then the more experienced ultrasound tech took over. She also looked and looked, nothing. While my husband firmly held my hand through their silence, I never once looked at the monitor.

“There’s a sac, but no fetus or heartbeat. We’ll give it a week to see if anything changes,” they  finally told me.

I’m not a crier, but that day I cried and cried the entire long ride home. For more than an hour, I sobbed.

We hadn’t told our families that I was pregnant, so I put on a brave face and went to work, visited with family, went to family celebrations and to church, pretending everything was okay. It wasn’t.

I spent hours on my phone, googling stories of other women who had positive outcomes to my same situation. There were some, but it still didn’t help. I stayed on forums, talking with other women who had been in my shoes. I cried whenever I was alone.

It was the longest week of my life.

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On my husband’s birthday, we returned to the doctor’s office. We went into the same ultrasound room. This time, the nurse and tech were not as chipper. More looking, nothing. Without much being said, I was escorted into another room where I waited on the doctor.

I knew.

She came in and advised me I had what is called a blighted ovum. For some reason, my body did not let this fetus form inside the present sac.

She told me I could “let my body take care of it itself” or have a dilation and curettage. Maybe I’m weak because I was just ready for it to be over, but I was.

We had to call our parents and tell them simultaneously that I was pregnant and that I wouldn’t be having a baby.

Early the next morning my mom, my husband and myself headed to the hospital for my outpatient D&C. “Spontaneous abortion” is the medical term for a miscarriage; I wasn’t having an abortion. I didn’t CHOOSE this. I wanted my baby. I had prayed for my baby. I had cried for my baby.

In just a couple of hours, I wasn’t pregnant anymore. I was on my way home, cramping, nauseous, drowsy, emotionally numb. And not pregnant.

Over the next few weeks I experienced the same decrease in hormones I would have if I had delivered a beautiful baby. My hair started breaking; I cried for no reason; I had hot flashes; I bled.

But I didn’t have a baby, and I wasn’t pregnant anymore.

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Three months: that’s how long I was told to wait before “trying” again. I didn’t listen; I wanted to get pregnant right away. I wanted a baby.

Every other day there was a new Facebook announcement from parents-to-be or a video of baby moving around in his mommy’s belly. I hated these people. I was bitter, believing that they didn’t deserve to have the happiness of pregnancy if I couldn’t.

I wanted to have morning sickness; I wanted to feel my baby move inside of me; I wanted to be decorating my baby’s nursery.

Month after month, test after test, still no positive.

Five months post D&C, I was over it all. I was tired of trying. I had spent much time in prayer and knew that God would give me my perfect baby when I needed it. I hadn’t cried about it in quite some time and I was ready to change my focus to something else.

I was over it . . . but I wasn’t.

Another month and another period later: other women were having their babies when I should have been enjoying my last couple of weeks of pregnancy.

I told myself that this would be the month I would be pregnant. I’d been praying, eating right, taking my vitamins, exercising, tracking my days. I knew exactly when I ovulated. This was my month, the month I should have been delivering, and surely I would have my positive.

I didn’t.

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This time, after this month, I am done.

I’m not going to think about it. I’m not going to track my ovulation. I’m changing my focus completely to being the healthiest me that I can be. I am “over it.” The miscarriage is in my past. I’m now happy for new mommies. I “like” pregnancy announcement posts. I know my day will come.

But today, I cried again.

It’s March 9th, and I should be bringing my baby home in a couple of days. I should be holding my brand new baby. Our baby that was made in love. Our baby that was prayed over. Our baby that “never formed.”

God knows when I will get to be a mommy.

God knows.

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Selah.

 I looked for pictures for this blog; nothing I found was quite right. And I thought about my own blighted ovum. My secret box, feet from my bed, that has pictures of my lost babies–babies whom my students know about. Although I didn’t really want to–because this is her story, not mine–I walked to my room, opened the box, and rifled through to the folder that reads, “Baby’s First Photo,” opened it, and looked at the empty sac. I thought about the baby that should have been.

And then I looked at the date. Again and again and again.

And I messaged the author to call. She had to call. It had to be heard, not written–she had to hear the tears and the laughter–the mourning turned to joy–for herself

Because when I looked at the picture of my blighted ovum, the date I read was November 30, 1995. 

My only birthchild’s birthday?  November 30, 1999. 

The Worst, Best Day

Tuesday evening, the baby was not kicking. She had not kicked in about nine hours, and April was growing concerned. She tried a warm bath, a sugary drink, a cold drink, a Mountain Dew, walking, sitting still, lying down, and playing music. We called her obstetrician’s office in Savannah; the answering service attendant and I strongly disagreed over whether she needed to know precisely what medicine April took at age six. (“I cannot tell you that right now.”/”Let me just write down that you refused.”/”Please make sure you also write down that we are two hours away and the baby is not moving.”) My truculence was punished by my not getting to talk to the doctor, though the secretary did condescend to say, “He said you can go to the Waycross ER.”

The Waycross ER it was.

Like most ERs, our ER is sometimes a place where you have to consider pinching  your children to make sure they wail louder than the drug seekers. Last night, when we walked through the door, the lobby was calm, but they were training a sweet new intake clerk. If you are a waitress in training, spill a coke on me; I won’t say a word. A slow, new cashier? Count that money three times–I’ll wait. Kind and fumbly ER typist? No. I can’t.

I used my Teacher Voice to holler to a triage nurse: “How long’s it going to take to get this baby’s heartbeat seen about?” She asked if April was over twenty weeks, and then gave us the “Get Out of the Waiting Room Free” card: pregnant women over twenty weeks get to go straight to the third floor.

Three nurses greeted us quickly; it was a slow night. One patient had just given birth and was immediately moved to another wing: we then had the entire labor and delivery wing to ourselves. They set about trying to hear Stephanie Grace’s heartbeat using a fetal monitor; it seemed to be there, but faint. They weren’t sure, and wanted to do a sonogram–an expense we wanted to avoid if possible. But sitting there together on that hospital bed, not really knowing whether that was the baby’s heartbeat or an echo of April’s, we decided that one more scan might be best.

I have never seen a stiller sonogram.

I gripped April’s arm too tightly, willing the baby to wake. Once again, I was stunned by my inability to see anything baby about the sonogram. No heartbeat, no feet, no head, no arms. Just spine. It was March 16th all over again–but worse. I looked at the tech and the nurses, trying to sense weakness: who would tell us now? Did we really have to wait an hour and a half for a radiologist in Minnesota or Maine to download and read what looked instantly obvious? They formed a tight huddle, but as April went into the restroom, I pounced, hissing their names and making thumbs up and thumbs down motions with raised eyebrows. Demanding. Now.

I honor their professionalism. None cracked. But in my eighteen years teaching teens, I have learned to read split-second reactions. And although I wasn’t told, although no one’s face changed an iota, I knew.

April did, too. She swaddled herself in blankets and said, “I just don’t feel good about this. I don’t think I saw a heartbeat on the sonogram. Nothing moved.” We sat in silence, and time passed. The nurses and the tech once again entered in a huddle–they took turns speaking, so that no one person broke our hearts. There was no heartbeat.

At 46, my rage, I know is impotent. It will not pay the bills, fix the car, cure the cancer, or start my grandchild’s heart. It’s useless, really, to argue about what we are dealt--but I had continually prayed, hoped, and believed for Stephanie Grace to have a chance to enjoy a few hours on earth. To  ask April to gracefully bear this, too, seemed a most brutal injustice. 

April’s tears were hard and angry, but brief–because, as she points out, “I was given medicine.” As she dozed, I sat wondering about the unfolding day–we’d envisioned Stephanie Grace’s birthday as a summer day in a Savannah hospital with a top-notch neonatal unit. To be in small-town Waycross on a spring work day was unexpected. I knew the day would be long, but I hoped we would be able to proceed with what April wanted–very few visitors, a tight circle of love around sweet Stephanie Grace.

The first sign that the day held possibility: a message brightened my phone about 7:00 AM. “I’m working in the OB today if you need me. I love you.” A former student, Ursy, was checking in. Her firstborn also died from severe birth defects, and she and April had been planning to have lunch one day and discuss what April could expect. A room-brightener by nature, she cheered us greatly. She told us the story of her daughter’s birth; the girls discussed memorial tattoos–April wanted Stephanie Grace’s footprints and the green anencephaly ribbon. Ursy kept telling April, “Get lots of pictures. Lots and lots of pictures!”  

Pictures posed a problem: early that morning, we’d learned that the photographer we planned to use was unavailable on such short notice; others were similarly booked or not up to the task–and who could blame them, with so much unknown? It was anguishing–it was so important to us all that this day be preserved. We’d been comforted by others’ beautiful baby pictures, and April wanted her own. I kept Facebooking photographers, and finally texted another former student, “Help me find someone!” Within thirty minutes, a sweet-voiced stranger named Stacey was reassuring me, “I’m on my way,” and another piece of our day fell into place.

In all of our time enduring medical crises and hospitalizations, I have learned two things: the first is that the right person will ALWAYS show up. I was mildly curious who the day’s right person would be. For us, the Right Person is never a best friend or a favorite relative because second truth is simply emotional distance is ideal in a hospital visitor during the first throes of crisis. (Alternately: helpful acquaintances can be better than friends, who are often better than family.) This second truth seems cold, but it’s a truth we have lived. It is easy to lose yourself to sorrow when a much-loved aunt shows up, especially if her emotions are also running high. A casual friend or coworker can be a more appropriate support; they recognize your sadness,but their presence encourages equilibrium, something a 40-hour stretch without sleep can require.

At 9:35, a Facebook message came through: “I’m wrapping up things here at the church so I can be free for you the rest of the day.” And, just like that, I knew who the Lord had planned to be the day’s right person: Beth, the mother of four of my former students. I’d seen her at a restaurant a few weeks before and told her the news; she invited April to lunch and took her shopping for the baby. And she planned to attend Stephanie Grace’s sad, sweet birthday.

April dozed as the baby’s father slept in a recliner, having come straight from the night-shift. I quietly sent texts to family members, including Abby, who reported that Greg was still asleep after his midnight run to check on us in the ER. I advised her to wake him and arrive by 11:00.

By 11:17, we’d assembled–a small, slightly frightened crew. The nurses had cautioned that the baby, having died, may be discolored or disfigured; they explained privately to me that, for babies like Stephanie Grace, if the baby’s defect was thought too gruesome for the mother to see, the nurses would whisk the child out of the room and “attempt to make the baby presentable, or wrap her so that the mother can at least see the hands and feet.” We all were silently afraid of what we might see, of what the next hours held.

Abby, Beth, and Stacey waited together down the hall as April slept. We’d been told that the mothers of stillborn, preterm babies often slept, then woke abruptly and–whoosh!–gave birth before the nurse call button could even be pushed. As April slept, my prayers were frantic. My mind was frantic. I could not deliver my granddaughter, could not disentangle her from the sheets. Surely that would not be required of me.

(Author’s note: Brown text below may be difficult to read, but no harder than it was for us to live.)

And then it was time. April awoke, and the just-in-time doctor delivered sweet Stephanie Grace at 12:13–and I was overtaken.  Ninety seconds before, I doubted my ability to look at my granddaughter,  but I was now thunderstruck, mesmerized. The nurses were hastening her from the room, and I whipped behind them, literally, completely unable to take my eyes from this perfectly imperfect, tiny child.

“Don’t you want to stay and encourage April?” a sweet nurse suggested, for the defect was horrific. “No, I’m not leaving her side,” I replied, my eyes still fixed on her. Two truths: It was so awful. And she was so beautiful. They took Stephanie Grace to a nearby room and laid her on an empty hospital bed. As she lay on the blue plastic chuck, her perfect mouth open and her tiny hands clasped, I saw what will be the horror of my life–a secret the sonogram had not revealed: the baby was missing her right leg below the knee. My brain screamed and screamed and screamed at God: ALL April had come to want was a footprint tattoo, and she couldn’t even have THAT??? Two feet was too much to ask for? We were to be denied even that???

And then, that quickly, the rage was gone–I knew we would have loved her, leg or no leg. We would have played soccer, gone to therapy, visited specialists–the rage was gone and the wishing returned. I so desperately wanted a well, one-legged soccer player romping through our house. I wanted the hassle of driving to the best pediatric orthopedists.

My breath was gone; I was full of wanting. I was only all the wanting in the world. 

I started taking pictures of the baby, ungroomed, imperfect, untouched. I turned my camera into a sanctuary forever–full of true, if gruesome beauty. She had one leg, a clubbed hand, a deformed arm, and no skull–but also long fingers, a sweet face, a tiny nose, and decidedly un-toadlike eyes (how wrong the doctor had been!)–all of her, unswaddled. Pristine.

Greg came in search of me, and after begging him not to leave the baby for a second, I went to April. She was proud–radiant with pride. I went to get the photographer and Abby–who went immediately to the baby, and then to tell her sister of Stephanie Grace’s beauty. To soothe her as only a sibling can, to say, you will be able to hold and love this baby because she so very far from frightening.

April stuck her hand out, silently demanding my iPhone. She saw the baby’s hands and relaxed some. The baby’s face, her small nose. April relaxed futher, and a flick of her wrist got her more quickly to the other pictures. She brought the iPhone to her face, peering and scrutinizing. I could almost hear her saying to herself, “That’s not too bad.”

And suddenly, holding her baby became possible for her.

The nurses dressed Stephanie Grace in a tiny gown and covered her head in two caps; they wrapped her in a pink lace-trimmed blanket hand-sewn by an 83 year-old woman touched by April’s story. Stephanie Grace, snug and beautiful, was taken down the hall to her mother’s arms.

The only word: transformation. The truth of that word, of every word here–all of the Unknown that had stalked and savaged us for weeks was gone. Removed. East and West became real–the Unknown was so far away and so absurd. The room was reverent–this sounds like hyperbole and romance and overkill, but oh, I assure you, it is so true–the room was far and away and time was frozen and sound was still and there was just that baby, that sweet baby, and all of these people who loved her. 

It was so awful, so beautiful. So terrible, so holy. 

She was our shared treasure, everyone holding her and studying her, marveling at her pin-prick fingernails, and April adoring her tiny ears. Her petite mouth was a mirror of April’s. We held her hands, kissed her forehead. There was no chatter or cooing–looking back, there is so much silence, but there was no need for words. The cries of you’re here and I’m delighted and you’re here, and I’m so sorry, though unspoken, filled the room.

We took so many pictures. The compulsion: capture every instant. Store it up. True treasure. Truth and treasure. The room was filled with these two things. There was no posing, no checking for a camera, no glancing or glimpsing.I did not look at April, Abby, or Greg–I did not worry about any of them. There was no concern for anyone or anything–our time in that room was the most singular time in our lives. We were all alone, so alone with that sweet baby. Her nineteen ounces filled all space.

We held Stephanie Grace throughout the afternoon. At 3:00, the nurses suggested making a pallet for the baby on the sofa, so April could see her from her bed. I told Stephanie good-bye, once, then twice, and, in order to live, I have to know she heard my apologies as well. They are legion.

***************

There is so much that we do that is wrong and ill. We make decisions and say words that are foolish and hateful. We destroy ourselves with anger and rage and all sorts of envy. We self-destruct and immolate and blaze and blaze and blaze. There is so much wrong. There is so much wrong in all of us.

But I have seen the right, and I have seen the perfect. I have glimpsed the glory, and I will tell the tale.

***************

As she went to sleep empty-armed and aching in her hospital bed last night, April said to me through the darkness, “I know this sounds crazy, but I’d do it all again.”

As would we all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Christ: Who Strengthens Me

On my classroom white board, there is a list of things I cannot do. Currently, it reads: “Carve into a mountain; jog to Blackshear (nine miles); cross the monkey bars; roller skate; be nice to Abby about her eyelashes” (Ab added that last one).  It’s a silly list, but it’s meant to remind my students of two things: that works of nonfiction may not always be truthful (mountain carving; jogging barefoot through the snow carrying a violin) and that we all have things we cannot do.

An honest and fearless list would, of course, be much longer. It would include more negatives: I can’t help you with a loose tooth or a nosebleed–ever.  I can’t be kind when I’m really, really tired.  I can’t repeat an answer more than three times nicely. (I start spelling each word in thundering tones.) I can’t remember names when I’m anxious. But lately, the biggest Can’t remains this: I can’t cope well with my daughter’s pregnancy, nor with the fact that her anencephalic daughter, Stephanie Grace, is expected to die soon after birth.

I generally fare well in the struggles we face. I always have. From my husband’s leukemia and our family’s cross-country move to students’ in-class seizures, I have handled past crises calmly. But this pregnancy, after a series of smaller family crises in the fall, has just done me in. I’m ready to turn in any medal I won in the Cancer Caregiver Olympics or the Child of an Alcoholic Triathlons–because in the Parent of an Unwed Pregnant Daughter Speed Trials, I’m not doing as well as I’d like.

I suppose that I expected more of myself because I’ve always done well with my pregnant students. I recognize their stammering and hesitant, “Can we talk?” and, if I’m among the first adults they tell, I manage to make the interaction survivable for both of us. I want my student mothers to remember adult support, not condemnation. Logically, I also want that for my own daughter as well.

I just can’t find my footing–I can’t put the pieces together. I can do some things–buy maternity clothes, accompany April to doctor’s visits, get excited when I feel the baby kick, make jokes about the baby’s stubborn streak, and even talk with some equanimity about the plans for her funeral. Anything pragmatic about this pregnancy, I have a pretty good handle on–if I haven’t figured out the logistics, I have a fairly adequate general plan. But in every emotional aspect of this pregnancy, I am inadequate. Not enough.

I couldn’t even be happy before it was time to be sad. 

April, at 24 weeks, is not struggling. If the time with her daughter is limited to Stephanie Grace’s time en utero, then April will make the most of it. She wants maternity pictures, plaster casts of the baby’s footprints, and an adorable layette. She’s letting the baby listen to her favorite songs, singing to her, and making certain that she knows she is loved.

There is nothing, nothing that I would rather do than curl up beside April and read Let’s Get a Pup, Said Kate loudly to my granddaughter, to cheerfully chirp, “What a brand new one?/With the wrapping still on?” and to let that baby learn my voice. But I can’t stop sobbing long enough to read a book. I can’t talk for more than one minute about maternity pictures or help April shop for the right dress. I can’t stay in the baby section of any store for more than thirty seconds before the air leaves the room. I can’t share in my daughter’s fragile joy because I am still gathering the pieces of my broken heart. 

There is no instant fix for this. I’ve been trying to tell myself, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” but I’m finding that, for me, that verse has been stripped to something akin to “I can live another day, and perhaps be kind to people.” I can’t do much more than that right now. I cannot be all that my daughter needs me to be. 

But I want you to know, my grandbaby now has a layette. A former student’s mother took April to lunch last week; afterwards they shopped in Belk’s, where April selected a pink dress and bonnet set for Stephanie Grace.  The student’s great aunt, whom April has never met, has also crocheted the baby a blanket.

My daughter has her professional maternity pictures. A former coworker volunteered to spend the last day of her spring break doing a beach photo shoot. In addition to having pictures to cherish, April will always remember the flower crown she wore, the wind whipping her dress, and the nearby wedding that was close enough to hear.

She has a lovely, long maternity dress. One of her elementary school classmates, Caitlyn, loaned April the dress she’d used for her own cotton-field maternity shots. When we went to fetch the dress, Caitlyn sat holding her newborn, whom we’d thought would grow up alongside Stephanie Grace. I marveled at our peace in the room.

She has freshly cut and curled hair. Our hairdresser, whom I have known for over thirty years, made sure that April felt special and looked beautiful for her photos, refusing payment. “She said it was her gift to me,” April explained.

Yesterday afternoon, as April was dropped off after the photo session, we got to sneak a peek at some of the shots. She beamed peacefully onscreen, totally relaxed, trusting God and enjoying the moment. She was beautiful and radiant and loved. She’d accomplished one mission, ticked one item off the To Do list; her pregnancy was, in at least one way, normal and fun.

My part in all this? Well, I had made the phone call for the hair appointment and suggested a pink bow. That’s it. Because I could not do any more, my friends did Much More. They enthused and rejoiced and clucked over April. They smiled and laughed and chatted. They made everything better. 

Last night, as I was once again wishing my failures away, I thought about that verse in a different light. What if the words “in others” were included? “I can do all things through Christ [in others] who strengthens me” seems a bit more reflective of the way I’m living now. The funny texts, sweet cards, and late night phone calls from friends strengthen me. The Bible devotional a friend gave me months ago feeds me daily. My husband’s patience with me and my daughters’ understanding show me God’s grace. No one is mad that I cannot do what they can; they are simply picking up my load and going forward, then looking back to make sure I’m still straggling along.

This is the only way I will survive this journey: through the Christ in others, ministering to me. Though I wish I could lead the pack and plow confidently ahead, in accepting my current weakness, I am seeing other’s strengths.

I may be lagging behind, lost in “What ifs” and exhausted tears, but I’m still at least journeying toward the finish line that I don’t want to reach. I don’t want to go there; none of us do. But with our friends we are moving forward; through their love, we are all moving onward.

Myself included.

 

 

Cappello Rosa

I have seen photos of adorable skull-less babies

With perfect hands and match-tip fingernails

Grasping and holding. Saying hello.

Baby, will you be be closed-or-open-eyed?

These babies with fancy hats–

Pink crowns, Santa caps, bonnets of love–

Hiding the horrific known.

I promise you a soft hat and proper bandages.

Babies waving braceleted-arms pink and healthy

Against their white swaddles and reassurances:

Denied ponies, tricycles, and redwagon rides–

yet begifted–bedecked with glories and trinkets of love.

Baby, will you please live a little while?

Let our delivery room hold

A baby simply blowing spit bubbles,

Resting dimple-cheeked in loving arms.

Before leaving, let her

Bellow and caterwaul her opinion

Of all this Unfairness.

Yell, baby. Yell. All you want.  

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