A little over a year and a half ago, my younger sister found her infant son in his crib, cool and unbreathing, on an early February morning.
It's the kind of thing that you think will never, ever happen to you, nor to anyone you love. Not my family. Not my children. Not my niece, nephew, grandchild, brother, sister, cousin. It's also the kind of thing that you just don't get over. Life goes on, yes. New things happen. People come and go. Yet the death of a child is one of those things that lingers in your heart. Like all deaths, it is a forever kind of game-changer.
Early this morning, I awoke to thoughts of the afternoon tea party and shower that my mother and sister-in-law are hosting today in celebration of our first child, who's due to come join the rest of us at some time in November. It hasn't escaped me that my child's due date is close enough to my deceased nephew's birthday to matter. It hasn't escaped me that, as we approach the birth of my first child, my sister is approaching what would have been her deceased son's second birthday. So, I find myself thinking of my sister today, too, as well as my oldest nephews, who are now 13 and 12 and remember all too well the events surrounding their little brother's death.
My child is the first child to be born to someone in my family of origin since J. passed away. As I get closer to the end of my pregnancy, I find myself thinking less about the pain of labor, or whether or not I have enough (or too much) stuff packed in my hospital bag, and more about loss. I find myself staring down thoughts and stories of loss, and remember the words that someone very wise once told me: loss is a part of life, and loving fully means accepting that loss can and will occur. Even if the loss is something as common as the child being born, growing up, and leaving home, there will be many little losses and changes to meet along the way. There is the loss of oneself, too, as a person who is not a parent and becomes one. I think that keeping a loving spirit in the face of loss comes from accepting and acknowledging (but not resigning oneself to) the fact of loss. Shortly after J's death, a friend also shared what she had learned about loss, saying that it was not something you really get over or move past, and that no one else can take the place of someone who has passed away, but that you discover that you are big enough to hold the space where that person used to be.
I have seen my sister act in ways over the past year and eight months that show something of her own understanding of both of these ideas that others in my life have expressed. I've been able to witness some of the changes that have come to her over time as she follows her life where it takes her. I see her growing, both because of her devastating loss and in spite of it, holding the loss and expanding around it as she moves further along the path of her life. I have the most profound respect for the challenges of her journey and how she has met them.
At my midwife's appointment the other day, I was asked about my sister's kids. I told the midwife that she had six children. "How old are they?" she asked. I found myself saying, "The oldest is 13, and the youngest is almost 2." That was the first time that ever happened. Usually, when I talk about my sister's kids, I tell them how old child number 5 is, and that the youngest passed away from SIDS. I don't ever say, "my sister has five kids," because that is not true and dishonors the short time that J. came to hang with us here on planet Earth. I suppose that the reason I told the midwife something different was because I just didn't want to get into the big, awkward conversation that tends to happen when someone finds out a child you know has died, even as I wanted to keep the memory of my nephew alive. I also feared being seen either as attention-seeking for sharing this information in the first place, or uncaring in the way I sometimes matter-of-factly convey this information.
The thing is, I'm not a big fan of secrets, although I've been known to harbor a few. Privacy, yes, but secrecy, no. You can decide just once not to tell the whole truth about a situation, for a reason that may feel perfectly right at the time, but then it gets easier and easier not to tell the whole truth. You start to box parts of yourself and your life experience away. Whether it's because of shame, or being concerned how others will view you, or whether or not someone's opinion of you will change, or just because it seems easier for the moment, you keep a secret that needs to be expressed or you hide something of yourself that is starving for light and air. Loss winds up begetting loss. You may have started by losing a person to death, or an important perceived part of your identity, or all of your money, then you start to hide these facts of your life. That is where you wind up losing yourself.
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