I turned away from this post many times over the past few weeks. Why is it hard to write about the ten-year anniversary of the book about my newborn daughter Mary Rose who died at birth? My son just graduated from eighth grade and middle school, and each of his milestones remind me that Mary Rose is not here on this earth. I am the mother crying at the school concerts and talent shows always holding the space for my baby who lived inside my core and belly and could not live outside my body. The years and decades go by, and we continue to change and grow in love and grief and hope.
Last weekend I walked a labyrinth in a forest of ponderosa pine trees. This sacred circle is one I have walked many times since moving to Colorado almost 10 years ago. In the center I remember my loved ones, living and dead, and speak their names in prayer. The saplings in the center are growing. Woodpeckers carved more holes in the bark of the trees as they ate. A dog barked in the distance.
If my heart is a woven tapestry, or a work of embroidery, many stitches make up the landscape of my life. I think about the people who have come and gone, of the many places where I lived, of milestones and griefs and miracles. As the decades go by, my own view of life expands and widens.
St. Olga of Alaska says, “God can make great beauty of utter desolation.” I lived for months in the dark night of my soul after the news from the doctor at 21 weeks of pregnancy. The fact that some babies with trisomy 18 live and others don’t, made the experience that much more difficult. I had to prepare for different outcomes (from a preemie car seat and pump, to a casket for burial), and my heart was heavy. I was determined to love my unborn baby in life and in death.
As a classical homeopath, when a grieving mother enters my office, we feel each other deeply. Last year before Thanksgiving a new client whose adult daughter died came to my office bereft. I told her to look at me. We made eye contact. “You will survive this,” I said. “If I lived through my daughter’s death, then you will too.” I gave her a homeopathic remedy and love. We soon realized that her daughter Nicole and my daughter Mary Rose have the same birthday.
This summer will be the 12th anniversary of my daughter’s birth and death. Each year I change as I walk through this world in awe of so much beauty. I am grateful for the experience that I had with Mary Rose which shaped my understanding of life and love. I loved my baby when I knew that she would die, and I love her more now. I feel her close by. I know that we will be together again.
If you want to read more about my pregnancy or grief walk, or you know someone who could use this raw story, the book is available on Amazon. I wrote a how to book about pregnancies with life-limiting outcomes. There is a chapter on how to stop milk that comes in after you bury your newborn baby, and another on whether or not to send out birth announcements when your baby has died. There is poetry in addition to contemplation, and the emails that my mentor Cubby LaHood wrote to encourage me when I was pregnant through the nonprofit Isaiah’s Promise. In the months before Mary Rose was born, Cubby told me to love my baby now, just as she is. And I did.
