His precious jewels

Lynn Graham

My grandmother and I were speaking about our grief over the death of my mother. Grandma has lost parents, siblings, a husband and numerous friends and relatives, but she told me that it had been hardest to lose a child. This may be because the death of a child seems to violate the natural order. Children should have full lives and outlive their parents.

Parents who have experienced the death of a pre-term baby or a newborn are robbed of a life. In fact, stillbirth and miscarriage are almost more traumatic than the death of a baby later on. When a stillbirth occurs, the cause of death is often not known, and so questions are raised about whether it will happen again, or if it could have been prevented.

Our society has limited methods of handling this type of death. It is government policy that a death must be registered if a fetus is stillborn after 20 weeks. In this situation, the hospital treats the fetus like a baby, and the loss as a death. A grieving kit with souvenirs may be given, including a baby book, booties, a bonnet, a quilt, a footprint in clay, photographs and literature for emotional and physical health.

The 20-week cutoff is a legal technicality. The people whose loss comes prior to this stage also need to be strongly supported. This is difficult because many miscarriages happen in the first trimester, often before people have told family and friends that they are expecting.

In each situation, the central emotion is one of loss. The loss of life is conceded, but equally important is the death of a dream. The expectant parents have begun to plan their future with a child in mind. Speculations have been made as to his or her appearance, personality and accomplishments.

In our culture, a death is usually marked by a funeral service and burial. Edward R. Good Funeral Home in Kitchener, Ont. has been providing memorial services for stillborn babies since the early 70s, as the result of a suggestion from a hospital chaplain. In the past, the baby would be placed in a casket and buried, but without the mother present, because she would still be in hospital. The chaplain suggested that they bring the casket to the hospital chapel and have a service there that the mother could attend.

The removal of the secrecy cloaking conception, birth and prenatal death, has allowed women to share about things that were formerly not considered proper conversation, and to be supported in their grief.

Few stories of the past are known relating to stillbirth or miscarriage because the grief was largely internalized. In the late 1960s, Elfrieda and Hardy Schroeder were serving as missionaries in an African country. She shared her story with the editors of the Living More With Less book: "We were studying and adjusting to a new culture while waiting for our first baby to be born. Unexpectedly, he arrived six weeks prematurely and was gone as quickly as he came. While I was alone in the hospital room trying to come to grips with what had happened, a middle-aged African woman came softly into the room. As she began cleaning, she turned to me and said a few words in a language I didn't understand. I shrugged my shoulders to indicate that I didn't know what she was saying. She reverted to sign language, and now I knew she was asking about my baby. How was I to tell her that he had died? I tried, then just shook my head. Overcome with grief, I burst into tears. Her eyes told me that she understood. She was a complete stranger, and yet she began to weep with me. As she went about her work, she mourned softly. Her caring comforted me. I learned something that day about mourning with those who mourn."

People didn't do very much to mark the death. A quick, poorly attended service was held, but she didn't go. For Elfrieda, not going was a way of avoiding the reality of the death. She wishes now that someone had suggested that she go to the service or that she see the baby after his death. She and Hardy did give their baby boy a name, Harold Mark. She made a book of memories of her pregnancy and his short life, and even put her stirred emotions into poetry.

The impact of this loss resurfaced again, at the time of saying goodbye to a grown daughter who was leaving home. Because she "didn't take all of the steps" at the time of her son's death, she now worried that he might not have been in that coffin, wondered who had dressed him and fantasized that he had been kidnapped. The concerns of a mother for a deceased child still existed 20 years later.

For women like Elfrieda, on Mother's Day, 1996, flowers were placed at the front of the Kitchener Mennonite Brethren Church to remember women who had lost babies. Families who had suppressed the pain of the past were able to find some healing with this recognition of their sufferings. Kitchener MB pastors Allan Labun and Bob Rempel have also led funeral services for stillborn and miscarried babies.

With the offering of a funeral service, the church's practice is now meeting up with its theology. A fetus is important because the church professes that life begins at conception. The church can comfort the grieving parents with the hope that upon the death of a fetus at any time after conception, the child's spirit goes to heaven regardless of the faith of the parents.

The most convincing bit of comfort I've found comes from Madeleine L'Engle: "Life at best is a precarious business, and we are not told that difficult or painful things will not happen, just that it matters. It matters not just to us but to the entire universe."

Lynn Graham is a member of Kitchener (Ont.) MB Church.

Further Resources

Empty Arms by Pam Vredevelt (Multnomah Press).
Free to Grieve by Maureen Rank (Bethany House Publishers).
Empty Cradle, Broken Heart by Deborah Davis.
Surviving Pregnancy Loss by Rochelle Friedman and Bonnie Gradstein.

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