Disrupting the Silence: Life, Love, and Loss
Content Warning: This essay explores life and death, infant and fetal loss, grief and mourning.
Death is not a part of our vocabulary when we think about birth. It hovers over our fears, enticing them to take over our thoughts. It is the silent, uninvited guest who prances in the back of every parent’s mind, no matter the age of a child. With the arrival of October and Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month, many of us are reflecting on our own wrestling and experiences with death. We remember our own close calls and even the undesired phone calls confirming what we were never ready to hear, and still aren’t. For many parents this month, we remember the promise of new life and precious hope that was taken away too soon.
Then my heart sinks as I remember that we can’t stop there. Death knows no bounds. I think of the person who is fearful to conceive at the thought of loosing the child or the thought of loosing themselves. Sometimes I wonder if I have adapted to the presence of this elephant in the room because death has never been far from my reality as a black southern woman. This month, I also acknowledge the way in which the shadow of death is an all too tangible concern for many expecting black birthing persons, despite the advances in modern medicine. At every turn, black and brown people are asked to think subconsciously and consciously of death. Just as many proclaim, Black Lives Matter, it is unprecedented death that ignites this cry. Death and life are old friends, and for many marginalized communities, they are too closely wedded, unjustly too close for comfort.
As much as I never want to invite death into any space, as a Chaplain and doula, I have to acknowledge that death can lurk in the background of our lives. And so we confront it in an effort to declare that even in the face of death, a part of us always survives. We are still rising and surviving even its deepest sting, because confronting death really means confronting life. It means confronting the lives that touch(ed) you, that love(d) you, that still hold you together when grief is all encompassing. The love, hope, and memory of life, holds us when death is near. As author David Kessler once said, “Death ends a life, but not our relationship, our love, or our hope.”
Not too long ago, I baptized a baby who was taking their first breaths. The next week, I baptized a baby who was taking their last way too soon. Witnessing the miracle of life and the tragedy of death in the most brutal form had me wondering what does baptism have to say to these two families? I could give you the long theological exposé I learned to regurgitate from seminary, but I’m much more fascinated by the simple truth. The simple truth is, regardless of how life presents itself, and regardless of what death might think it is capable of doing, it is the grace to love anyhow, that connects us to the ones we have and the ones we have lost. The grace to love anyhow.
You don’t have to be religious to know that it takes grace to love anyhow. When my son shouts “No” for the millionth time that day (did you know a one year old’s favorite word is no?!), and I’m at my wit’s end, it takes grace to love anyhow and be patient with him still. When I find myself exhausted and subconsciously acting out my wearied sublime actions towards my husband, it takes grace for him to love me anyhow. When an Ob/Gyn suggested that our daughter would never live past her first birthday and suggested that we terminate the pregnancy (a story for another day), it took grace for me to love anyhow.
When death comes knocking for someone you love, whether their 90 years old or two days old, what you see in their outpouring of grief is really their ability to embody the grace to love anyhow. There is a recognition that there is a love here that is too strong to end. Our grief is only a testament, a rallying cry to death that it does not get the final say.
As a Doula and Chaplain, I cannot ignore the fact that black women are dying and experiencing maternal morbidity at a higher rate than any other demographic. I cannot ignore that our children are also suffering from neonatal morbidity and fetal demise at higher rates than others. I do this work, both doula care and chaplaincy, because I feel called to be a part of the change and to ensure that all clients and patients feel safe enough to live and thrive, despite what statistics may say. It is the ultimate call and the grace to love anyhow, to love yourself anyhow, to love how your body is able to love and create anyhow, to love the child who is birthed out of this self love and communal love, anyhow. This is the life. This is the life that survives every elephant in the room, even death itself.