Mammoth grief

We're nearly eight months into this grieving family life and still some days the depth of my sadness catches me unaware. The triggers for tears can be simple things like the food I craved while pregnant or passing each 19th of the month and remembering in scary vivid detail the events of our son's death during my labour.

Excruciating. Huge.

Some days I'm fine and hopeful and more peaceful. There's no rhyme or reason to it, which can be crazy-making in and of itself. Mostly I feel okay but on the verge of tears. There's a rawness to my psyche that is really hard because we've moved and I don't have many friends or a support system here yet. It's hard to meet people, even as an extreme extrovert, when I'm feeling fragile.

I'm incredibly hurt by the friends who have not been in touch, not even over the holidays, to see how I am. Or who sent only short chirpy merry, merry, joy, joy messages with no mention of our George. How can good friends not reason that Christmas would be particularly difficult after babyloss? And reading about other bereaved mothers losing subsequent babies and miscarrying or struggling to conceive makes my heart ache even more. Life seems so unfair and cruel when drug addicts can deliver live babies to suffer withdrawal and mothers wanting babies who do "all the right things" don't.

Yesterday at a playgroup I take my preschool daughter to every week one of the staff members asked me how people can best help a bereaved family. One of the mothers who has a son at the preschool at that site just lost a baby at about 24 weeks gestation. I of course teared up at hearing this - I would have before losing George by the way - my sister and I both cry very easily (my sister cries during the Herbie movie when he's in the ring because his honking horn sounds mournful....I can cry at a For Better or For Worse cartoon). But now I don't just imagine such pain, I know what it's like. The staff member, who is the kindest of women, apologized if this had upset me and I hastily said no, no. It makes me sad, but I'm glad to share ways that people helped us if it can help another family. You can't make me more sad than I am. We talked a bit about some things and I got her email so that I could send her some more ideas and links to things like Morning Light Ministry and The Secret Garden.

It seems some weeks that babyloss is all around me, on TV or running into other babyloss parents IRL. And this week is one of them.

My husband and I watched 60 Minutes he had on the PVR the other night and there was a segment about The Secret Language of Elephants.

We were fascinated and enjoying watching the researcher and these giant creatures. And then there was a clip of the herd reacting when a newborn elephant calf dies. The mother and other female elephants try to get the little one to move repeatedly. When they fail, they mourn. They grieve and it is heart-wrenching to watch their sorrow. And the commentary says that the female elephants walked around the dead calf's body grieving for four days.

Both of us were choked up watching this segment, naturally, and it was in a weird way nice to connect in our grief as a couple all these months later.

It was interesting to me to see this pachyderm grief (pardon my pun of Mammoth grief in the heading but it sounded catchier) and to think about all the babyloss in this world.

Elephantine grief. With other women to share the burden of mourning whether you're an elephant or a human. Thank God.