Child Loss

 

Michelle Cramer put out a book this year called Unshattered Grief. In it she shares stories of parents as they deal with stillbirths or the deaths of their older children.

 

The loss of a child is crushing because we never expect it to happen. It always feels wrong. At a time when expectations of joy are building for a new life, they are taken away and emptiness is left behind.

 

What do you say to someone who has just given birth to a stillborn baby? How do you console a parent whose four-year-old child is dying because of a genetic abnormality? What can you say without making the parents feel worse. There are no easy answers, but there are helpful suggestions in the book, all geared to the parent-child connection:

 

Don’t try to fix people’s grief. 

Saying “I’m sorry for your loss” is only an introduction. You have listen to their grief, and then respond with the compassion in your heart. 

Don’t say that this is part of God’s plan. If they’re a believer, they already know this. What they need is for you to help them bear their pain. 

Rather than asking someone who is grieving, “How are you doing?” Say, “How can I help you today?”

 

How people expect grievers to feel is part of the problem, because they start talking and giving advice to this imagined place. They don’t know what people are going through until they ask. Words are not actions. We need people to show up and do something, not just talk. Those who are grieving have to figure out how they need to grieve on our own, and be allowed to do so. Grieving takes longer than anybody has the patience for, but we can learn to live with grief. We don’t move on from grief; we move forward.

 

Cramer’s organization is called On Angels’ Wings. They currently serve families in Missouri who have medically fragile children, from maternity up to age 18 years. This includes, but is not limited to, genetic disorders, chromosome defects, childhood cancer, heart conditions, extended NICU stays, and birth loss. They provide therapeutic photography and grief recovery services based on the Grief Recovery Handbook by James and Freedman.

 

What struck me the most is that they offer to come in and take photographs of the baby or child at the time of parting. The photography is a free service. So much is happening and so quickly in these moments, and the parents are trying to handle the logistics of everything, while at the same time trying to focus completely on their child, absorbing everything about them, that they do not think to take a photo of this moment. This is especially important in the case of a stillbirth when the parents don’t have months or years to memorize every line in their baby’s face, or how their eyes shone, and then they are gone. 

 

To be there in these moments when grief is filling the room is emotionally challenging for the photographers, and my hat is off to them. Yet love is also present, and these images of compassion is what Cramer and the photographers seek to capture and preserve. 

 

In the presence of death, every life is worth celebrating, no matter how brief it is.