How can my Marriage Survive the Death of my Child?
Even though our child’s death was a still-birth, our
marriage took a hit that I was not expecting.
The pronouncement of my child’s death took place at a
regularly scheduled Doctor’s appointment. When they could not find his
heartbeat, I was sent directly to ultrasound where they confirmed it. They asked if I wanted to go back to my Doctor's office, but I could not bear the thought of walking
back past all of those eyes as I tried to control the raging emotions welling
up within me. All I could think about was getting to my husband. “He will know
what to do.” I thought as I stumbled to my car and drove, unbreathing, the
short distance to my home.
He was already late for his second-shift job at the hospital
due to the added time it took for the ultrasound, and was in the kitchen
collecting his keys with my 1 and 3 year old children playing around his feet
when I arrived.
“My baby is dead!” I blurted out abruptly as I stepped
through the door.
The following moments are a blur in my mind as he quizzed me
on what had happened, cancelled work, called my doctor, made arrangements for
our small children and drove me back to the doctor’s office.
It was a Wednesday and she suggested an immediate induction.
I wanted time to process what was happening, and was in complete denial that it
could really be true. I could not bear the thought of proceeding with an
induction, only to find that the baby had not, in fact, been dead at all – but
that the premature birth had killed him!
She needed to make sure that she had the proper staff in our
tiny hospital to handle the situation and could not guarantee it over the
weekend, so an appointment was made for Monday morning.
I went home to bide my time, feeling as though my body were
a tomb. I put away my maternity clothes and squeezed into the most
loose-fitting ordinary clothing I could find because I did not want anyone to
see me and ask, “When is your baby due?” or any of the other kind bits of conversation
about pregnant bellies that friendly, small-town folks make. I stayed home as
much as possible.
My husband had called our church and they gathered around
us. It seemed to me that the year had
been characterized by childhood death among our circle of friends. Only a year
earlier, one friend had given birth to a child who only lived a few hours due
to a serious medical condition. Another had lost a young infant to SIDS not
even a month before our own loss.
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I spent those days crying, talking to other grief stricken
mothers, and typing out my thoughts as tears rained down on my keyboard and
overwhelming emotions constricted my throat.
My husband remained calm.
My husband is incredibly stoic. I have heard from his family
that he helped to plan the funeral for his grandmother when he was only 16
because all of the adults were still reeling from her sudden death and
struggling with the number of details that must be attended to.
Even though thousands of years have passed since the days in
Athens where Zeno taught stoicism – the
philosophy that men should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief, and
submit without complaint to unavoidable necessity with calm, austere fortitude
– many men, even to this day, gravitate toward this style of living. [1]
Women don’t understand it. To us, it looks uncaring.
And that is what I thought.
He seemed placid and unaffected. Every time I tried to talk
about it, he changed the subject. I began to resent his passivity, and even
felt fiercely protective of my child against his own father.
I went in on Monday for the induction. My mother came with
me and stayed until the end. My mother in law stayed with my children at home.
My husband went back and forth between the two places. Though I typically do
not use medication in my deliveries, he instructed the hospital staff that I was
to have whatever pain medication that they could give me – I was suffering
enough with the emotional pain, he said, and he did not want me to have to feel
the induction as well. After a very long day, Caleb was born about 1:00am on
Tuesday.
We as mothers are in love with our babies just as soon as we
learn that we are pregnant, but fathers often need a bit more time. This was
his moment. He looked down at our tiny, lifeless boy and commented on how much
he looked like one of our other children. He was a person, complete and whole,
and his life had as much value as the lives of any of our other children. My
husband was in love now, too.
He changed his mind about not having a funeral, and began
planning a small, respectful service just with family and friends.
Our pastor came to plan the details of the service, then he
closed his notebook and set it aside. “Now I want to talk to you about
something else,” he said, and proceeded to explain the differences in the way
that men and women grieve.
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He told us that men handle issues in life more like a filing
cabinet. They take out one file at a time and tend to it, then put it away and
take out another file. They do not get out multiple files and look at all of
them at once. When they are eating, they are not thinking about something else.
When they are watching TV, they are simply watching TV. “Grief is hard for men
because they cannot fix it. They tend to put that file away in the back of the
drawer and leave it there as much as possible, hoping never to have to take it
out and look at it.
"Women are more like a desk top. Multiple projects can be out
at once – things to deal with now, things to deal with later… A woman can be
working on something and glance up and see something else and her mind will
immediately go to that thing as well. A woman can be washing dishes and
thinking about a conversation she had a few days ago. She can be watching TV,
and planning her next day’s itinerary. A grieving woman can be working away at
something, or experiencing a moment of joy, then suddenly something will remind
her of her grief and she will be overcome with sorrow in that instant.
Then our pastor turned to my husband and said. “It is
important that you do the hard work of grieving with your wife.”
Then He turned to me. “Your husband cannot handle all of
your grief. It is important that you find other people to grieve with, as well.”
After this conversation, everything changed. My husband did
not change the subject every time it came up anymore, and I called my friends
when I was feeling emotional, and gave him the freedom not to have to talk
about it all of the time. All of my resentment melted away.
During that time, I began attending a support group for
grieving parents that the hospital recommended. It was agonizing to listen to each
of them share their grief. It did not take me long to see that there was a
strong under currant of bitterness among many of them.
The topic for the Father’s Day meeting was about how fathers
grieve. I listened as one, then another woman expressed the same resentment I’d
had toward my own husband. One of them angrily announced that he could not
possibly care about their child!
Suddenly, I felt compelled to share what our pastor had told
us. A quiet thoughtful mood came over the group as they processed this
information. More than one person expressed their gratitude for this
enlightenment. I did not attend the group much longer, but I’ve always thought
that, despite the fact that I hated those meetings, this one, especially, was
God’s divine appointment for me that day.
It has been nearly ten years since the death of our son.
Though I still cry when I read There’s a Party in Heaven to my little kids, for
the most part, the pain is gone.
I have long since accepted the possibility that the sole purpose for my son’s death was for YOUR benefit. If you have gained any help or comfort from my experience, then my tiny son’s short life is still fulfilling the purpose for which he was created.
I have long since accepted the possibility that the sole purpose for my son’s death was for YOUR benefit. If you have gained any help or comfort from my experience, then my tiny son’s short life is still fulfilling the purpose for which he was created.
“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our
troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves
have received from God. For just as the suffering of Christ flow over into our
lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. If we are distressed, it
is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort,
which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.” 2
Corinthians 1:3-6