WARNING:
Dear Reader,
I should caution you before you get yourself in too deep. This story will leave you stuck in the middle of a narrative arch. The narrative arch is what structures all our favorite stories. It guides the reader through all the pain and turmoil to set them down gently at the end with a sense that every twist and turn had a purpose. And yet, here I am, trying to build my life right smack in the middle of my life’s narrative arch. Worse still, I have no idea where my story is headed. I don’t know how (or even if) any of the pieces of my life are going to fit together. So in the spirit of full disclosure, here are three reasons to stop reading now:
If you can get past these potential deal breakers, there a few reasons you might continue.
That last one is something I can do. I don’t have any good answers for unresolved pain, but I can sit with you and tell you my own unresolved stories.
P.S. Most of the photos in this post are of objects in my office at work, personal items that give me joy. They do not illustrate the stories I tell you here. They are just my counterbalance for grief. I hope they make you smile too.
Of Child Graves and Waiting for Redemption
Long after I lost her, I still saw Rachel. She followed me around town, surprised me at the grocery store or in the laundry room. Suddenly, she would just be there. She was something in the air. She was words a piece of paper. She was song on the radio that set me crying over soapy dishes. I talked to her in my office at work. I dreamed about her at night. I kept imagining that someday this child would reenter my life. Maybe Carly, the birth mother, would call me up someday and say, “she needs you, Cindy.” The connection was that strong and it was killing me. Hope like this is a terrible torturous thing.
After eight months of sadness, I decided I had to put the matter to rest, surrender all hope, and close the door on this chapter of my life. I made Rachel a baby-sized beaded bracelet to match one of my own, then I wrote her a long goodbye letter. I told her all the things I wished I could have done for her, all our dreams for her future, the places we wanted to take her, the things we wanted to teach her and all the love we wanted to give her. I placed the letter and the bracelet in a heart shaped box and drove to East Lawn Memorial Hills Cemetery in Provo. There is a hidden spot in the graveyard that is surrounded by trees and overlooks the valley below. There, next the gravestone of another lost baby named Grace, I buried the box and tried to let go. I cried so much over that little grave. I stayed there a very long time. I can say that after this day, things were a little better, but the grief never leaves you entirely. Ask me about it today, and I will still tear up.
Our adoption story does not end there. A few months later, we were matched with 18-month-old twin girls and were so excited to adopt them since they had been cared for by their German-speaking grandma. They knew all the German songs I sing to my own kids. The match seemed even more perfect. But this birth mom backed out a week later. I was sad, but it did not devastate me. Perhaps I had already felt this would not work out. Perhaps I had just hardened my heart. We were about to give up on adoption entirely when a miracle sent us Amina in January 2009. I promise to tell you this story too, but not yet. There is more to Rachel’s story.
Hoping for Redemption
In summer of 2010, When Rachel was nearly three years old, I planned a trip in San Diego. I was taking Amina, age 18 months, to visit her birth father. Carly is from San Diego and amazingly, despite a long period of silence in our email exchanges, Carly and I talked on the phone the week before my trip. We were both excited to see each other and planned to meet up. This phone call proved to be the last time I ever heard from Carly, but I did not know that at the time. I don’t know exactly what I expected would happen on this trip. I wanted to see Rachel and tell her that I love her. I wanted some kind of closure, a sense that all is well in the universe. Yes, I admit, I wanted a redemptive ending to this narrative arch.
The week I was there, Carly never returned my calls. For four days I told myself kind and plausible reasons for why she had not called yet. But I felt hurt anyway. I tried to stay upbeat and keep my emotions under control, but, on the last day, I went to sleep in my hotel room determined to close the door on my heart forever. I will not love Carly anymore, I told myself. I will not love Rachel. I am done! No more pain! No more sadness! No more disappointed hope! As if it were possible to compel your heart in this way.
Have you ever had one of those dreams that are so vivid, you could swear it actually happened? That night I had such a dream. I woke up in the middle of the night because I heard a voice of a little girl calling for Mommy. I sat up and looked around me wondering why I was the only one awakened by the sound. And there she stood. I could see her more clearly than I ever had before. She was not just something in the air. Rachel’s three-year-old self was actually visible to me, standing by my bed, brown curls loose and wispy around her face. “Mommy,” she said. “Don’t forget about me. Please don’t forget about me.” I burst into tears. “No, no. Honey,” I soothed, “Please don’t say that. I would never forget about you.” “But how will you be there for me, if you forget about my other mommy? Please, don’t
forget about her either.”
It was clear to me at this moment, that I had lost the battle. I could not banish either of them. I called to Rachel. “Come on, Honey,” I coaxed, “get in bed with me. I promise not to forget about you or Carly.” Satisfied with my answer, she jumped into bed and snuggled in. Thus, I fell asleep again, holding Rachel (or an apparition of her) in my arms. Was it real? Was it a dream? Or was it just the psychological manifestation of a heart that cannot stop loving. I do not know. But it also does not matter.
What makes this story so relevant to me now, more than a decade later? It is the proximity to loss. My own losses and also those of my friends around me. I see how entirely impossible it is for us to shut the door, to force an ending onto a painful narrative thread, especially when this thread involves one of your children. Perhaps, we prefer to hold on to our hope and take the pain that goes with it. However, some losses leave you nothing to hope for.
An Incomprehensible Loss
A few months ago, I was pushing my shopping cart lazily through the aisles at Macey’s Grocery when I got a call from a close friend of mine. I picked up the call and chatted away cheerfully, without waiting to hear why she had called. I was laughing and it took her a few tries to get my full attention on what she intended to say. It was wrenching transition. “Kris killed herself.” Kris is my friend’s 40-year-old daughter and this was not her first suicide attempt. A couple of weeks earlier she had swallowed pills, but when her convulsions caused her to fall out of bed. The crash alerted her father who took her to the emergency room. This time, Kris was more careful to lie on the floor first. Listening to my friend explain this to me, I stood frozen, gripping the shopping cart. I took in deep breaths. At first no words came and then I had only one thing to say and I wanted to say it a dozen times over. “This is not your fault!”
But, of course, I knew my friend would find fault in herself anyway. It does not matter that Kris was an addict. It does not matter that my friend had spent the last 25 years of her life trying to get her daughter through the rough spots and into rehab. My friend would scour her mind and soul looking for the mistakes she had made, determined to unearth them, even secretly hoping that she will find the key to this problem in some personal or moral failing of her own. Because this is just what we do in the face of incomprehensible losses. We torment ourselves with the obsessive notion that we might have, could have, surely, must have been able to prevent this from happening. I knew my friend would walk down this mental pathway. I have done it many times myself. I think there is something universal about self-blame in the face of tragedy.
Why We Blame Ourselves
Why do we do this? Because a twisted logic born of grief compels us to imagine that if we can just find the flaw in ourselves, we could prevent such tragedies from happening again. Our minds are racked with a never-ending parade of arguments that all begin with the words “if only I had…” We delude ourselves into believing that if we could just be more perfect, we could wrest control of our lives from the hands of a capricious universe. Then, we are stricken with the realization that no matter how we strive, it will never be enough. As merely human, we are utterly insufficient for the task of thwarting the inevitability of loss.
As mothers who have lost children, we are especially prone to this kind of thinking. We need not have any precipitating role in the tragedy, for even the most innocent of bystanders will be tortured by guilt for having been unable to foresee it. Or if we did see the train wreck coming, we flog ourselves for having been unable to conceive of those magic words that, we are certain, would have altered the outcome and set the world aright again. That instinctively repulsive notion, that there was nothing we could have done, cannot be absorbed on an emotional level, even if we can admit its logical congruity.
Mourning Estrangement
Your daughter does not have to die for you to be tormented this way. Two other friends of mine have lost grown daughters this year, but not to death. When your child cuts you out of their life, a similar grief overwhelms you. That aching wound left behind feels like a bottomless pit of sadness. Your limbs become heavier, your sleep becomes fretful, and all your experiences are washed over with a coat of translucent gray paint. You retreat into yourself. In time, maybe you don’t cry every day anymore, but your thoughts still get stuck in the middle of a routine task, and you wake up suddenly, as if from sleepwalking. How long have I been staring out that window? How did I get on this road? What was I supposed to be doing? Where are the kids? Your heart is racing and you have to consciously slow down your breathing. The momentary disorientation of having lost yourself to grief can be terrifying.
Unlike suicides, the estrangement of your child is a secret grief. There are no flowers, no rallying around the bereaved, no neighbor to bring you dinner or sit with you in your loneliness. You do not talk about your sadness for fear that it will find its way back around to the estranged loved-one, where your words will reappear in a distorted form. My two friends talk to me about their estranged daughters, but it was a long time before they revealed this to me. I would have never guessed they carried this burden. They are kind and caring women who have always been very close to their daughters. When, in adulthood, their daughters became estranged, there were no fights that preceded it, no arguments to look back on and pick apart for clues. The reasons their daughters have distanced themselves appear as mysterious and incomprehensible to their mothers as a suicide note, that documentary detritus of loss that just raises more questions and answers them with silence.
Letters to Lost Ones
But what is to be done? How do you move on after the loss of a beloved child? All three of my mourning friends write letters to their daughters, much like I did to Rachel. The mother of the suicide victim fills her laptop storage with endless pages of letters and poetry for her daughter. She passes some of these on to me and I try to remind her that this is not her fault. My other two friends write letters or emails to their estranged daughters. Some letters are sent but most teeter on edge of flight only to be snatched back. They fear that revealing so much sadness will only widen the divide. Thus letter upon letter is archived in a heart that dares not take so great a risk.
And so, my two friends content themselves with manageable risks. They send texts messages, small and innocuous. “I saw on Facebook that you have a big project coming up. Just wanted to wish you luck.” “Happy Birthday, Honey. Would you like to meet up for lunch?” or “The family is getting together, will you be there?” They tell themselves to expect nothing in return, and they convince themselves they will NOT be hurt by silence. They go cheerfully about their day, but they will still cry at night in the dark when the redemptive moment they hoped for did not materialize. They will reach out like this again and again, hoping that just this once, the message will be acknowledged by the recipient. A single emoji would be words enough to set their hearts ablaze with the hope that both soothes and torments them.
Rachel was never fully mine, and yet I grieve her loss eleven years later. How must it be for those mothers who had their daughters close for twenty years or more and then had to endure their departure? I cannot say I know exactly how any other person feels. I cannot fathom how I could possibly absorb the suicide of one of my own children. I have not, as yet, experienced the estrangement of a daughter. But I do know what it means to lose a child and have a permanent cannon-ball-sized wound in your heart. Losing Rachel is not the biggest heartache of my life, just the first one, and one I can talk about in public. Here is how I cope.
Stories without Endings
My office at BYU is decorated with mementos of my life, symbols of all the things I value most. Amidst the rows of books and the stacks of paper, there are pictures of my sons, love notes from my daughters, cards from my students, a framed photo of my husband who is currently deployed, my one-and-only marathon medal, a Russian poster from my daughter-in-law, a tissue paper note from my grandkids with the words “Babooshka, we were here.” In the center of it all is an image I printed from the internet. It is a painting representing the biblical Hannah presenting her son to Eli.
The story goes like this. For years and years Hannah longed for a child but was barren. This seemed to her the greatest failure of her life. Indeed, there was nothing she desired more than to have a child: “She was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore. And she vowed a vow, and said, O Lord of hosts, if thou wilt indeed look on the affliction of thine handmaid, and remember me, and not forget thine handmaid, but wilt give unto thine handmaid a child, then I will give him unto the Lord all the days of his life.” Miraculously, Hannah is given a child and after the child is weened, she presents him to the priest, Eli, at the tabernacle.
I used to hate this story. Why would God give Hannah the child she so desired just to take him away again so soon? That is just plain cruel. No one should have to give their child away. I categorized Hannah’s story with those absurd Old Testament narratives to be dismissed and forgotten because they represent extremes. For me, Hannah’s story was like Abraham being asked to sacrifice Isaac; there was simply no universal application. Except, now, I know now that there is.
I was given Rachel and even before I ever held her I had to give her back. Beyond that, there are birth mothers, who welcome their child into the world and give them soon thereafter into the adoptive care of others. I have been the recipient of such heart-rending choices. As I think about it, I wonder if all mothers are not called upon to follow in Hannah’s footsteps. We experience this in varying degrees or at different phases in life. Ultimately though, I believe, all mothers are called upon to let go, to relinquish their claim upon the beloved child, to send them out in the world not knowing when or if they will return. The narrative arch is incomplete, the resolution remains distant.
Trying to Be Hannah
When my soul is aching for that lost or distant child, I look at this biblical painting and try to see myself as Hannah with her son. Hannah stands here in the middle of the narrative, in her moment of loss and we never know how the story ends for her. But I still feel this painting tells me something about how to live in the unresolved present moment. In the painting, Hannah stands behind her son. He has his attention focused elsewhere, he is attending to the things he needs to learn, and if he does not see her, if he does not know how much her heart aches, if he is oblivious to the agony within her, it will still be okay. He needs to do this. He has a mission. He knows this better than she does. Hannah lets him go.
What lies ahead for Hannah and her son is unknown. The time frame might span years. But Hannah is not clutching at him; she does not protest; she is not a puddle of tears on the floor. Instead, she honors her son by accepting that this is his time and his journey, however long and winding it may be.
Look at Hannah’s hand, the way it gestures, palm out. She does not touch her son, but she sustains him. She stands behind him. She sends her love. She extends whatever comfort she has and this flows continually to him along unseen channels and extends itself beyond him to those he loves. All this she gives him for his journey, and he may never know it. This is how I feel about Rachel. This is how I feel about all my children. This is how I choose to stand.
To be honest, I cannot always do this. Sometimes I feel numb, or hurt, or confused, or angry. I do not get to sidestep those natural phases of grief. But when the moment passes, I stand again and let whatever peace is in me flow toward my child, a gift with no expectations, no strings, no criticisms, and no regrets.
We are not alone
Like Hannah, I am still standing for you, Rachel. I am comforted to know that I am not alone in this. I am standing with my friend whose daughter died by suicide. I am standing with the birth mothers of my own daughters. I am standing with myriad mothers whose sons or daughters are estranged. I am standing side-by-side with all mothers, whose hearts ache for a lost child. We are a chorus of women calling out to our lost ones. We are still here. We remember you, always!
Dear Rachel, Dear Son or Daughter,
We, your mothers, stand for you! We stand imperfect, uncertain, unable to bridge the gap between us, and, yet, we stand for you. Whatever has been or will be, we stand for you. Whatever sorrow or misunderstanding or doubt may loom between us, we stand for you. In surrendering our expectations, we honor your independence. In surrendering our attempts to “fix” the distance, we trust in your journey. Sometimes the distance prevents us from giving you all that it is in our hearts to give, but we give you what we can: our love, our hope, our encouragement and our prayers. May God watch over you with gentleness and compassion and bestow our kiss upon your forehead at night. We are letting you go, but we will never close the door, because we cannot betray our own hearts. In all your eyes-forward fervor to succeed, remember to glance back once in a while. You will see us standing there, door wide open, waiting for you. We know that, in your adulthood, we can have no claim on you, but you may have claim on us, anytime, anywhere. We are here for you. We loved you long before you took your first breaths, you are dearly loved now, and we will love you always.
Mom, Mama, Mutti, Madre, Mat’, Màna, Okaasan, Mère…
Dear Reader,
I read this post to some of my family late last night. My father-in-law asked me why I don’t just shut the door on the Rachel now. “It has been so long,” he commented, “doesn’t writing about it just make you sadder?” He has a good point. Why do I write about this?
When I woke up this morning, I could see something differently. Rachel is a heartache that has stayed with me, but Rachel has also been good to me. She has changed me in positive ways. When my friends experience grief, the Rachel part of my heart resonates, it reaches out and connects. Rachel has taught me how to sit peaceably in the face of sadness, to be more comfortable with grief in myself and in others. I don’t run from it. I don’t avoid the grieving. I am getting better at this. I can sit with you in your grief and be okay with the silence and the unanswered questions. I wish I had more to offer my friend whose daughter died by suicide. I have got nothing, not even hope for that one. But, Autumn, you are welcome in my home anytime, and you don’t need to check your grief at the door.
To answer to my father-in-laws question: I choose to keep Rachel with me, that missing child I have never seen in any tangible way, except in a single pixelated photograph. Carly sent me the photo a week after her birth. It was a terrible photo, too close-up and too dark to distinguish much detail. I cannot find the photo anymore, but when I look inside, I always find Rachel. I wonder if she knows, that I am with her, that I have her back, that I send her my love. Does she ever feel it? Do all my children feel it? I hope so, because it’s REAL. And, I guess, I can wait a little longer for redemption.
“I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.”
PS. If you scroll to the bottom of the page you can leave comments or messages to me. I would love to hear from you.
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Cindy Brewer
December 4, 2018
Adoption, Death, Faith, Family, Friendship, Grief, Rachel
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