(LifeSiteNews) – Through my kitchen window, I can see St. Clement’s Graveyard a little way off in the distance, over the rolling, golden prairie grasses and just beyond the apple orchard we have painstakingly nurtured from the roots up over the years. The graves there tell intriguing – yet often heartbreaking – stories of the good Catholic homesteading families who made this rugged land their home throughout the last couple of centuries. When my friend first took me to visit the graveyard about 15 years ago, she showed me a number of crumbling headstones that belonged to babies who died after birth, mainly because they could not survive during the grueling North Dakota winters, or because medical help was nowhere to be found. I also distinctly remember seeing gravestones of mothers who died during childbirth, and joint graves that belonged to mothers and babies who died together during a labor that took a foreboding turn.
Some days, I thank God for the beautiful scenery outside my window, and the graveyard that graciously reminds me I was created to spend eternity with Him. But other days it isn’t so easy – especially when the wind is howling, we are snowed in, and I have plenty of time to think. Then I notice that just a smidgen to the right of my view, there is a double-headed granite gravestone that often radiates with the rays of the Dakota sunshine, as well as a grave next to it marked by a wooden cross my husband made. A quick glance down at my wedding ring reminds me that my husband bought me one with ten diamonds on it to represent the ten children we hoped we would have some day.
Then “it” all begins to creep back. “It” charges back into my memory just like it happened merely a few months ago – and soon, the dismal feeling of death sweeps over me. I think of the two miscarriages I had – one brutal with hemorrhaging, at nearly four months along; and the dead, connected, conjoined full-term infants I held in my arms on September 16, 2013, after an absolutely grueling, 28-hour-long labor. My mother has an identical twin sister, and seeing the joy they shared made me pray hard to have identical twin girls as well – and although my earnest prayer was soon answered, it wasn’t answered in a way my human heart can comprehend. A little while after they were delivered by an emergency c-section, my most precious little girls, Michaela Therese and Marina Joy, died in my husband’s arms apparently after he baptized them. About 20 minutes after they died, he says he felt their souls ascend upwards, likely to Heaven.
My husband’s brother, a priest, came into my hospital room soon after they passed, and prayed the first Joyful Mystery of the Rosary with me. My husband begged me to hold our babies while I could, before they would be taken away, so I forced myself to kiss their cold cheeks and feel the softness of their skin. Their faces looked just like the faces of my other children; they had darling button noses, blue eyes, and a sweet, endearing Dutch baby look.
As I held them, overcome with shock, I knew my life would never be the same; I knew I would never be the same. I had now encountered a wretched, twisted, dispirited side of life. I had traveled down its dark tunnel, and part of me would never see the light of innocent joy again.
In honor of my twins’ funeral, I wrote a poetic meditation on the Scripture verse, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.” As I worked on it in my hospital bed, I comprehended, perhaps for the first time, what it really means to be a writer. I saw that writing for the King of Heaven means to intermingle your God-given talent with the elements of the earthly world in which we live – to bring words to create a magnificent sense of reality so that the Master of the Universe may be glorified. It is to make sense of life, so that God’s children may put the enigmatic puzzle pieces of it together. And at that moment, it meant to allow God to write within me, even when my heart so broken I could barely hold a pen.
The few months after my twins died, I thought I was “good” at grieving. I accepted that my babies were in Heaven, and devastated as I was, I felt joyful to have little saints to call my own. A month after they died I went to Confession and sought absolution for resenting God, and the priest told me, “I know it is very, very hard. But try to be grateful for what happened. Try to thank him that He gave you the opportunity that so few mothers have – the grace to be like Our Lady of Sorrows.” For some time afterwards, I allowed his words to transform me, and enable me to offer up my wounded heart for a higher purpose.
But as the years passed, sometimes I felt like “it” just wouldn’t go away, no matter how “good” of a grieving Catholic I tried to be. And even now, nearly 10 years later, I find myself still struggling from time to time. I tend to turn to books for answers to everything life throws at me, but I admit, when it comes to dealing with these four deaths, there is no turning to books. Ultimately, I’ve found that there is no turning to anything but the boundless mercy of Jesus Christ Crucified, and the kindness of the Heart of Mother Mary. Each pregnancy I have after their death carries with it a mix of terror, gratitude, and wonder. Unborn lives are so awe-inspiring, so intriguing, so capable of revealing the masterful presence of Our Creator – and yet so vulnerable and able to be taken away from us at the most inopportune time. When I had my first two healthy babies, in a sense, I took it for granted – but I don’t anymore. Each of the four healthy babies I have had since I lost my twins has been deemed a miracle in my mind, one to be celebrated generously.
I believe my miscarried babies and my twins are with the Blessed Mother, and by doing so, I humbly respect the sovereignty of God. Soon after I lost them, an acquaintance of mine gratuitously dropped by out of the blue and gave me a lovely painting of the Blessed Mother, sitting in Heaven, cradling an “angel baby,” a baby who has come to join her there. This painting has comforted me in more ways than my friend could possibly understand, and has been a wonderful witness to others about the hope that lies beyond this side of Heaven. The good Lord has consoled my motherly heart in many other ways as well. One time, after receiving Holy Communion I saw a picture in my mind of my twins dancing on the prairie grasses of Heaven, with sweet little pink dresses on, not connected to one another, and free of all pain. I know where they are and I know God knew what He was doing when He took them from out of my arms and put them in His.
At times, though, I often wonder – have I grieved like a “good Catholic?” and what does that mean, anyhow? I get envious when I see mothers with healthy twin girls and I can’t help but think, “Why me?” I have learned that when we grieve, we must do it in union with Christ Crucified and Risen, with the help of Our Lady. We should never try to suffer without clinging to the Heart of Jesus, both in its agony and in its glory. There are a plethora of mysteries on earth that we will never grasp until we are enjoying the Beatific Vision, and we need to be fine with that. And when we grieve, we must not try to do it “well,” or compare our own grieving process to that of others. There is no formula for grieving that gets you the right answer every time. We must just simply surrender – simply be in the presence of Our Father and confide in him what is most wounded within us; we must offer Him the angst that is buried in the crevices of our wounded hearts. We must accept that it is Our Father who decides who lives and who dies, and trust that He is Love. Life and death is His thing – not ours. And because it all belongs to Him, we must trust that He will dig us out of the mounds of grief we find ourselves in, and bring us to a place of serenity once again.
Providentially, the Church offers various liturgical rites in the wake of miscarriage, as well as prayers for grieving women and couples. The “Blessing of Parents After a Miscarriage or Stillbirth” is provided by the Church “to assist the parents in their grief and console them with the blessing of God.” The Order of Christian Funerals contains Funeral Rites for Children with adaptations for children who died before receiving baptism. The Traditional Rite offers a very beautiful, efficacious blessing for expectant mothers, which can offer encouragement and prayerful support to pregnant mothers who have had traumatic experiences with past pregnancies.
There are a number of helpful books out there for grieving parents, such as: Nursery of Heaven: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Loss In the Lives of the Saints and Today’s Parents by Patrick O’Hearn and Cassie Everts; Grieving Together: A Couple’s Journey Through Miscarriage, co-written by Franco David and Laura Kelly Fanucci; and Hiding in the Upper Room: How the Catholic Sacraments Healed Me from Child Loss by Kelly Breaux.
Furthermore, there are numerous online resources as well, such as: Catholic Miscarriage Support, which offers practical and spiritual support for Catholics who have lost a child through miscarriage; as well as the Facebook group, “Mommy to a Little Saint,” which offers Catholic pregnancy and infant loss support. With a few thousand members, this group is an active community of support that provides peer-to-peer ministry for women who have lost children in miscarriage as well as prayer and discussion.
The most important thing a grieving parent should remember is that they are not alone. Our Lady of Sorrows carried the cross that they carry, and she will always be there to shoulder the burden along with them.
“Well, your child may have departed from you, but he has gone to Christ the Lord. For you his eyes have been shut, but they are opened to the eternal light: he is gone from your table, but is now added to the table of angels. The plant was uprooted from here, but planted in paradise. From the earthly kingdom he was transferred to the heavenly kingdom. You see what was exchanged for what. Are you sad because you no longer see the beauty of the face of your child? But this happens, because you do not see the real beauty of the soul with which he rejoices in the heavenly feast. How beautiful indeed is the eye that sees God! How sweet indeed is the mouth that is adorned with divine melodies!” – St. Gregory of Nyssa