words from a walk to remember
I’m no authority. They’re just as babylost as I am. Maybe more so.
What do I say to bring light to an unknown number of grieving parents? For those who believe their babies are with God, and then for those who believe their babies were turned into random dust, all in the same crowd? For those ten days out and ten years out?
I settled on these words, some of them familiar, in case you’d like to see them.
Imagine blinding sun, breeze in leaves of red and gold, chalk-names and grass, cartwheels and tears. And yes, my voice came back just enough to croak through it. No one in the audience was naked, but at least I remembered to zip up my pants.
I’m going to let the voice of another babylost father bless this gathering: that of the excellent Shel Silverstein, because his words are lit with magic.
+++++
There is a place where the sidewalk ends
And before the street begins,
And there the grass grows soft and white,
And there the sun burns crimson bright,
And there the moon-bird rests from flight
To cool in the peppermint wind.
Let us leave this place where the smoke blows black
And the dark street winds and bends.
Past the pits where the asphalt grows
We shall walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And watch where the chalk-white arrows go
To the place where the sidewalk ends.
Yes we'll walk with a walk that is measured and slow,
And we'll go where the chalk-white arrows go,
For the children, they mark, and the children, they know
The place where the sidewalk ends.
+++++
Some of us subscribe to God with a capital G. Or the universe. Or Allah or Buddha or Shakti or Gitche Manitou. Or the random spark of nature, of dust and regrowth free of myth. Then there’s ghosts and angels and spirits and souls and energy and chi and serendipity and karma but really, what does it matter?
We all love, fiercely.
We’re all shell-shocked that we can’t follow them where they’ve gone. Because as mothers and fathers, that’s what we do. It is the right we all assume, our right and our rite of passage.
We follow because we love.
Eventually you run out of tears. You go dry and you breathe again. You blow a fuse and life demands that you let go, at least for a while.
But you might miss the tears for how divine they can be. For how they keep you close. For how they can make the concrete that separates our dimension from theirs fade into a sheet of almost transparent silk.
+++++
Before losing Liam I contemplated life and death with the luxury of not really needing to.
Now, I’m walking around with this gaping hole in my chest. But there’s something to be said for leaving it uncovered, if you can get used to the draft. There’s a view to be had when you look straight at it, and through it, and when you don’t turn away.
I don’t think it matters what we believe. All of us need to feel some sense of accompaniment, witness, restoration. What takes some time to see is that we can get all of this from one another, right here.
We are accompanied by the people in our lives who are brave enough to simply love our babies as we do. By people who say This was a baby, or the promise of a baby, who mattered deeply. Who by way of explosion made our hearts so big, so raw, so hungry.
We are witnessed by the people in our lives who say we lift up the parents of this baby. The parents who looked at her and said ‘she is perfect’ or spoke of him ‘look at those toes, long like daddy’s’. We stand with the parents of this baby, and we look, too, and we see more than despair.
We are restored by the people in our lives who say we don’t want to forget. We stitch this child into the quilt of this family, and this community.
We are the mothers and fathers of spiritbabies.
This initiation is painful and dark. All this time we’d been walking the edge of a cliff, sauntering along, totally unaware of the swallowing void at our feet. We lost our babies and the blinders came off and like skittish horses we became frozen, stricken with terror and shock while everyone else just trudged on past, unaware as we once were, and preferring to stay that way.
In the first while, the spectre of babyloss can make us all feel like medusa.
We are walking proof that the void exists. We stir up dread in others, confronting just by existing. Loving my son, remembering him, talking about him often felt like a burden on the world, unpalatable, a mark of dwelling or weakness or ‘not moving on’.
Together, medusas can be authentic and messy. No need for propriety or social grace or censorship. We can speak frankly. We can diffuse the loneliness by saying yes…that’s exactly how it feels.
Most important, we share the sweet of our babies without having to apologize for the bitter. Because among each other we know, above all else, that standing on both sides of this life makes what is sweet that much more vivid.
I've always wondered if I'm just a little bit crazed, inventing magic where none exists. If the presence in the room the day he died was merely the intensity of the moment, then Liam's life was just a hiccup.
Maybe he was an egg and a sperm that divided, and divided again, and grew into one of two babies, and was betrayed by his mother's placenta, born sick and then died. Then turned to ash and set loose on a lake because his parents are sentimental that way, thinking that letting him out of that ceramic jar would make him free to come and go as he pleases. Maybe it was just a handful of ash. Maybe it’s just that simple.
For some of us that notion is at the very root of peace—there can be comfort in trusting that the short straw that we pulled was nothing more than biology or blind misfortune or random chance free of meaning.
But a handful of ash… I need more. A handful of ash makes me despair, makes me doubt my own dreams—but then my imagination enters the room in a huff, sleeves rolled up, shoving logic aside.
Stuff it, it says. You don’t belong here right now. It’s my turn.
Mothers and fathers write letters to the other side, sending them by way of fire and water and air saying we miss you and where are you and why did you have to go.
One day, what feels like a lifetime ago, my imagination and I sat with a blinking cursor in front of us and willed him to write me a letter. He did.
It’s okay, mama.
This place… I already knew it. I am whole here, safe. I go places, and am taken places, and I am never alone. I am with you, sometimes, and with daddy. I talk to my twin and he talks to me. I watch my big brother as he spins.
You see my name and you cry, ‘Liam Inglis’ in print. Sometimes it’s after ‘in memoriam’ and sometimes it’s before ‘certificate of cremation’ and you write it over and over again with a phantom pen, with the tip of your finger, imagining the permission slips and the school registrations and the passports that should have belonged to me. It’s my name, but I am not attached to it. And then you summon me, the hole in your chest bleeding blackness, and I curl up with you.
Maybe this is exactly as it was meant to be. Maybe I was only ever to take that name to six weeks and then be in stasis, waiting for you. Maybe I was only ever meant to be spirit-brother, spirit-son.
The world is bigger for you now that I’ve left it. Darker, more tenuous, and broke open, you call it gutted.
But mostly it is just bigger, for what you can’t explain. And what you can’t explain is everything, from here, all that makes me whole again.
It’s okay, mama. I miss you too.
He wrote that letter to me back when I bled blackness every day, when he was right here—his essence and his absence—every day.
But now he’s gone. Someone’s opened a window, and he heard another call.
When I think of him now I think off you go, son. Fly high and fly fast. Be peace, be light, be useful wherever you are. Be all shiny and brand new. Off you go, son, and thank you. Thank you for giving your mama your self, just as you were.
Guilt, doubt, fear, the sensation of having been cast out… none of these are sustainable. They burn too hot and they burn out, replaced with all that’s left of our babies. And that is love—a meadow reclaiming a ruin.
I am medusa still, a year and a half passed, but the spectre is mostly gone.
My snakes are cherished, beautiful. They’re made of light now. They swirl, sometimes loose and venturing in wonder, sometimes clinging close in memory. They are Liam, my heart outside my body.
My snakes… they whisper to me. They remind me to watch for the lines of chalk that point the way to where the sidewalk ends, to stay open to glimpses of the world where the grass grows soft and white, and where the sun burns crimson bright.
Because us mommies and daddies—we need all the reminding we can get.
We’re a bunch of crusty old farts compared to our babies, stubborn and all toughened up with time and ego, convinced of far too much. We’re so sure of what we know to be true. But we forget just how much we don’t know, and how wondrously vast that not-knowing is.
Our babies … they were pure. Grown open, born open, and they left us open. Still connected to their own ancient selves. I’d like to think they knew just where to go, what happens next, why they were here. Because… why not?
We are the mothers and fathers of spiritbabies.
We are walking proof of two worlds touching. We were chosen by these souls, these souls that we already knew, and who already knew us.
We are the mothers and fathers of spiritbabies…
but we are so much more than the sum of our experiences. Take away all that’s wrapped up in skin and muscle and what’s left? Not our categories: mother, sister, daughter, wife. Not our plot twists. Not all that was done and undone.
Take away all that and we are just energy and love, infinite: each and every one of us purposeful, miracle, gift.
It’s almost as hard to end as it was to start, and so again I turn to the words of another.
If what I’m about to read had been written yesterday you might call it trite. But it wasn’t written yesterday. It was written in twelfth-century Persia by a philosopher called Rumi, long before hallmark cards or blogs, long before stuff like this was so commonplace as to be written off for its commonness. This makes it extraordinary.
And so I pass his words on to you because a man eight hundred years gone said it better than I ever could.
The breeze at dawn has things to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
Don't let your throat tighten
with fear. Take sips of breath
all day and night, before death
closes your mouth.
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe before it's gone.
Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, when you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood
Dance, when you're perfectly free.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Reader Comments (66)
Blessings on you and your boys.
Thank you.
Cindy
Thank you.
Eloquent Ambassador, indeed.
this is what i love about you as a writer.
Bella and I have been having a lot of conversations about death recently (and I've had no time to blog them) but in one she welled up and said, "but mommy, I'll be lonely when *I* die. I'll miss you when *I* die." And that cut me in two, to think there's loneliness there, and missing on the other side. Because I like to at least think I'm doing my maternal duty by carrying that burden for Maddy. I don't know why but I thought of this now, reading Liam's note. Maybe it's ok if I let her have a little bit of that missing, too.
And the photos are just priceless.
Thank you for sharing, thank you for you, thank you for Liam.
I wanted to let you know that one of your readers sent me an email based on the comment I left a few posts ago. She is at the other end of my journey and has had to live my fears. I read her email hungrily and then over and over, savoring different bites. I treasure it and can't wait to have a quiet moment when I can honor her contacting me with a reply more than the hurried "I get it!" that I immediately dashed off.
I wanted to let you know because you created this space for us to find each other. It wasn't until I got her email that it dawned on me that finding her may be why this space calls out to my soul. I love your writing, don't get me wrong, but when I comment I'm reaching out. I had thought I was reaching out to hug, but now I think it's her hand I've been reaching for.
Stunning. That phrase embodied everything. Thank you.
Thanks so much for sharing your words. I'm so envious of this gathering you spoke at. I wish Minnesota had one just like it. I long for a place where others "understand."
Your strength and beauty are inspiring.
Thank you so much for sharing that.
great meeting you this morning. i wrote about it here: http://racheljonat.blogspot.com/2008/10/im-not-stalker-promise.html
sending you good thoughts for novel completion. and yes, a memoire would be amazing. run with it.
rachel
Brenda
We felt like our hard work was in vain, that our hopes and dreams had been dashed and that the fits and starts of the new lives my wife and I had been trying to build together had come to an end, all too early. We had let ourselves become carried away in the joy of these two little boys we had made, we used them as the catalyst for change, for a life with each other and for each other. For a new life. When we lost Finn we questioned all that we had made. We didn't just grieve the lost imaginings, the guesses at personality traits, the future great deeds, we lost the dreams of our lives together as a family. Over the last 8 months we have worked hard, together, to redefine what it means to be our family, how we will live with this gap, how we will grow around it and through it and how we will make the hole part of our texture.
These days, mostly, I am fine. Sometimes I think of the unfulfilled promise of our little man, especially when Jacob does something new or achieves another milestone. I'm coming to realise that it will always hurt, we will always miss him, but we will be less and less debilitated by his death. As my four year old step-daughter once said to a complete stranger admiring Jacob at the park; "Actually, I have two babies. Ones just dead."
Thanks for your post, it made me remember. It also made me cry, a lot, but that's okay too.
gorgeous.
thank you for sharing your light - his light - with the world.
Your words are beautiful, as always. xo
Big hugs, brilliant Mama.
Maybe it's not and maybe my mother, who spiralled downwards suddenly into death three years ago, is taking care of spiritbabies as I know she would if she could. She just would.
He is 4.
I wanted you to know that you and your words meant so much to those you spoke to. I have a dear friend who was there, she mentioned how healing it was for her and how the speakers reached her in ways her friends and family never could when she lost her baby boy.