Wow. That really sucks.

I had an interesting experience at the end of last week. I had a beautiful, dear friend of mine tell me that she was having a miscarriage. It was the first time I have been faced with a person who has had one since I had my two this year. I knew the pain she was feeling, the frustration, the confusion. Hers was remarkably like mine. An “incomplete” as they call it, which for me, felt like such a raw deal. Your baby is gone but…not. You have this awful period of limbo where you are carrying something inside you that is no longer alive. Waiting and wishing for something to happen, even though that something is awful.

I knew exactly what she was going through. I remembered. I felt the pain, the ache and yet when she told me the news I said

“Wow. That really sucks.”

(Takes a cyber bow)

Yeah.

I tried to rally but all my words were feeble, superficial, unable to express the depth with which I wished to express my compassion.

Now here is why I found the experience interesting (which I’m sure you’re wondering). When I had my miscarriages, I received a lot of reactions. I discuss these reactions at length in my post on The Problem with Perspective. They usually fell into one of two categories. The people who tried to underplay it, telling me “miscarriages are pretty common” or “you know, my mom/sister/friend had 10 miscarriages” and the people who wanted me to feel better/look on the bright side, telling me “at least you have one healthy child” or “perhaps its for the best” or “you can always try again”.

In the throes of my grief, these comments seemed heartless, uncompassionate and rude. They made me angry, made me want to scream, to make them understand. How could they be so careless with their words? How could they not feel the depth of my grief? I vowed that I would be forever changed. I would never be so flippant. I would be different, better (far better) at showing my empathy in the face of another’s grief.

And then I was given my first opportunity. I knew what she was feeling, I knew what she was going through, I had the empathy…but I had no words. It made me acutely aware of how difficult it is to be faced with a person dealing with loss. You want so badly to express your profound sorrow for their situation but your mind goes blank.

The proverbial shoe was on the other foot and I realized that a mental apology was in order. In my grief, I had known that people’s intentions were good, known that they wanted to say the right thing but I was still angry. I thought they just weren’t trying hard enough. That they were miscalculating the importance of my loss and therefore weren’t putting in the amount of effort needed to find the right words. I thought that if they’d really cared, REALLY, that they could have found the right thing to say. I know better now. I think I had it backwards. They did know. They knew I was hurting, knew I was suffering. They knew they should say something, but what? What can you say, really? They weren’t heartless, they were just speechless. How do you articulate the sorrow you feel at someone else’s loss without sounding melodramatic or possibly depressing them more? It is a delicate, difficult situation, even when you entirely understand, of this I am now totally aware.

And so in the face of my “Wow. That sucks.” moment, I am mentally forgiving both myself and all those I had mentally chastised for saying the wrong thing. I will still continue to try and say the right thing in the face of others grief (for me, the best response was the simplest “I am so sorry for you loss.”) but I will also go forward with an increased compassion for those doing their best to help.

It feels like this experience with my friend, this light bulb moment, has allowed me to let go of one more component of my grief: “The Enemy”. Having “The Enemy” was a coping mechanism that helped me deal with my pain at the time. It felt better to have someone to blame for something. But now I can see that letting go of “The Enemy” brings me closer to healing. I am slowly reframing my experience, transforming the negative into positive. Seeing all that these babies have taught me, how they have helped me grow as a person and given me a better understanding of humanity and how it operates in the face of crisis.

I was lucky to have had those babies, even if it was only for a couple of months each. It’s amazing what you can learn just from the process of love and loss. It’s so painful but you are stronger and wiser as a result and I realize now that if I had the choice of losing those children or never having them at all, I would chose the former. They were a part of me, and they have made me better. As I write this, I am reminded of the ever so famous and relevant words of Alfred Lord Tennyson:

I hold it true, whate’er befall;
I feel it, when I sorrow most;
‘Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.

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