An Encouraging Thought

“I wish none of this had ever happened.”

Oh, Frodo, you can be a whiny little bitch, but how truthful your words ring.

Yesterday I found myself driving home, staring at a picturesque sunset over the horizon, furious at its beauty.  I was angry at everything – the still flowering mid-January trees, the afternoon rush-hour traffic, the obnoxious radio played out song.  I inched forward through the sea of vehicles on the packed interstate, screaming and crying alone in my own car.  Probably not something to admit, but I’ve gotten very good at driving with tears in my eyes – driving is my time to let it out before I get home, my time between putting on the “productive worker” mask and my “happy wife and mother” façade.  I started asking “Why? Why why why why why?  Why her?  Why me, why us? WHY?”  I cried, I yelled, I pleaded for some understanding.

And the answer came.  From the sun that suddenly popped out from between the clouds, I had my answer.  I'm not one for visions or epiphanies, even though I've been hoping for some sort of supernatural or otherworldly sign, but I envisioned God holding her - wrapped in her pink crocheted blanket - holding her very tenderly.  I heard His answer - “because I knew you were strong enough to bear it.”  It wasn’t the one I wanted to hear, but it filled my head and I couldn’t shake it, so I knew it was truth. I never wanted to wish it all away – I don’t dream of life without her existing at all, or without having been pregnant with her, feeling her twist and kick inside me.  But there are days when the remaining pain is so much, too much. 

Gandalf, filling in as the classic God-like figure, sagely answers – “So do all who live to see such times. But it is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us. … Bilbo was meant to find the Ring. In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”

Not that I’m comparing my daughter to the one ring, but the analogy of loss and destiny remains.  “It is not for them to decide.”  This wasn’t my decision, nor anyone else’s.  This is a tragedy in the truest sense, not even brought about by hubris (well, maybe my own in thinking I would have another perfect pregnancy and birth).  Fate and destiny are ultimately not up to us – things happen beyond our control.  This is one of many lessons I have had to learn.   Of course, you can say I chose to get pregnant in the first place, knowing the risks involved and the odds.  But this is one of those “once in a million” things that even medical professionals cannot explain – she was perfect, and then she was gone.  Giving up control of my own life was a slap in the face, but one I was forced to accept in an instant – my willpower, my desire, my perfect planning couldn’t save her.  It wasn’t even an option.  I’ve always been a firm believer that people shape their own destiny, by either their action or inaction – this was the first situation in which I had to admit absolute defeat and powerlessness by no means of my own.  On top of the absolute heartbreak of losing our precious child, this revelation was shocking.

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”  Of course, that’s easier said than done.  Do we give up, and let the grief and fear consume us?  Or press on, leaning on our friends for strength when we can’t stand?  Do we simply sit and do nothing, waiting for death to take us?  Do we really have a choice, if things are not left up to us after all?  Is anything predetermined, or do our choices shape the future?  Time seems to drag on and fly by all at once - I wonder how I'll get through the seemingly endless minutes, while feeling that time is slipping through my ancient fingers, running out fast.

“In which case, you were also meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought.”  I was meant to have her, no one else.  We were meant to be her parents, and shoulder the burden of her loss.  It says volumes about the kind of people we must be, the relationship we have, that we could endure this and still walk hand in hand, in love, and together.  We have the ultimate privilege of being her parents, of her being our baby, and sharing her perfection with the world.  We also have the benefit of this loss – yes, loss can be a benefit.  Without the pain, what can we compare happiness to?  Without the storm there is no rainbow.  Life is comparisons and contradictions and even extremes – it’s why day and night exists, why we live half in shadow and half in light.  It is an encouraging thought that we were destined for this, destined for something so precious that we could feel so deeply, that was ours alone.

The sun glared at me, but I remembered what our friends had told us, in those first weeks when the pain was so raw – it still is, but this thought gives me some consolation – “whenever we see a sunbeam, we’ll know its Coraline looking down on us”.  She is my sunshine, my light in the darkness.  And that is also an encouraging thought.