Day 15: Honouring Our Losses

Today at 7:00 pm parents around the world will light a candle in memory of the babies they’ve lost. It’s called the International Wave of Light. I’ll be lighting 2 candles for our sons Noah and Simon.

Pregnancy and Infant Loss Day may seem like yet another awareness campaign in an endless round of causes and crusades. Unless you’ve held a tiny little piece of your heart in your hands, or in your body, as you say good bye. It’s a devastating loss made all the worse by the worlds eagerness to sweep past it as quickly as possible. To us, a day like this is validation, comfort, permission to grieve years later and never, ever, get over it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating eternal wallowing and pain. But healing comes when we absorb our losses and walk alongside grief in all its seasons. The death of a child is not something that you get over.

The death of a child before or shortly after they’re born is often seen as different on the scale of sorrow. Their lives and our grief somehow meaning less. In my experience time is no measure of parental love and attachment; the impact is different for every person regardless of gestational age. I’ve seen extremely early miscarriages which are gut wrenching and late term still births handled with aplomb.

I’ve stopped trying to measure what grief anyone is entitled to. A loss is a loss. Only you will ever plumb the depths of your own losses. Grief is by its very nature a lonely journey.

Yet, this is a common experience. One that 1 in 4 experience. A few weeks ago the waitress at Denny’s let it slip that one of the three children she mentioned had died, and looked embarrassed, bracing herself for a socially awkward moment… I teared up, touched that she would keep her in the count. Yesterday I learned a friend had lost another baby, and I honestly searched for something meaningful to say, left only with a simple ‘I’m sorry.’ Scarcely a month goes by when I’m not aware of another loss and left grasping for some sort of help to give.

Maybe it is enough that we are not alone. Neither in our grief, nor in our desire to honour our children. They are precious. They are missed. They are always in our hearts.

So please, light a candle tonight at 7 pm.