Spirals and Weavings : Reflections on Living with Loss While Parenting a Living Child
by Denise Jess
Just after Thanksgiving an email appeared in my “in box” labeled something like “a fun little exercise.” The email had come from a woman on a moms’ email list that I’ve been a member of for over three years. My curiosity sparked by the subject line, I opened the email. The task was to write something of my life in five-year increments, from 1980 to 2000. I pondered the task a bit and then back to write.
In 1980 I was a senior in high school, anxiously waiting for the time when I could leave the oppressiveness of the small island community on which I lived to find a larger community where I could more fully express myself. I was ready to flee parents, caught up in their grief over losing their son, my brother, to cancer and who were emotionally not very available to me.
1985, 1990, 1995, are reflections of growing into womanhood, finding my voice, my spirit, my life partner and our long journey to have a child. Then 2000, feeling my sheer joy at being Rowan’s Mama D. and my deep longing and sadness in being Cassidy, Mandy, Keegan and Molly’s Mama D. only in spirit.
Looking the piece over once, then twice, I hit send, ready to share it with the women on the list. Most of these women I’ve never met in person, but many have become sisters of the heart and I wanted to share my story with them.
What I’d written sat with me and I knew my unconscious mind was working on something, but I didn’t know what. Then it hit me. In the 20 years since graduating from high school, I was now traveling a similar road to my parents. We both had to say “good-bye” to our children too soon. In some strange way, my life had spiraled into theirs and their lives had spiraled into mine. Even though my children had left before taking their first breath, they were much loved and are forever in my heart. In that moment I grew in a new way of understanding my parents’ pain.
Now I’ve made this observation before, about my parents experience of loss and my experience of loss as a parent, so why was the noticing sitting so strongly in my body, my mind, my spirit this time? I contemplated what I’d written in the exercise and one line spoke to me loud and clear…”my parents weren’t there for me.” Now that I’m walking a journey of loss, am I repeating my parents’ journey? The question rang in my head. My mind said, “I don’t think so. I sure hope not.”
Shortly after I participated in the writing exercise, we attended our local bereaved parents’ holiday service. After learning our story, a woman, whose losses had come before her living child, asked me, “How do you do it? How do you grieve your losses and remain a grounded, present parent to your daughter?” Wow! Here was the question again, albeit a different form, but nonetheless the same question. I felt like an invitation was being put before me to seek a deeper answer than I’d already given myself. Somehow assuming I was doing a “good job” parenting Rowan, while doing my work around loss, wasn’t a good enough answer. The question seemed beyond “Am I doing a good job?” to “How do I live for the joys, sad moments and everything in between that our living child brings into my life and deeply honor my feelings and experiences that the spirit babies bring into my life?” How, for example, could I learn to live with the pure joyful moments of hearing Rowan from the backseat of the van declare that the holiday lights are so “beat-I-o” while at the same time live with the sadness that I’ll never hear the chipper little voices of the four spirit babies express their joy at seeing the holiday lights?”
As I thought, meditated, reflected on this question an image came to me of a weaver, sitting at a loom, weaving threads together into a beautiful pattern. Somehow, in some way, I realized I needed to become that weaver; I need to find a way to weave the soft cotton threads of our living child into the fabric of my life, while weaving the coarser wool threads of our children lost into the same fabric. The possibilities for the fabric are incredible; unique patterns and textures that have a rare beauty that not all will see and others won’t appreciate. Perhaps only I and those closest to me will know the beauty of the fabric, the tears and joys that have gone into weaving it and the meaning of it’s imperfections.
My parents, I think, dealt with their grief by creating a patchwork quilt, beautiful in its own right for sure, but with its places of weakness. I believe they added a scrap of fabric to the quilt when the hole of sadness got too big. I know now, after walking my own journey of grief, that they were doing the best they knew how. For me, though, I hope to be a weaver, creating a strong fabric for myself, my partner, and my children, both living and in spirit.
Denise Jess and her partner, Jani, are proud mothers to one living child, Rowan, conceived
after six years of infertility and four spirit babies, Cassidy, Mandy, Keegan and Molly.
You may reach Denise at newmoon@terracom.net for comments.
© 2000 by Denise Jess. This work is protected by copyright and may be distributed or published only with the express written permission from its author. You may, without permission, publish or otherwise provide the URL (web address) of this page.
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