Unholy silence [Bryan]

Ellie and I recently returned from a trip we took by ourselves to England. We saw many great and important things, timeless monuments to human persistence, endurance, and creativity. We saw majestic cathedrals, ancient libraries, sculpted gardens, and brilliant artistic achievements. Nothing was as sweet, though, as returning to embrace an armful of children. To see their little smiles again, their eyes full of trust and delight, their snotty noses, to feel their little arms give me the tightest squeezes they could muster, to listen to their voices rise with excited questions and bubbling curiosity -- I don't know if could ever stand to be apart from them for too long.

And so it was that I read this remarkable essay, by theologian Christopher Pramuk, about losing children when they are young, particularly losing them through miscarriage. I recall that, when Ellie discovered she was pregnant with each of our three children, we often didn't tell people for several months. After all, what if "something happened" and Ellie miscarried? Thankfully, we were spared this ordeal. But it is sad, tragic really, how there is this culture of silence around miscarriage, and heartbreaking how couples are often forced to carry this burden alone.

The essay begins:

Several years ago my younger sister gave birth to a three-pound baby boy stricken with severe genetic anomalies. With sophisticated prenatal testing, she and her husband were about as well prepared for the birth as possible. Their single hope and prayer was that the infant, Jerry, might live long enough—a few seconds, a few minutes—to say hello, as it were, and say goodbye. They wanted to hold him and look into his eyes, however briefly, so that the child might feel and know their love for him. God willing, they would have long enough to introduce him to his two sisters, ages 2 and 4. God willing—the phrase still catches in my throat.

The day came, and we gathered in the delivery room to welcome the baby. With his limbs badly deformed, his breathing labored, Jerry gazed into my sister’s beaming face as she held him against her, crying and smiling. He was beautiful, and for more than eight hours he fought to stay alive. Everyone around the hospital bed held him in turn: parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and his two big sisters, beaming with delight. At last, lying on his mother’s breast, with his father’s hand resting gently on his head, Jerry gave his last labored breath and lay motionless. God, it seemed, had been willing, and a family’s humble prayer had been answered.

Four days later, we prayed at the graveside where Jerry’s body, in a tiny coffin, would be laid in the earth next to his older brother, Jack. Delivered at full-term nine years earlier, Jack was stillborn, the victim of an umbilical cord accident.

Jerry’s death awakened painful memories. My wife and I have suffered two miscarriages. For years I have struggled to reflect prayerfully on these and on my sister’s losses, experiences that have struck me to the core; largely, I have failed. What disarms me still is not just the pain of those losses but the revelation of how many others have been through this. After both our miscarriages it seemed that whenever we shared our news with a close friend or family member, a kind of hidden door opened behind their eyes and words would tumble forth, “I’m so, so sorry.” Long pause. “You know, we had a miscarriage two years ago. It was awful."

Another long pause, “No, we didn’t know.”

And the unspoken question arises, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

In Christian and Catholic circles, a strange kind of silence, an existential and theological loneliness, surrounds these more hidden deaths. Some silences are good, healthy and holy, pregnant with hope and expectation. Something new, something beautiful waits to be born here. The silence following our miscarriages, however, was nothing like this. It felt like loneliness, death, crucifixion. It seemed to mock my wife and me and our desire for life, our trust in its elemental goodness.