Living and Learning from Loss: An Article and a Sermon
The Preface
The year was 2002. I was somewhat newly married and we were happily expecting our first child.
However, what should have been the greatest joy in our lives became our most difficult nightmare.
The following is the article I wrote, published for the Women's Rabbinic Network, the Interfaith Clergy Coalition and others,
in order to help other clergy who were helping other mothers experiencing similar loss.
We never forget. But we manage to move forward, to live life one day at a time.
However, what should have been the greatest joy in our lives became our most difficult nightmare.
The following is the article I wrote, published for the Women's Rabbinic Network, the Interfaith Clergy Coalition and others,
in order to help other clergy who were helping other mothers experiencing similar loss.
We never forget. But we manage to move forward, to live life one day at a time.
Living with Loss
Typically, when I think of health issues that might confront myself, my family, my friends or my congregants, I think of things that occur not as part of our day-to-day life. I think of cancer and heart disease, orthopedic issues and weight challenges. I think of people who were in terrible accidents and people who suffer life-altering strokes.
And until November 5, 2002, it never dawned on me how the simple process of giving birth to life could be a health challenge, and a life-altering experience. What I have learned in these past five years is how unnatural one of life’s seemingly natural events can actually be.
During the fall of 2002, I was working as a Rabbi Educator at a congregation in New Jersey, and I started the school year and the High Holy Day season 8 months pregnant with our first child. Unlike so many people, I became pregnant rather easily, and I had a great pregnancy, until it was the worst thing I had ever experienced. Ten days after my due date, 24 hours after a perfectly normal check-up at the hospital, my husband and I checked-in on the maternity floor, as so many parents-to-be do, so that I could be induced. From the minute I was hooked up on the monitors and saw the look on my doctor’s face, I knew something was wrong.
He left for a few minutes, as I’m sure so many people have experienced when being told of a health nightmare, and he returned a few minutes later with another doctor, only to be told that our baby had died. And as I’m sure so many people have experienced when discovering a health problem, we learned far too much about full term still-borns, placenta privia and the umbilical cord connection than any non-doctor should ever know.
As I think is true whenever one hears such horrific news, I was in shock. And then I went into that “mode” that we women go into – the “just tell me what I need to do” mode, and I’ll process later. So it was explained to us that I would need to deliver our 8 pound 4 ounce baby, and I could have all the drugs I wanted, but I would still need to push this baby out. And so I did.
Our daughter was born 12 hours later, after the worst night of my life. We couldn’t call her the name we had pre-chosen, after my husband’s mother, for that would have been mourning her all over again, so between tears and pain, the name Batya came into my head – if she couldn’t be with us in life, then I would always think of her as a daughter of God.
As one who had helped so many others through their darkest moments, I was smart enough, or desperate enough, to find help and support. Colleagues, friends and family helped immediately, while we all mourned together. We held Batya for hours in our hospital room, took pictures of her, sang for her, and for us. Giving her to the nurses was one of the hardest things I have ever done. And the nurses at our hospital were wonderful! They gave us a beautiful keepsake box to hold all of our memories, our hopes and our dreams of our Batya, who would never come to being as we had imagined.
While recuperating in the hospital from a horrific delivery, all I wanted was to go home and be off the maternity floor. After the first round of phone calls, I couldn’t make any more, and thank God for my father, who called all of my friends, one-by-one. And thank God we thought to reach out to our dear friend and colleague who had done our pre-marital counseling, who knew my husband better than most, for when we called at 7:00am to share our nightmare with her, she was everything we needed and more.
We held the funeral and burial a few days later. The burial was completely organized by my then senior rabbi who knew exactly what to do. All I chose was the location of the grave, under a big tree, and he did the rest. The funeral was conducted by my good friend and high school rabbi, who himself had experienced a similar loss 20 years prior.
What will I never forget about this experience?
What do I wish I had known at the time?
Today, I feel lucky, for we have a beautiful son Samuel and a charming daughter Sophie. But I realize that is not the case for everyone. And it will never replace the love I felt for our first child, Batya.
I have become a resource for many colleagues and their congregants experiencing similar loss, and I am in the process of putting together programs to help colleagues better understand and guide their congregants through this kind of loss. Please use me as a resource, for I hope, if anything, our experience can help me to make someone else’s pain slightly less.
Please click below for the article from above and a sermon on the same topic.
And until November 5, 2002, it never dawned on me how the simple process of giving birth to life could be a health challenge, and a life-altering experience. What I have learned in these past five years is how unnatural one of life’s seemingly natural events can actually be.
During the fall of 2002, I was working as a Rabbi Educator at a congregation in New Jersey, and I started the school year and the High Holy Day season 8 months pregnant with our first child. Unlike so many people, I became pregnant rather easily, and I had a great pregnancy, until it was the worst thing I had ever experienced. Ten days after my due date, 24 hours after a perfectly normal check-up at the hospital, my husband and I checked-in on the maternity floor, as so many parents-to-be do, so that I could be induced. From the minute I was hooked up on the monitors and saw the look on my doctor’s face, I knew something was wrong.
He left for a few minutes, as I’m sure so many people have experienced when being told of a health nightmare, and he returned a few minutes later with another doctor, only to be told that our baby had died. And as I’m sure so many people have experienced when discovering a health problem, we learned far too much about full term still-borns, placenta privia and the umbilical cord connection than any non-doctor should ever know.
As I think is true whenever one hears such horrific news, I was in shock. And then I went into that “mode” that we women go into – the “just tell me what I need to do” mode, and I’ll process later. So it was explained to us that I would need to deliver our 8 pound 4 ounce baby, and I could have all the drugs I wanted, but I would still need to push this baby out. And so I did.
Our daughter was born 12 hours later, after the worst night of my life. We couldn’t call her the name we had pre-chosen, after my husband’s mother, for that would have been mourning her all over again, so between tears and pain, the name Batya came into my head – if she couldn’t be with us in life, then I would always think of her as a daughter of God.
As one who had helped so many others through their darkest moments, I was smart enough, or desperate enough, to find help and support. Colleagues, friends and family helped immediately, while we all mourned together. We held Batya for hours in our hospital room, took pictures of her, sang for her, and for us. Giving her to the nurses was one of the hardest things I have ever done. And the nurses at our hospital were wonderful! They gave us a beautiful keepsake box to hold all of our memories, our hopes and our dreams of our Batya, who would never come to being as we had imagined.
While recuperating in the hospital from a horrific delivery, all I wanted was to go home and be off the maternity floor. After the first round of phone calls, I couldn’t make any more, and thank God for my father, who called all of my friends, one-by-one. And thank God we thought to reach out to our dear friend and colleague who had done our pre-marital counseling, who knew my husband better than most, for when we called at 7:00am to share our nightmare with her, she was everything we needed and more.
We held the funeral and burial a few days later. The burial was completely organized by my then senior rabbi who knew exactly what to do. All I chose was the location of the grave, under a big tree, and he did the rest. The funeral was conducted by my good friend and high school rabbi, who himself had experienced a similar loss 20 years prior.
What will I never forget about this experience?
- Being in my hospital room with my husband, our first-born child, my mother and sister-in-law and two dear friends, one of whom was Debbie Friedman, and when asked what she could do, I simply requested her to sing Misheberach
- The eulogy our friend gave, where he told people what is helpful to hear at a time like this, and what is not helpful to hear (saying it was meant-to-be or that we would have another one just didn’t help)
- Several friends flew from all over the country to spend time with me while I was on “maternity leave”
- Never having to speak directly with the funeral home
- Having an incredible colleague who wrote the letter to the congregation about our loss, explained it to the 400 children in our religious school waiting to see our baby, and helping the sisterhood and others in our synagogue to mourn our loss so I didn’t need to help them
- The incredible support I gained from colleagues at the CCAR, NCJW’s grief counselors, and our grief therapist
What do I wish I had known at the time?
- Shivah could have happened “officially”, and not just by happenstance
- We didn’t need to rush to give Batya back to the nurses. We could have held her longer, bathed her, waited for other family from out-of-town to see her, and though it would never have been enough time, it could have been longer
- I was so worried that because Batya never took a breath, her soul never came in to being, so friends researched for me, and I do believe her soul did live, and continues to live in me, her father and her now siblings
- What have I learned from this experience?
- I take absolutely nothing for granted. When I know someone is due to deliver a baby, I never leave the message: so what did you have? When I wonder why someone is childless, I never ask: why don’t you have any children?
- I recognize that we come to know people today, and rarely do we see a glimpse of where they were in the past. We don’t know what pain people have experienced. The number of letters from people who had “experienced a similar loss” was extraordinary.
- It is so difficult to be in the public eye, as so many of us are as rabbis, and to experience such personal loss. I was conscious of my personal mourning that I needed to do, as well as what needed to occur publicly.
- Loss is loss. People were always trying to tell me how much worse, or better, our loss was than theirs. But loss is loss. It doesn’t matter if the baby was miscarried at 8 weeks or full-term at 41 weeks – it is still loss.
Today, I feel lucky, for we have a beautiful son Samuel and a charming daughter Sophie. But I realize that is not the case for everyone. And it will never replace the love I felt for our first child, Batya.
I have become a resource for many colleagues and their congregants experiencing similar loss, and I am in the process of putting together programs to help colleagues better understand and guide their congregants through this kind of loss. Please use me as a resource, for I hope, if anything, our experience can help me to make someone else’s pain slightly less.
Please click below for the article from above and a sermon on the same topic.
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