Our own grief can help us comfort others

My first cousins-once-removed suffered the loss of their stillborn child, Aria Grace, last weekend. We ache for this beloved branch of our grieving family.

Others’ sorrow invites us to consider our own. This is not a way of comparing sorrows, or ranking them, but a way of remembering. Perhaps we appropriate other’s pain through the lens of our own.

This, by no means, suggests we can feel what others feel, or that our experience equals, rivals, or approximates what others are going through. Whyever they surface, these thoughts, often fraught with their own kind of sting, seem automatically to come to mind proving true the adage that time doesn’t heal wounds but deepens them.

When we got the news of Aria Grace — 5-pounds, 2.4-ounces — my and Rachel’s thoughts returned almost immediately to the loss of our child by miscarriage over a quarter century ago.

Though early, at only seven weeks, we had announced the pregnancy widely. So, both the good news and the bad was widely public. Everybody knew about it; there was no keeping it private, no pretending it didn’t happen. While it might have been nice to disappear, we could not.

On the evening of the dilation curettage, we had tickets at Scope in Norfolk, Va., for “Phantom of the Opera.” Dr. Mistry urged us to go to the show. This brief procedure would simply help the body do what the body was already doing, and it would make the uterus ready “for the next time.” Medically, he suggested, this wasn’t a big deal.

It felt like an earthquake to us.

Having never experienced this before, we followed our doctor’s advice and shuffled to the show. We enjoyed it in a bittersweet way. We needed, I suppose, a full orchestra and a stage set that featured a crashing, larger-than-life chandelier. The heartbreak on stage matched ours in the cheap seats where we sat holding hands.

The show made everyone cry, so our hot tears appeared unremarkable. We fit right in.

On the Sunday after our loss, the congregants at our church embraced us tenderly.

They spoke gently, some in rehearsed platitudes.

People said that we shouldn’t worry. They said things like God’s timing is perfect, and there would be other pregnancies, other children. Rachel’s body wasn’t ready for this one, or this child would never be ready for the world, or some variation of survival of the fittest. These bromides were well-intended.

Many shared their own experiences of miscarriage; it seemed like everyone had experienced one. (Mayo Clinic reports that up to 20-percent of recognized pregnancies in the U.S. end in miscarriage.) My parishioners didn’t speak cruelly, but some of what they said hurt. God, for example, didn’t need another angel in heaven, certainly not ours.

As many men and women came up to me after church, I suppose many also avoided me on that Sunday, their own pain too fresh or too deeply remembered. Sometimes, we deal with pain by avoiding it, pretending it didn’t happen, chalking it up to life’s commonplace vicissitudes. Easy come, easy go. Get back in the saddle. No need to cry over spilt milk. Life goes on.

Jan Whitford took my arm and pulled me close. She said that, yes, while miscarriages are common and we’d probably have other kids with no difficulties, we should not forget this child. We should not let life get too quickly back to normal. We shouldn’t just sweep this loss under the rug. This was a real baby. A real member of our family. God’s gift. And we should not just pretend it didn’t happen.

She squeezed my arm hard.

She wanted me to hear her.

And I did. Though I didn’t know what she meant then, I listened. I heard. All these years later, I still do.

Life quickly got back to a new normal. We had our active firstborn to take care of, which kept us busy. Joseph had some idea of what was going on because children always do, and he needed us. We needed each other.

Now, 30 years later, this child we lost whom we might have named Grace comes to mind every time Andrew Lloyd Webber appears on our playlist. We feel a warm spot glow a little brighter in us.

When our family saw “Love Never Dies,” the Phantom sequel, in London’s West End, we sat in the cheap seats. Rachel and I held hands and remembered. Our three kids — two teens and a 12-year-old — loved the show and knew the lyrics by heart. All these years later, I feel a dull, happy ache for this Phantom whom I never got to hold.

As for Aria Grace?

Her grandfather, my cousin, said of this late-term loss, “Yesterday was the hardest day in all our lives.”

We ache for them.

All who were to know Aria have to be careful not to dole out well-intentioned platitudes. If we speak up, we risk being trite or accidently hurtful. I don’t feel your pain. I don’t know the wherefore and whys. I can’t imagine.

And if we hold our tongue, how will these hurting friends know we are standing in their corner, leaning in, praying, rooting them on, hoping for the best?

Grief is confusing — and painful — for everybody.

This I know: Remembering my loss steels me to do my best to stand by others in theirs.

If I forget the one and ignore the other, I am the one in need of condolence.