The Ambassador

I had that call again.

A friend of a friend. Someone’s brother. A former colleague.

I shake my fist at Jimmy Stewart, because every time my phone rings an angel gets its wings, but it doesn’t seem so uplifting when the angel is a dead baby and you don’t believe in angels anyway.

I hope you don’t mind me getting in touch, I just didn’t know what to do and I thought of you immediately…

It reminds me that I am a denizen of a bruised nation with a missing population. We stand invisibly united under a knitted, never-used flag.

We did not choose to come here. We cannot leave, cannot flee. Yet we are dispersed. Grieving refugees. Missing a home we hardly built, earth we barely touched.

Another family crosses our border and we do not bring them casseroles. Or, y’know, we may bring them a casserole, but really we’re giving them some kind of painfully extended metaphor for what the next weeks/ months/ years will be. There is no silver lining, so perhaps a free casserole is the best we can hope for.

I feel like I should stand on something and proclaim:

Friends, Mourners, Undiscovered Countrymen…

But no one here wants a rousing speech, or maybe you do. I don’t know. We do not speak a common language, or share common customs. We hold different politics, different faiths, different aesthetics. We are connected, but only nominally. In reality, babylost covers an extraordinary diversity of experience. There are so many ways for babies to die. It still shocks me.

The friend of a friend. Someone’s brother. The former colleague.

I do not know what they want. I barely know what I want, truthfully. I want to make some weak joke: …something something DIPLOMATIC IMMUNITY, am I right folks??!!

I am an undeserving emissary, chosen by default.

Yet I am your Ambassador.

And you are mine.

Have you encounterd a babylost ambassador? Someone who had walked the path before you and helped you navigate your grief? Who are they and what did they do that helped?