What blooms in darkness
/
Guest writer Lynn Drew is the mother of two sons, one in her home and one in her heart. She lives and writes in Boston, Massachusetts.
When my son Felix was stillborn, sympathy cards flooded our mailbox. I praised those who used his name and despised those who didn’t. Couldn’t they understand that I wanted it shouted from the rooftops?
His name was still new to me. We’d called him “Nubby” throughout the pregnancy, not knowing whether he’d be a boy or girl. Now Felix had a proper name, but he was not here to animate it: to lift his head to its sound, to ring in its meaning of “happy” with gurgling smiles, to eventually form the two sweet syllables on his own tongue, then learn to write them out in crooked caps.
I purchased a small black journal after his death. It was covered with flowers that looked like they only bloomed at night. I was ready to pour out the darkness, but where were the words? All I could manage was to write “Felix” across the first page, over and over and over until it was filled. His name was the physical container of letters that I’d chosen for him, synonymous with love. With little else to hold on to, I searched between the letters, feeling for a memory, sensation, or spark that could bring me closer.
In the wake of Felix’s death, language suddenly felt inadequate: the phrases “I can’t imagine” and “There are no words” made me feel alienated; the reductive Hallmark phrasings that people regurgitated left me cold; even the seemingly benign word “stillbirth” seemed to muzzle my grief and rage.
I continued to return to the page with the raw materials I had: grief, tears, language. I met other mothers, parents in support groups, books, and podcasts who lived on Planet Bereaved. In summoning language from the shards of their own grief they gave me the courage to sit with my own; to feel the shimmer of love alongside the jagged pain of grief and let it continue to move through me. Their stories created space for mine.
“Dear Felix,” I start my journal entries now, channeling my son through his two sweet syllables. I feed and water our relationship with words, not wanting to miss what blooms in darkness. I beckon him close, close, closer still:
Dear Felix,
We traveled together for nine months and then got separated, but not just in the ordinary way in which mothers and babies become two separate bodies. When you were born you’d already traveled to the other side. We were separated physically and in death.
Travelling Together
by W.S. Merwin
If we are separated I will
try to wait for you
on your side of things
your side of the wall and the water
and of the light moving at its own speed
even on leaves that we have seen
I will wait on one side
While a side is there.
This poem speaks to this journey of separation, pointing to a future where there is reunion; the absence of a side. Maybe I don’t believe in the concept of heaven, but I do believe that in some capacity, when I die, I will be part of the essence that also contains you (and many). And in that way we will be reunited. I don’t expect it will look like ordinary, earth-side life; no physical bodies or forms, maybe not even conscious awareness, but an acceptance, an invitation for souls to mingle on the breeze.
Love,
Mommy
Do you keep a journal or write letters to your baby? Does it help you feel closer to your child? What other ways do you find to feel close to your baby?