Broken-hearted

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During the time my daughter was dying, my heart was breaking – not only metaphorically but also literally. After a lifetime of perfect health, I suddenly developed a life-threatening cardiac condition postpartum. No one can explain the root cause, it’s beyond even today’s most advanced science, but it seems obvious that the phrase “broken hearted” comes from the real, biological connection between emotional pain and the human heart. It’s a connection that people have spoken of instinctively for millennia. The science may not be there yet, but to bereaved parents the connection is clear – the pain of losing a child is simply more than a person can bear. Some people don’t survive that loss. Some do, but at a cost. 

It’s as if my body was making a statement more powerful than what my meager words could articulate in that moment – stop, look, this pain is real and it must be attended to. This heart is breaking apart in front of you. This is how much she loves her daughter, enough to rend apart cells from deep within her chest, under layers of flesh and bone, without even lifting a finger. It may look as though she’s just sitting and staring at the wall, but inside, this bloody, violent, spectacle is unfolding. 

In another mysterious medical twist, my heart in the physical form fully healed within a few months – metaphorically of course is another story. 

Years later, a friend sent me an article that she hoped I would find comforting. It was about scientists who were investigating why women with childbirth-related heart injuries so often made a full recovery, while people with the same types of heart injuries not related to pregnancy never got better. The scientists found that cells from the women’s children when they were fetuses, which are known to live in a woman’s body long after pregnancy, had rushed to the mother’s injured heart and transformed into just the type of cells needed to repair it – a process called microchimerism – and then built new pathways where the injury had occurred. 

Even at first glance, there seems to be something miraculous and just as poetic as the “broken heart” metaphor here. Did my daughter save my life even after her death? Did she mend my broken heart? But this heart-related metaphor just didn’t speak to me. Why should my infant daughter have to save me? Why couldn’t I save her? I want her whole being here, laughing, playing with her brother. A few cells is not enough. Reading about fetal cells in a scientific paper is a poor substitute for having my living, breathing daughter here in my arms. 

So, no, it’s not comforting, but it may be accurate. All I have left of my daughter is invisible, much as I wish that wasn’t the case. All I have is something tiny, or many tiny things, beautiful and complex, deep inside me and woven together with the very cells of my beating heart.  

Well, I guess it is a little poetic. 

How has your body reacted physically to loss and grief? How do you relate to the types of metaphors people use to explain pain - both physical and emotional? Do metaphors help or hinder, and if they help, in what ways?