Some stories entertain and enthrall you. Others bemuse and lighten you up. Some give you a big emotional jolt like a bolt of lightening. Today, I read a story of a mother of stillborn child on the BBC. She is a journalist with the broadcaster and experienced something no woman in the world would want to experience. She had her daughter stillborn. It was a baby much longed-for and anticipated, much prepared for and dreamed about. Still, complicated and delicate that all pregnancies are, hers was overly so. She broke water early and her daughter died before she was born.
It is hard to imagine yourself in this situation but there indeed are countless people out there experiencing such profound emotional scars. Scars that are so deep that you cannot subside them for the rest of your life. And it is not only you that suffer, your family, friends and loved ones also feel the pangs of it. For a human being and even more so for a mother, no loss can even come close in intensity to the loss of a child.
A child is the embodiment of a parent's dream. All the shortcomings, deficiencies and unfulfilled aspirations are cherished by parents hoping they shall make their children better than themselves. Every parent dreams big on a child to overcome those shortcomings, dispossess the deficiencies and fulfill all the aspirations. All parents want their children to be much better, more successful and overall a more complete human being than themselves. Children are the biggest reason behind parents striving to do more, be better and achieve more. And imagine the mother nurturing that little embodiment of dreams with her own flesh and blood for months having to lose it, at the moment of holding it in her arms and cuddle it with the most divine forms of love - that of a mother to her child. Imagine the feeling of pain and sorrow felt by that woman at that moment. What could surmount that grief? Perhaps nothing.
However, the tenacity of the human persistence is such that even such bereaved mothers (and fathers alike) find different reasons to persevere, persist and prop themselves up. In case of this BBC journalist, she tried to preserve memory of her daughter and started connecting with mothers with similar emotional scars. She would personify the gone child, register her birth (and death), celebrate her birthdays and even help other bereaved mothers connect better with their lost children. She would help them cherish long-lasting memory of the very short companionship with their children. Perhaps it is the best way to handle the grief and try to heal the deep scars. Perhaps it can add meaning to their lives and try to replenish the deep emotional void that they carry with them.
Seeing children of peers grow up into gorgeous human beings would certainly remind them repeatedly of their loss and lead to a lot of 'what if' in their minds. In in the meantime, perhaps the way they handle the loss and regroup themselves to move ahead in life is a testament of the tenacity of their emotional fabric. It is perhaps also the testament to the magnitude of parental and especially motherly love. No love can be greater.
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