Requiem for Joseph

JESUS called them unto him and said, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.

HE shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arms, and carry them in his bosom and shall gently lead those that are with young.

I love new babies. I've helped a couple hundred birth babies and the sweetest thing is new mothers, tenderly caressing tiny fingers, toes, and dressing them in outfits they carefully picked.

I never thought I'd bring one home from the hospital they way I did today. With count-able fingers and toes, visible sweet little body parts but wrapped in a four inch piece of gauze, put in a denture container with my name and PRODUCTS OF CONCEPTION emblazoned in red ink, wrapped in a baby blanket and put in a white box tied with a white ribbon. Oh and some pamphets on grieving.

My dear friend Sherry was a perinatal nurse who was the one on the L&D floor who was "good" with the fetal demises, the stillbirths, and the families whose babies died. She has been precious to me, reminding me that despite what people think an early and mid-pregnancy loss is hard because you don't have as much time to "know" your pregnancy -- and every mother notices how strong/mellow/active her unborn baby is -- and you may be ok or you may be devastated. It will vary from day to day. Sherry is a nurse who helped me give birth to Mary Ellis, Fairlie, and John Garland. She's also arranging a burial for our sixth child, Joseph, who died in the womb.

Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.

I simply have to hold that Joseph and other tiny humans lost in the womb, whether as a clump of cells, or as a term stillborn or somewhere in between sees the face of our Father in heaven. This is a perspective held by the church in antiquity, and Orthodox Jews, ancient and modern, that conception, not viability, not quickening, and not birth, is the moment when the body and soul collide. (Most of the church universal acknowledges, if not celebrates the conception of John the Baptist, Jesus, and His Blessed Mother.) Was it C.S. Lewis who said that we aren't bodies with souls, we are souls with bodies? I think so.


I'm blessed. I had a compassionate staff at St. Vincents, a nun to pray with me, and left the hospital with Joseph's remains. In my loopy, Versed-inspired pre-operative stupor, I'm told that I embarrassed the anesthesiologist by calling him Dr. McDreamy.

I remember my elderly aunt, who died in her 90s, had lost two babies in the 1930s. A friend of the family had attended a funeral for a baby and my elderly aunt, on her deathbed was aghast, and heartbroken, that there was a such thing as a baby funeral. No one told her that when her babies died. Oh, sweet Aunt Alliene, your babies aren't forgotten here. I have several friends who ended pregnancies, voluntarily, decades ago, while living in the grasp of hedonism, who, years later, also grieve those humans. They aren't forgotten either.

O GOD, whose most dear Son did take little children into his arms and bless them; Give us grace, we beseech thee, to entrust the soul of this child to thy neverfailing care and love, and bring us all to thy heavenly kingdom; through the same thy Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (1928 Book of Common Prayer)

Joseph, God willing, will be laid to rest with a proper burial on Monday at a beautiful Catholic monastery with a cemetery for the unborn. Meanwhile, he will repose in our refrigerator next to the kale and above the beer for tomorrow's football game.

I can't let one more day pass without telling you guys how much I love you and how much you mean to me, and thank you for being you.