Benches, Gardens, and a Ritual of Healing

October is National Perinatal Loss and Infant Death awareness month and as this is a topic close to my heart I like to spend my first blog for the month of October reflecting in this area. This is usually one of the blogs where the words come easy. This year it is different, I am not sure why but the words are not coming easy.

If you have been reading here a while you know I am a chaplain and have as one of my units the Maternity areas. I also serve on our hospital Maternity Bereavement Team. Each year on the first weekend in October we host a memorial walk for families who have experienced perinatal loss and infant death. This year was special because we also dedicated a garden space that is dedicated to remembering our little ones who have gone from our arms, but not from our hearts. Our team has been working for years to see this garden become a reality.

This past Sunday, I spent the early part of the afternoon speaking words of dedication, walking, remembering, and honoring our Hope alongside many other little ones. I was honored to remember the short life of a special little girl, who had a very special connection to the hospital I work at. It was her death and the gift of a bench by her family and friends that provided the momentum for the garden itself.

I personally felt deeply the gift of this bench. In preparing for the dedication, the family made it clear that it was their hope that the bench would be a place of comfort for all who walk this journey of loss and death of little ones. Their gracious expansion of the meaning of the bench beyond themselves is a blessed gift to me as the tangible places and things that mark our Hope’s presence in this world are few and far between.

My loss did not happen at a hospital, so the fact that the bereavement team has been intentional about the garden being for all who experience perinatal loss and infant death, no matter if it was at our hospital or not, is another gift. It is another small way of others saying my little one is special and had an important place in this world and is worth remembering. I know this as Hope’s mom, but to have other people and an institution say this in such a public way is a gift of healing that words fall short of conveying.

It has been a little over 6 years now since Hope died and Sunday was the first time since the small private service in our home that my family had gathered with intentionality remembering Hope’s presence in our family. This was the first time we had been as a family to a public memorial walk event. There were tears as we stood and listened to our Hope’s name read aloud by one of the nurses I work with and we walked to place our roses in front of the angel statue. My husband, daughter and I stood in a close hug with my parents not far behind us as we listened to all the other little ones name be read and honored. And for a small moment in time we were a part of people who shared a similar grief.

We have had moments of healing all along this journey and each has been Holy, but there was something very special and Holy and sacred sharing this time with my family that seemed to solidify my own healing as a bereaved mother.

My daughter stood at my side as I said prayers and spoke words of dedication. She held my hand as the two of us led the group on the walk. She shared with me as we walked that she finally feels ok in her own grief journey. She has really struggled to grieve her role as big sister and I have journeyed very intimately with her helping her young, tender heart deal with this very big grief. The healing power of ritual was very evident in her response to the afternoon. It was a very unique afternoon of my ministry as a chaplain and my role as a mother coming together, quite literally side by side. But again there was The Holy in this meeting up that I have not felt this strongly before and will cherish for many years to come.

As I come to the end of the struggle to put these words to writing, I am realizing what the power of the day was for me. I finally experienced a public ritual of remembering my little one. The day may not have been all about our baby Hope, and we were sharing the ritual with many others. But then, perhaps that was the power of the day. We shared our common grief in ritual and that is healing.