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.

Coming into the Family of God

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that I was participating in a discipleship class with my daughter. Only I was not leading the class, I was present as my daughter’s mentor. Each day we had a bit of reading and discussion from the book we were using, “Baptism Ahead.” We met for five weeks with a two other kids and their parents. This has been a wonderful journey to be on with C. I am humbled to admit that it was not only C that learned on this journey. I discovered that I too had much to learn. I had to learn to step back and let her guide me and by doing so we went to some amazing unintended places off the curriculum path discussing about diversity of our world and the image of God as male and female, to name a couple. I was blessed to hear some of her deepest thoughts and wonderings. I was also blessed to rediscover some of the simpler, pure, faith filled answers that can come only from the eyes and heart of a child. More than once in this time the phrase “and a little child shall lead them” came to mind. This preparation experience was a sacred meeting of the place where my role as mother meets my experience and training as clergy.

Even at the tender age of seven it became very clear that she had a deep understanding of what it means to be disciple and so I was not surprised when she told us that she was ready to accept Christ and be baptized. I found myself appreciating this at an even deeper level having been present to some of her innermost thoughts coming to this decision. What I was not prepared for was the way my soul jumped and sang with joy as she asked me to be the one to baptize her. Our church has a tradition of doing baptisms in a local lake and parents or important mentors being in the water with the baptism candidate and our pastor. We were to get the privilege of being the ones to do the baptizing. Even knowing this would be what would happen, it was nice to have C acknowledge that she wanted me to be an integral part of this sacrament.

Today we celebrated her baptism. Before we went to the lake we sat down as a family to give C a family blessing and equipping. Her Grammie and Boppa, my parents, gave her a Bible, my husband gave her a CD of music familiar to her from worship, and I gave her a cross that had been given to my mom, who gave it to me when I was in need of a cross. We each spoke words of why we were giving her these gifts, these tools for her faith journey. I spoke about how these were more than just gifts, but our way of equipping her for her ongoing path of discipleship.

Even at a young age, she gets the importance of ritual and how important this day is to her. This was deeply evident by her words in the car to the lake. She spoke about how excited she was to gain so many brothers and sisters in Christ. To hear her connect so deeply to this gaining of family gives me pause. To have such words of welcome and belonging being spoken by her reminds me of the many ways church has been family to me. Hearing it from her, nudges me to remember that more intentionally.

Standing in the water listening to the words of baptism I remembered the day my own father, also an American Baptist Pastor, baptized me and marveled at how I was blessed to do the same for my daughter. The ritual of baptism, as we practice it, is simple in and of itself. When you add the layers of family and church tradition, it becomes more than a simple ritual, it becomes a sacrament beautiful and life giving. The baptism began with our pastor speaking the words of baptism, my daughter making her profession of faith and my husband and I laying her back into the water and bringing her up out of the waters with a glowing, smiling face to the celebratory clapping and cheers of her church family who is so important to her. And much like Mary, I cherished all of these things in my heart.

The service concluded with communion. I was blessed to serve my daughter her first communion. I was even more blessed to be the first person she served communion to. To the accompaniment of Amazing Grace I watched her serve our church family communion with her other newly baptized brothers and sisters in the faith. I got teary and my heart grew just a bit more knowing I was once again in that holy place where my motherhood runs smack into my ministry. I am left with no deep theological thoughts, only deep, deep awe at the grace that runs so fully in this place.