Making Room For Other Things

"Ain't no shame in holding on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too."  - Reginald “Bubbles” Cousins, The Wire, Season 5

The newest addition to our family is chugging along at 30 weeks in Melissa’s belly.  It’s a baby girl.  The series of doctors visits have been medically uneventful, except that we both still get PTSD symptoms from being in those offices — on at least one occasion we had to reassure the OB that Melissa’s heart rate and blood pressure are actually quite normal according to our frequent home monitoring systems.

I guess we are both just bracing ourselves for the potential bad news.

It’s not that we are pessimistic people — quite the contrary — we are, on the whole, rather hopeful and positive.  But when Louie died due to unknown causes, with very little warning, and outside of anything I (or Melissa) could control, there were a few things that cemented inside of me:

(1) I am not entitled to, nor should I expect, my plans to come to fruition;

(2) The most important things in life are out of my control;

(3) Painful acceptance of the fact that God often does not prevent unimaginably horrible things from happening to people;

I guess when you add it all up, I am still hopeful about life and people, and less certain that we can have any say in the matter.


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For most of the past year, Melissa and I have been in a process of grief, anger, and sadness.  It’s been so challenging that it’s hard to really put into words.  I don’t wish even on my worst enemy to have to bury their own child.  When we found out we were pregnant again last winter, it was with such a tremendous mix of emotions - relief that our “plumbing” still worked, fear that we would lose another kid, uncertainty about what that meant for remembering Louie, and wondering whether we could survive the roller-coaster that goes with a pregnancy after loss.  When you lose something so great, sometimes the sorrow seems to fill up every available space.  Would we have anything left for this child?

**a couple of Louie's memorial cards designed by some of our artistic and caring friends on display in our living room**


We have sat this past 6 months in the juxtaposition between losing a child and waiting for another one — and I have found that there is room enough for more than just sadness and anger.  I have laid in the grass next to Louie’s grave while writing a letter to my unborn daughter.  We have smiled at the ultrasounds on the screen in one moment while in the next moment explaining to the doctor what happened to her older brother.  The maternity clothes painfully packed away a year ago are making fresh appearances again.  

In probably the greatest TV series ever created, The Wire, one of the most poignant moments in Season 5 has Bubbles, a recovering addict, sharing his thoughts on guilt and grief.  His inability to conquer his own demons directly led to the death of a young kid for whom he had been a father figure and mentor. This caused him to spiral into intense shame, guilt, and grief.  After a long period of healing and reflection, he concluded, "Ain't no shame in holding on to grief, as long as you make room for other things too.”  It’s perfectly put.

Despite others' well-intentioned advice to "move on" and "be positive", we hold steadfast to our dead son's memory and continue to let our love for him manifest itself in its many forms.  But rather than allowing ourselves to be completely dominated by this, we are doing as Bubbles suggests -- beginning to make room for other things -- and I am discovering that there is a lot more space in my heart than I ever knew.

To my baby girl -- we are making room for you.  And we can't wait for you to arrive.