On Coping With Death and Pregnancy
“The life you carry inside of you is equivalent to the one you’ve lost,” that was how this particular sympathy message began. I closed the card and looked again at the reproduction of the watercolor on the front: a purple iris or something like it. I considered tearing it up but urged myself to give it the opportunity to bring me some relief. The rest of the message carried on uneventfully. I tore it up. I didn’t always give them this opportunity. Some cards were torn up while still in their envelopes. I found that I grew anxious when one appeared with the daily mail. I would avoid it. I would read the bills first or the junk mail. When I finally picked up the card I would examine the stamp, the address, the penmanship or the post mark and date. I would open them slowly and wonder for moments about the art. What had made the sender choose this card? Why do so many display flowers or sailing ships? At other times I would tear into them quite recklessly, an attempt to destroy the contents perhaps. Then I would open it and search for that seemingly omnipresent line. It appeared in many forms but most commonly it went something like, “ the cycle of life and death is a mystery. You are mourning now but soon you will rejoice,” if far less poetic.
Two months ago my Dad died followed one week later by my grandmother. Two months from now I will deliver my second son. When I told my parents that we were expecting a second baby in seemed my father had replied with great joy and excitement. However, in the weeks leading up to his death I began to wonder if I’d made up that response. I began to recall a look of concern, panic, perhaps sadness. A crooked smile had slowly climbed up just one side of his face. His eyebrows heaved high into his forehead, perhaps to conceal the tears in his eyes. He had laughed softly and looked to my mother, as he often did when his emotions were threatening to show themselves. It seems clear now that he was probably beginning to feel the effects of his disease. Our announcement gave him one more thing to live for or one more thing to lose. My mother, brothers and I have spent many hours now recounting the signs we seemed to have missed. His once stout and thick frame had become brittle and tenuous. As a child I had watched him vigorously knead dough and chop the firmest of vegetables with great precision and ease. Now his hands shook when he lifted his plate and he repeatedly became frustrated with their weakness. His shiny black hair was suddenly a glistening silver. The shape of his bones were apparent even through his clothes. His arms were thrust behind his back hanging as awkwardly as a chimpanzees, bent at the elbow, as if he were prepared at any given moment to fall or fly away. His shoulders were constantly drawn up towards his jaw. As I watched him during his final days and later at his wake I recalled the great deal of attention I had paid to my father’s large nose, the only evidence of his, ever so slight, Jewish heritage. It seemed to become larger and more pronounced as everything around it sank, shrunk, stiffened or broke.
In truth, I had always worried I would develop a similar nose. It is often said that I resemble my father quite remarkably. I have his darker skin and excessively round features. We each have thick lips that jut off of our faces as though we’re prepared to kiss everyone we see. We each have very wide and flat feet. For years I had attempted to deny or hide these similarities; now I stare into the mirror and try to recall my Dad. Oh how mischievous and youthful he so often appeared when he discovered a joke or poked fun at one of us! I try to see in my own eyes the glimmer that would fire across his. During his final weeks everyone seemed to find comfort in our similarities. They would shake their heads and say, “you’re so much like him.” They would put their hands on my budding belly and say, “you will carry him onward.”
I heard the latter message so often that I began to feel a sense of shame and guilt. I did not want to carry my father onward in myself or in my unborn child. I wanted my Dad to stay just where he was. I began to feel as though I had made a choice to give him up in exchange for a new child. I felt trapped between the two of them. Who should I choose? I determined that the best solution was not to move forward or backward. If we could stay just where we were my Dad would still be here and my baby would still be on his way, each trapped somewhere in perpetual states of dying or developing. I clung to this sentiment for weeks, until my Father’s suffering became undeniable and he passed from this life.
At his wake my mother, brothers, aunt, uncles and I stood in line to receive the mourners. We shook their hands and accepted their tearful embraces. At times they would grow inconsolable. We led a few women back to their seats after it appeared they might faint. One woman did faint. My own feelings seemed tucked tightly within me. I saw it as a duty to comfort the people that had come to say farewell to my father. I stood erect, my hands folded across my belly. As the mourners approached I would smile and apologize. I would wipe their tears or hand them tissues. For the most part, I was able to maintain this stoic facade. Then a mourner would approach, his or her hands prepared to cradle my belly, a wimpish smile upon their face, “The cycle of life,” they might say. Suddenly here again was that message, “Your father is dead now but your son will take his place.” How sick I became of that sentiment. How warped and unhealthy it came to feel. In the weeks to come the message would be delivered to my door day after day.
Initially, I had very high hopes for sympathy cards. I would open them eagerly and search for some sort of clarification. I wanted the writer to tell me how to navigate all of this grief. Would it end soon? How had they coped with their own grief? Most of all I think I wanted them to tell me how to get my father back - the hard reality I was unwilling to face. Sympathy cards, in my opinion, did not follow through. They didn’t do their job. I told family and friends that sympathy cards were useless, a waste of money and resources. I was rather verbose regarding my repugnance of them. I would spend extended periods of time complaining about them, even when I hadn’t received one.
Depending on who you consult, there are five or seven stages of mourning. In either case, stage two is anger. It has dawned on me lately that sympathy cards may have served as a scapegoat. Perhaps this loathing for them was really my own manifestation of stage two? These inanimate objects that arrived readily each day and were somehow connected to some human could have been serving as a safer, more comfortable alternative to an actual human. It is only recently that I have stopped receiving cards. It would be dishonest of me to say that I’m not a little disappointed by this. With whom am I supposed to express stage two now?
Epilogue
You’ll be as surprised as me to find that I actually sent two sympathy cards myself last week. I did not examine the art, nor did I pay much attention to the printed message inside. I simply wanted someone I care for to know I was thinking of them in their time of grief.
