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December 31, 2009
New Years Eve
Trying to catch up with the blog, like any who must have read it, I was moved by Annas post before Christmas about her friends who lost their baby. All heightened no doubt, in the season of babies. In the last 3 months, 5 people I know have had babies. 2 are beloved firstborns hatched without a hitch, 1 was a miraculous accident born to my friends in their late 40s, also safe and sound and incredibly so, another was born with Downs, and another was stillborn. This is a prayer I wrote for the parents of the stillborn baby, mindful too, of Annas friends.
May the God of all consolation hold you
In gentle mercy at this time.
I give thanks for N, who is and will always be
Child of your flesh
Bone of your bone.
May you not be comfortless in the dark emptiness of night
But let your troubled spirits rest
In the quiet waters of sorrow
Where memory is healed,
dreams are restored,
And the reflection of N is never lost
But shines on your lives as you journey on
Until yours are joined eternally with hers/his
In the deep peace of God which keeps us always.
Thinking about all this reminded me of saying goodbye to someone at work who was leaving the week before Christmas. He had had a shitty year and we had been sharing it as it happened. I was foolishly trying to make sense of some of it in retrospect and he said what I actually believe: It just is. In my paid work in the hospital, every day is full of the shitty end of random. People naturally ask me to make sense of what happens and I say there is no sense. It just is. I myself try to make sense of shit that happens in my own life even though I always conclude that it just is. The urge to make sense of it is so strong. People tell me I am faithless for saying it just is, that my view of life is too chaotic. It is a less frightening option for me than one where it is part of a plan that babies die. But random is also very frightening and I find myself trying to guard against it by making sense where there is none.
On New Years Eve, like others, I will bring to mind my hopes and fears, especially my hopes but the truth is, who knows? Who knows what any of us stand on the threshold of? Who would have thunk 2009? I have just ordered a book by Carol Ann Duffy called The Lost Happy Endings. It is a brilliant title – havent read the book. I admit Im a sucker for happy endings – see prayer above, but Im more and more convinced as each year goes by, that the happy ending is how we wove in the shit – how we handled those threads and made them part of everything. Even though weve got no idea why they had to be there at all.
Posted by Tess at December 31, 2009 09:05 AM