a thoughtful time

I’m coming up on an anniversary of the beginning of a very sad time. For years it hasn’t made me sad anymore, more thoughtful around the end of April. I’ve written more specifically about it in this post. Today I was floating around the lazy river at the water park, being end-of-April thoughtful, and found a tiny baby bird just below the surface of the water. I scooped it out with my hand and put it gently under a plant.  Thoughtful meant I could not help remembering that I’d only held a dead baby in my hand that one time before.

And then also it’s almost exactly a year since we rescued a one-day-old kitten. We (mostly I) bottle fed her every 2 hours, then every 3 hours and eventually 4 hours, night and day for weeks.  For awhile not confidant she would live, nor really confident that I would cope well if she died, I was feeling in some tiny barely-and-reluctantly-acknowledged nook in my soul that she was some kind of chance to pick up where I left off and not fumble it this time (a day-old kitten is around the same size as a 16-week fetus).  I can’t believe I’m sharing this, and I probably wouldn’t be able to except that she is now sleek and fat, bigger and snugglier than either of our other cats and a special friend to our youngest, born three years after we lost the little brother.

A friend of mine has been through this baby-losing lately and reached out to me to see if I had any insight, experience, and support. I shared that post about Dhaka and some of what people said that was helpful and some of what was less helpful.

I’m reluctant to give advice here, to tell people how to feel or behave, because that seems like one of the most irritating and click-hungry areas of the Internet.  I’ve been deleting nearly everything in my FB feed that starts bossing me around. But. I have found the most interesting and helpful advice comes from people who have been through hard things and want to help you help other people who are going through hard things, because it’s difficult to know what to say or what people will need, even when we want desperately to be able to say it and provide it.

This is one that I like: http://articles.latimes.com/2013/apr/07/opinion/la-oe-0407-silk-ring-theory-20130407

I also like the one that’s been written by lots of people lots of different ways that suggests that asking a person to let you know if they need anything means that you might feel like you've done your part though the person in need will likely never ask you- so specific suggestions of ways in which you could help might be more likely to support people.

The one part I add, that helped me then and I have remembered ever since, is about woman who came in to me the morning after, to my bedside in the hospital in Bangkok, and simply told me that I was doing hard work. She was visiting in her role as a patient liaison person but had previously worked as a midwife there. She didn’t encourage me to think to future children or the ones I already had, she just met me right there and acknowledged the process and my place in it without hurrying me through it. The memory of this one encounter has stayed with me over the years, even as that work has eased, is the core of what I offered my friend, and is what I share with you as I’m passing through this thoughtful time.