Whose loss is worse?
In the days and weeks after Isabella died, my husband and I played a "game" where we would try and come up with situations which would have been better or worse.
For example, "it would have been harder if she had died unexpectedly at home." Or, "it would have been easier if we had known during pregnancy that she likely would have died." Or, "it would have been harder if she was six years old, but at least then we would have known her better."
This "game," for lack of a better word, was an attempt to help make sense of our unexpected loss. Our hearts were breaking and we yearned to find something that would help explain the unexplainable and make us feel better. Yet, we never felt better.
Yes, had she died at age six, we would have known her better. But it would not have hurt any less, or likely any more, to bury our child at age six. We would have had more memories, but we still would have had unrealized dreams.
One of the books we read said (to paraphrase), "on a scale of 1 to 10, burying a child is always a 10." Was burying our newborn daughter a 10? Yes. Would burying six-year-old daughter be a 10? Yes. Would burying a 46 or 62-year-old daughter be a 10? Yes.
Parents should never bury their children. At some point I realized that we would never have enough time with our daughter. Thirty-eight weeks of pregnancy plus 29.5 hours outside of me was not enough time. Even had we buried Isabella when she was 62 and we were in our 90s, we still would not have enough time with her. Regardless of when a child dies, parents always have more dreams for them.
A few weeks after we buried Isabella, we met a couple through mutual friends who had also lost their daughter named Isabella, after a healthy pregnancy. They gave us a book by Jerry Sittser called, A Grace Disguised. He wrote this book a few years after losing his mother, his wife, and his daughter in a car crash. His reflections throughout the book have helped us process Isabella's death. The second chapter was titled, "Whose Loss is Worse?" The chapter helped us lay to rest the "it would have been better or worse" game.
Sittser wrote, "I question whether experiences of such severe loss can be quantified and compared. Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances. All losses are bad, only bad in different ways...What makes each loss so catastrophic is its devastating, cumulative, and irreversible nature. What value is there to quantifying and comparing losses?" (page 33).
I've had to remind myself over the last few months that "loss is loss." My loss is different than all other losses because no one else's experience of loss is the same. Even other parents who had to bury a newborn have a different story of loss.
Last week I started attending a Bible study for women who have lost children through miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. I've had to remind myself that losses are different, but loss is loss. There are five of us in the study. Two women had miscarriages at about nine weeks, two others lost their babies at twenty-odd weeks, and I lost Isabella at thirty-eight weeks. I'm praying that God continues to open my heart to understanding loss. To be honest, I think that a miscarriage for me would be about a three to four on the scale, but I have never had a miscarriage, so I don't know. I do know that these women's hearts are aching for their baby.
The last page of Sittser's chapter about comparing loss has the following paragraph.
I pray that God continues to change my heart to be open to others' experiences of loss as loss. I do not want to indulge myself with my "pain and gain a strange kind of pleasure" in my misery. I also pray I never experience the pain of a miscarriage and find out how much my heart would break through that loss. The journey of loss is excruciating and I trust God will use our loss to grow us and continue to refine us to become more like his son. This is our story and only God knows how it will unfold.
For example, "it would have been harder if she had died unexpectedly at home." Or, "it would have been easier if we had known during pregnancy that she likely would have died." Or, "it would have been harder if she was six years old, but at least then we would have known her better."
This "game," for lack of a better word, was an attempt to help make sense of our unexpected loss. Our hearts were breaking and we yearned to find something that would help explain the unexplainable and make us feel better. Yet, we never felt better.
Yes, had she died at age six, we would have known her better. But it would not have hurt any less, or likely any more, to bury our child at age six. We would have had more memories, but we still would have had unrealized dreams.
One of the books we read said (to paraphrase), "on a scale of 1 to 10, burying a child is always a 10." Was burying our newborn daughter a 10? Yes. Would burying six-year-old daughter be a 10? Yes. Would burying a 46 or 62-year-old daughter be a 10? Yes.
Parents should never bury their children. At some point I realized that we would never have enough time with our daughter. Thirty-eight weeks of pregnancy plus 29.5 hours outside of me was not enough time. Even had we buried Isabella when she was 62 and we were in our 90s, we still would not have enough time with her. Regardless of when a child dies, parents always have more dreams for them.
A few weeks after we buried Isabella, we met a couple through mutual friends who had also lost their daughter named Isabella, after a healthy pregnancy. They gave us a book by Jerry Sittser called, A Grace Disguised. He wrote this book a few years after losing his mother, his wife, and his daughter in a car crash. His reflections throughout the book have helped us process Isabella's death. The second chapter was titled, "Whose Loss is Worse?" The chapter helped us lay to rest the "it would have been better or worse" game.
Sittser wrote, "I question whether experiences of such severe loss can be quantified and compared. Loss is loss, whatever the circumstances. All losses are bad, only bad in different ways...What makes each loss so catastrophic is its devastating, cumulative, and irreversible nature. What value is there to quantifying and comparing losses?" (page 33).
I've had to remind myself over the last few months that "loss is loss." My loss is different than all other losses because no one else's experience of loss is the same. Even other parents who had to bury a newborn have a different story of loss.
Last week I started attending a Bible study for women who have lost children through miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. I've had to remind myself that losses are different, but loss is loss. There are five of us in the study. Two women had miscarriages at about nine weeks, two others lost their babies at twenty-odd weeks, and I lost Isabella at thirty-eight weeks. I'm praying that God continues to open my heart to understanding loss. To be honest, I think that a miscarriage for me would be about a three to four on the scale, but I have never had a miscarriage, so I don't know. I do know that these women's hearts are aching for their baby.
The last page of Sittser's chapter about comparing loss has the following paragraph.
Catastrophic loss of whatever kind is always bad, only bad in different ways. It is impossible to quantify and to compare. The very attempt we often make in quantifying losses only exacerbates the loss by driving us to two unhealthy extremes. On the one hand, those coming out on the losing end of the comparison are deprived of the validation they need to identify and experience the loss for the bad thing it is. They sometimes feel like the little boy who just scratched his finger but cried too hard to receive much sympathy. Their loss is dismissed as unworthy of attention and recognition. On the other hand, those coming out on the winning end convince themselves that no one has suffered as much as they have, that no one will ever understand them, and that no one can offer lasting help. They are the ultimate victims. So they indulge themselves with their pain and gain a strange kind of pleasure in their misery. Whose loss is worse? The question begs the point. Each experience of loss is unique, each painful in its own way, each as bad as everyone else's but also different.(Page 38, italics added)
I pray that God continues to change my heart to be open to others' experiences of loss as loss. I do not want to indulge myself with my "pain and gain a strange kind of pleasure" in my misery. I also pray I never experience the pain of a miscarriage and find out how much my heart would break through that loss. The journey of loss is excruciating and I trust God will use our loss to grow us and continue to refine us to become more like his son. This is our story and only God knows how it will unfold.
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