What Cannot Be Said Will Be Wept

The ancient Greek poet Sappho, a woman with a brilliant mind for descriptive and searing language about love, and sorrow, is credited with one of my favorite quotes...and the title of this particular entry. My mind and my heart have been so heavy of late, as I have been busy in one of my most sacred callings - holding space for mothers who have lost their babies. Most recently a mother gave birth to a little girl with previously unknown genetic abnormalities, which resulted in the baby's death after only a day. And then I was called to a stillbirth, where the parents found out only that day that their child's heart had stopped beating. Labor was induced, and I was called by the hospital chaplain to come and serve the family in their darkest, most surreal...and still beautiful moments.

These are moments no one ever imagines until they are faced with them. So often I sit with these mothers and fathers too, and there are no words to be said. The grieving parents cannot say their incomprehensible sorrow. Oh, but they weep! Nothing I can say will help them, make them feel better, or change anything at all, but I am not afraid to weep with and for them. You cannot be with these mothers and not love them. Empathy and compassion demands that you grieve with them. It sometimes feels very personal, perhaps because I have wept over my own loss too.

At a memorial service for the sweet little girl I mentioned first, the preacher said "When we cannot pray words, we pray in tears or just gaping, wordless sorrow." What cannot be said will be wept. I have felt the weight of a mother's profound grief so heavily that I have prayed gaping, wordless sorrow. I pray for their peace. I pray for my own, as I help them navigate a new life in which everything is different because their arms are empty of the babies they expected to hold.

Eventually, the mothers (and fathers) do begin to talk, and when they cannot talk they cry...and sometimes they do both at the same time, but the tears are always words that cannot or will not be said, kisses that won't be left upon soft little noses, sweet baby breaths that will never be felt on her skin, contented sighs at her breast that she'll never hear. Each tear accounts for a precious moment in time that she will miss.