Did you know there is within the Catholic Church, a blessing offered to parents who are grieving the loss of a child through miscarriage or stillbirth?
It’s one of those things I think I may have known but forgotten — and I wish I’d known it when my husband and I were experiencing the horror of miscarrying. Our daughter would be 29, now, and no, you never forget the birthdays and school plays and Christmases you didn’t get to have with them.
I was reminded of the blessing after writing a piece for OSV about a new song by Taylor Swift, which many fans believe is about a miscarriage. Certainly her lyrics are evocative of my thoughts and feelings during that terrible time.
Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye
You were bigger than the whole sky
You were more than just a short time
And I’ve got a lot to pine about
I’ve got a lot to live without …”
Women who have suffered a miscarriage will tell you that the loss, usually inexplicable, feels like a promise left unkept, a denial of what seemed a new force of unlimited potential, and a new expression of love, taken away before the world had seen its beauty, rather like a flake of snow, melted before it ever reached the ground.
“I’m never gonna meet
What could’ve been, would’ve been
What should’ve been you
What could’ve been, would’ve been you …”
You can find the lyric video of “Bigger Than the Whole Sky” here.
The crux of my piece is that we don’t talk enough about miscarriages and stillborn children, and that largely because we simply don’t know what to say. But we should. We should acknowledge the grief that is real, and all the questions that come with it, and reassure mothers who bear the pain of self-doubt and all the questions about what we may or may have done to precipitate our loss, when the answer most often is “nothing… you did nothing and no one is to blame”. More talking is always good. And perhaps, along with the blessing the Church can impart to a grieve couple, I wonder if annual diocesan Masses of remembrance wouldn’t be an offering of consolation for such parents, in community with the whole Church.
“I’m never gonna meet
What could’ve been, would’ve been
What should’ve been you
What could’ve been, would’ve been you …”
_(RA)_-_Youth_Mourning.jpg){kind=link}