Twenty Weeks and a Name on a Form

There was a form and it had a space on it, and somebody handed it to her in a room, kindly, and she wrote a name in the space.

They had chosen it in the car about three weeks earlier and laughed about it.

Twenty weeks. Far enough that there had been a scan picture on a fridge. Far enough that two people at work knew and a sister had bought something small. Not far enough, apparently, for the world to have any language for it at all.

That is the thing she has run into over and over since. There is no word. There is nothing anybody says. A colleague said something about how at least it was early, and meant well, and had no idea that a woman had given birth.

Because that is the part people do not know unless they know. At twenty weeks she went through it. There was a labor. There was a room, and a midwife who was extraordinary, and a small weight, and photographs that live in a drawer and that she has looked at perhaps eleven times.

And there was a name on a form.

Now it is four months on and nobody says the name. Not her mother, who cries if it comes up. Not her husband, who deals with things by dealing with things. Not one person at work.

So the name sits in her, unsaid, and she has begun to feel that the silence is turning her daughter into something that did not quite happen.

That is you, and she happened.

What nobody should say to you, and I will not

I am not going to tell you there was a reason. I do not know one, and the reasons people offer at times like this are almost always constructed to relieve the discomfort of the person speaking.

I am not going to tell you she is in a better place as though that closed the subject. Whatever is true about where she is, it does not undo the fact that she is not here, and you are the one who was carrying her. Scripture holds that ground in 2 Samuel 12:23, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

I am not going to tell you this was anything to do with what you did, ate, lifted, worried about, or believed. It was not. That thought has visited you at three in the morning and it is a liar, and it needs saying plainly rather than gently.

And I am not going to tell you when this gets easier. Nobody can.

You are not being punished and you did not cause this. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and it is nearness offered rather than an explanation given, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a room with a drawer of photographs at three in the morning.

What David said

There is a moment in 2 Samuel where a man loses a baby, and what he says has been misread for centuries as coldness and is nothing of the sort.

But now he is dead, wherefore should I fast? can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.2 Samuel 12:23

He had been on the floor for seven days. He would not eat. When the child died his servants were afraid to tell him because they thought he would come apart.

And then he got up, and he washed, and he said that.

Read the last line slowly, because it is the whole of what I have to give you today. I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

He does not say the child is gone. He says the direction of travel is one way. He speaks about a person he expects to go to, which means he is talking about somebody who exists, in the future tense, in a place he is heading.

That is a father who has just lost a baby saying, out loud, in Scripture, that the child is somewhere and that he is going there.

And notice what else it does. It gives you permission to get up and wash and eat, without that meaning you have stopped. David did both.

You are not grieving somebody who did not quite exist. Scripture says I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me, 2 Samuel 12:23, and it is spoken of a real person in a real place by a man God did not correct, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ancient line hold weight in a house four months on.

She was a person and she has a name

The thing that is hurting you most right now is not the loss. It is the erasure.

There is a specific cruelty in a loss that the world does not have a slot for. Somebody dies at eighty and there is a funeral, a notice, a week of people coming round, and a permanent social agreement that this person existed.

Your daughter got a form.

And so the ordinary machinery of grief, which is other people saying the name, has never started, and without it you are carrying not only her death but the entire responsibility for her having been real. This rests on Scripture in 2 Samuel 12:23, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

That is far too much for one person and it is why the silence has begun to feel unbearable.

She was a person. She had a name, chosen in a car by two people who were laughing. The form is not the measure of her.

You are not the only one who has to hold her existence. Scripture says thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book, Psalm 56:8, and it describes a God who keeps a record of grief itself, and the Holy Spirit is not a witness who needs reminding that she was here.

Break the silence yourself

I know this is unfair. You are the most wounded person in this and you are going to have to be the one who starts it, because everybody around you is frozen and they are frozen out of fear of hurting you. Scripture already said it in 2 Samuel 12:23, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.

Say her name to your husband. Out loud, at an ordinary moment, not as an event. He is not avoiding her; he is avoiding causing you pain, and he has no idea that the avoidance is the pain.

Say it to your mother even though she cries. Her crying is not a reason to stop, and it is not you doing damage. It is a grandmother grieving a granddaughter, which is a real relationship and one she has also never been allowed to name.

And find one person outside it. A baby loss charity, and there are good ones, has a room full of people who will say her name back to you without flinching. That single experience, of hearing somebody else say it, is worth more than any advice on this page.

You are not required to protect everybody from her. Scripture says weep with them that weep, Romans 12:15, and it is an instruction to the people around you rather than a demand on you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a frozen family into saying a name out loud.