It could have been a birthday celebration. Happy Birthday to our middle daughter.

Instead, we went to the cemetery.

A Thousand Little Deaths

If Kali had lived her first day, and the day after, and the day after, I would have been more eager to live those days, too.

But instead, when she died on Day 1, November 13, born premature and with severe problems, part of me wanted to die, too.

Don’t we all die a thousand little deaths throughout our lives? Don’t we all collect bruises on our souls?

The author of Psalm 118 certainly had his own little deaths. He knew about prisons and enemies and destruction. He (and the Hebrew people collectively) had been pushed hard.

But at this point he had not been handed all the way over to death (Psalm 118:18).

Others had died. Why not him? Why not me? Why not you? Why not yet?

Resurrect One Slow Breath at a Time

It took me awhile to understand why I was still living without my baby to care for.

Resurrection is sometimes instantaneous. But sometimes resurrection only comes one slow Spirit-breath at a time.

For me, resurrection was one small thing at a time—a friend bringing dinner after my C-section, a sympathy card in the mailbox, a flower left on Kali’s grave.

And resurrection was one person at a time—a gentle hug, a conversation mentioning Kali by name, an empathetic ear.

Each small thing reminded me I had big reasons to still be here.

• I had my husband Jeff who loved me (and was grieving too),
• my 4-yr-old daughter Morgan who needed her mommy, and
• a God determined for me to know joy again.

(And unknown to me, another reason to still be here was on the horizon: a third daughter, Jenna, later to be conceived, born, loved.)

It is for the living we stay. For the loving. For the Lord.

You Still Have Purpose

If you are here reading this—as I am still here writing it—the Lord still has purpose here for you, too.

Even if you’ve come to the very rim of death, or are in crisis of a little death even today, know that God kept you from falling over the edge for now, for a reason.

You still have . . .

• living to do
• love to give
• praise to proclaim

God can empower a thousand little resurrections over your thousand little deaths.

So even though I am sad today that Kali has not been here in the flesh for 26 years, I can proclaim with confidence along with the psalmist in Psalm 118: “The Lord is powerful!” (Psalm 118:15 CEV)

Even when I don’t understand death, I can trust resurrection.

I have lived to tell what the Lord has done.

* * *

Do you know why you are still here? You are here to love somebody this week. Someone is here to love you. Please share in the comments.

• More on infant loss and my journey with Kali

Updated from the archives

“The journey burns away all the nonsense in your life, including your own sense of control.”
– Dr. Melissa McCrory Hatcher, The Cleansing Flood

Please Don’t Leave

I was 31 years old. I’d been away on trips many times.

But I’d never felt so torn about leaving home than this time. This time would be my first out-of-town trip without our newest daughter.

We wouldn’t be leaving her with grandparents. We would be leaving her alone, at the cemetery, where we had buried her months earlier.

And though it was totally illogical, I didn’t want to leave town. I didn’t want to be so far away from where our baby girl Kali was buried.

A Terrifying Love

That was twenty five years ago. But no matter, it felt like yesterday when I read this following passage in The Cleansing Flood, by Dr. Melissa McCrory Hatcher:

“Now they’re calling us to board.
We get in line.
They scan my ticket.
Snap. The door shuts behind me.

The door they can’t open.
‘I can’t leave my son,’ she hears me say.

The plane takes off without me.”

Melissa wrote this about her own trip, one she was supposed to take without her son, also a child buried in the ground.

I first met Melissa four years ago at a silent retreat. We were learning about Centering Prayer. Even through the silence, I sensed she was heavy with pain. And indeed she was.

She was grieving the loss of her perfectly-healthy toddler to SUDC, sudden unexplained death in childhood (the ugly twin of SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome).

Melissa writes,

“Do you remember when sleeping children didn’t look like corpses?
Now, the checks are for breathing monitors.
The Angel of Death did not Pass us Over.
We verify the bloodstains on our doorframes,
confirm the bread is unleavened.
‘Please, please,
please don’t steal another healthy child from us.'”

Does it get more heart-wrenching than this?

Melissa has just released these thoughts into the world in her memoir of the grief journey, The Cleansing Flood.

If you dare, read it.

It will move you. Back and forth and back and forth. Melissa’s poetry is both gentle and breath-taking as she describes the pain of grief and the joy of motherhood.

She reeled me in immediately, in the first lines of her dedication:

“This book is dedicated to my living children. When we’re all old and gray, I intend to say, ‘I didn’t miss you because I missed him.’ I fought to be present and joyful and grateful for YOU.”

Still Worth It

This book is a fight. But it’s a victorious battle. Not because the grief disappears. It doesn’t. You never “get over” losing a child. But you learn to manage it.

You incorporate the loss into who you are.

If you’ve felt such loss yourself, or know someone who has, or want to understand how the loss can feel, grab a copy of this memoir. It’s only 128 pages.

But those pages hold more meaning than most other books twice their length.

“Even if I live to be 100, and I have to endure all those days, weeks, and months without you, I’ll still spend more time in eternity with you than I ever did without you in this life.

Even if I had known this would happen, I still would have raced across the world to make you my son. I still have absolute certainty that you were supposed to be in our family, even if only for a short time.”

Yes.

“This book is a testimony to the fact that when everything else is stripped away in a crucible of fiery pain, Jesus is still there…even if you’re angry at him. Grief journeys are not straight paths.”

Also, yes.

On the Path

On that day twenty five years ago, I came up with a work-around solution: I decided I could leave town if I put someone else in charge of watching over my baby Kali.

A friend agreed to be on call for me. If I needed her to run to the cemetery while I was gone, if I had an irrational moment of panic, she would do it.

I did leave town for the weekend. I made it. So did my baby, as I knew in my head that she would.

The head and the heart don’t always travel down the same paths.

* * *

Dr. Melissa McCrory Hatcher is also the author of two excellent seasonal devotionals:

• Ordering our Affections: Advent
• Ordering our Affections: Lent

My Aunt Shirley died last Friday.

She was the precious wife for many years of my mother’s brother, Ralph. Because Jeff and I were too far away on a trip of our own through the weekend, I didn’t get to go to Aunt Shirley’s funeral. That bothered me. I wanted to see my cousins, my other aunts and uncles, my own siblings there.

I didn’t get to hear the words about Aunt Shirley’s life. I didn’t get to see her body one more time.

And I didn’t get to see where she was buried. In that quiet little cemetery in small-town Mississippi.

Immediately after my baby Kali’s funeral years ago, I think those in charge wanted me to leave after Amen, to come back an hour later—after the burial—instead of standing there to watch it.

But I had to stay. I had to see the dirt, shovel by shovel, dumped over her tiny little casket. I needed it for closure.

Two days before the first Easter, Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph needed to see the graveyard, too. They had to see where Jesus’ body would be kept.

Of course burial was different in those days. Jesus’s body was put into a cave-like tomb, sealed with a gigantic stone, then for double-dog-dare-you protection, guarded by Roman soldiers.

And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joses saw where he was laid.
Mark 15:46-47

They needed to see because they knew they’d go back.

I knew I’d go back, too. I wanted to go back and check on Kali’s flowers, put out pinwheels, and just cry. They did, too (well, minus the pinwheels).

But our endings were different. At least for awhile. Because when Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went back, there was no body. At least not a dead one.

What they saw was a miracle.

What do I see when I go back?

It doesn’t look like much of a miracle. Grass has grown over the grave. The fresh flowers I used to keep there are now replaced by artificial ones to last longer. I occasionally take a pinwheel, but not regularly.

But the miracle?

Because of the great miracle at Jesus’ tomb, miracles in our cemetery happen too.

I just can’t see them yet.

But I know they’re just as real. The souls with Jesus live on. And stay alive.

And one day my soul will meet again with all the souls that have transformed before my time. And those who come later. And we’ll all be as real to each other as when Mary and Mary met Jesus again in front of his empty tomb.

So we hope. We lean in. We press on.

Because there’s more yet to come.

For my Aunt Shirley, my Kali, my parents, all your friends and relatives who have already passed on, the graveyard isn’t the end. It’s just the marker of transitions.

And from there, miracles continue to happen.

Just like they did 2,000 years ago.

* * *

I was in the hospital delivering my second daughter. Praying she would live here. And crying when she didn’t.

Even though Kali hasn’t physically lived with us the past twenty years, her presence has. Having her in our lives continues to teach us much.

I’m collecting those lessons here. Please share your own as well.

Part of living life well is learning to live through death well.

* * *

• Infant loss