Unglued

Intro Triptych 2 of 3

orange bucket ©k.j.doogan

There are so many things that can unglue your security in this life, but there is one thing that topples the rest:

Death.

Death has a unique way of cracking us to the core, and opening up our hearts and minds to see who we are and what is essential. People universally consider their foundational belief system, and either look away, look for answers, rest assured, or fall apart.

I’ve weathered the heart-breaking deaths of several important people in my life. This is a story about about three of them. Each incident has a young child at its heart, and each one cracked me to the core and sent me scrambling to learn about Heaven, hope and eternity. 

One

I have a child in Heaven, who might be a little crabby about the name we chose.

We had names picked out for our future children by the time we’d been dating a month. Six names, all beginning with the letter J. Five years later we were married, and happily on our way to J#1.

It was the end of my first trimester when the plan unraveled. I remember the pain in my abdomen that began the miscarriage as if it were an hour ago. Sharp and deep like lightning. It felt like something was dropping out of me that should not be dropping out of me. I ran to the bathroom as the pain continued to strike. There was so much blood. I broke into a sweat as the room pitched like a rowboat in a storm.

I have no recollection of getting to the hospital. My next memory is laying on a hospital bed in a baby-blue tile hallway. My gynecologist was a huge man with a no-nonsense bedside manner, yet that night he was gentle and fatherly. He explained that the baby had become unattached from the womb and probably died a week prior. “These things happen,” he explained, “especially with a first pregnancy. You can try again in three months." He squeezed my hand.

It seemed that I blinked and the room was now white tile. A blue shower cap appeared on the doctor’s head. He smiled at me, nodded at the anesthesiologist and said, “Count backward from 100, sweetheart.”

“One hundred. Ninety-nine, ninety-eight...” When I woke up, my baby was gone.

Let me tell you something. There is no empty like that kind of empty.

We didn’t think to ask to take our baby home with us until we were already back home. My husband called the doctor but was told that kind of thing it isn’t done. The fetus had already been disposed of properly.

Disposed of properly. Those words would reverberate for a very long time.

We asked the gender of the baby, and the doctor explained that it was too early to tell. I had nothing. I didn’t even know if our firstborn was a girl or boy to solidify an identity.

We wanted to name our little girl or boy. We ran through our J’s and they didn’t feel right. We decided that we wanted the baby to have a family name—like genealogical glue, so my husband chose the name of his great grandmother: Margaret. 

 Two

“Your friend died.”

We were on staff at a Christian camping ministry early in our marriage. I was getting dinner ready in our tiny apartment kitchen/living-room, when my husband walked in and casually blasted me with the news.

“Died? Who?”

He said the name of a dear friend. “She apparently went into the hospital to have her baby, and something went wrong. The baby is okay.”

“Died? Wait. What?” I remember thinking the little apartment seemed to be out of air.

She was my best friend in junior high and much of high school. We were inseparable opposites. She was a tall, calm blonde and I was a short, not-as-calm brunette. She was my awkward-years co-dependent. We conquered braces, makeup, locker rooms, one-piece vertically striped gym uniforms, and contact lenses together. We were Diet Pepsi, cheese pizza, and chocolate shake addicts. 

We had code names for each other: Laurel & Hardy, George & Martha, Talls & Smalls. These came in handy for multiple daily secret-triangle-fold notes. There was that one time when one of us (me) dropped a note detailing current boy-crushes under her class desk in 4th hour Math. That same desk was occupied by the much-older, much-cooler boy that one of us (me) liked during 5th hour. He kindly returned the badly refolded note. And that was the last time we signed real names.

We became drivers, dieters, Glamour Magazine devotees. We met and figured out our first loves.

And then somewhere along the line we drifted apart.

I don’t really remember how that happened. I think it was because of the great divide of high school classes, combined with boyfriend life—and different career paths, maybe? I don’t really know.

But a few months before my husband’s not-so-gentle announcement, I received a letter from Laurel/George/Talls. Out of the blue. She said that she missed our friendship and would like to rekindle it.

I must have read that letter three times in a row, and I think I danced with it once. I would write her back immediately. (Long distance phone calls were not in the budget.) However, busyness overtook excitement and good intentions, and I didn’t get to it right away. And then that lovely letter went in my to-do basket, where it accumulated a little bit of dust.

I had no idea there was an expiration date.

 Three

I answered the phone to hear someone weeping uncontrollably. A close friend attempted garbled words and I held on while she worked to compose herself. I felt like a nightmare game show wheel was spinning, and I was waiting to find out on which really bad news slot it would finally stop.

Finally, she composed herself enough to make words, and explained in broken sentences that a mutual friend “…went in to get the baby up. Thought she was standing in the corner of her crib. Window-blind cord around her neck. Couldn’t revive her. She’s gone.”

It takes a minute to process that kind of information to be able to think forward. A very bad minute.

These were salt-of-the-earth people—responsible, loving and attentive parents. And they adored their daughters. I remember seeing that child’s beautiful bedroom for the first time and thinking: my goodness. This feels like a castle turret.

I was dumbfounded. I reviewed every thing I thought I might say and came up with nothing.

I’ll tell you what I knew not to say. I knew not to say something about the sovereignty of God, or that the baby was in a better place, or that there would be other children in their future. Pretty much, for a while, the best thing to say is nothing. You just listen, and be ready to support however you can while the family tries to walk through their reasonable facsimile of Hell.

The only thing that eventually even remotely helped me when I lost my baby was the fact that we would have our child back in Heaven. 

But you know what? Even when I could say that, I couldn’t back it up with anything solid. I only knew biblical generalities about Heaven. They needed something concrete: they needed tangible facts about hope to survive. And I came to the terrible realization that none of my general knowledge of Heaven was enough, and at best it seemed trite when reality turned brutal.

I knew the Bible said that we were supposed to set our minds on Heaven—but on what exactly? Did it even tell us what that meant? I desperately needed to figure it out. I determined that I would never again face something like this without knowing what I was talking about.

And so, my sojourn to find out what the Bible really said about Heaven began. 

 ***

Please Note: According to the U.S. Product Safety Commission, more than 800 children have died in recent years* from becoming entangled in a window cord. Many more have been seriously injured. For more information, or to see what you can do to help, visit Parents for Window Blind Safety.  (*retrieved in 2018)