When is a Memorial Service Not a Memorial Service?
This afternoon I went to the memorial service for my neighbours' baby who was stillborn at 22 weeks a few days ago. At least, I thought it was a memorial service, until I saw the little coffin and heard they were going to a cemetary afterward.
OK, fair enough, he was fairly far along, but at 22 weeks this baby never drew breath outside the womb. I didn't go to the gravesite. By the end of the 40 minute service I had had all I could take. We sang some hymns, which I could handle, but I was already disconcerted by the fact that this had become more like a funeral service for a baby that never lived and weighed barely more than a pound when he was delivered than just an abstract grieving and closure event for the parents.
I really lost it when I had to sit through the 20 minute power point display (to music) of photos of the family embracing the baby's corpse, dressed up like a live baby. Pictures of the mother kissing the corpse, holding the corpse, the corpse at the hospital, the little corpse at home (they were allowed to take it home)... I am using that word, which is more disturbing, very deliberately. No one would do this for an elderly person who died, would they? If they did, we would probably perceive it as being in very poor taste.
I understood the family's motivations for wanting to celebrate what this baby meant to them in terms of hopes and dreams, and this was their way of showing that he was cherished and loved even if he didn't come to full term, but I didn't realise that for me they crossed a line until I was there and in the midst of it. These are good people, who clearly believe the soul begins at conception, but I couldn't help thinking how much more sense this whole event would have made if this had been a baby who had been born, breathed for even a few minutes, and then died. I would then have seen all of this as necessary. And I am still wrestling with the fact that I feel so conflicted about this. I know they could not have saved him at 22 weeks, but at 24 weeks there would have been a chance. He was (on the outside at least) perfectly formed, and looked like "a real baby" (forgive the phrase), and the numbers 22 and 24 seem too abstract along side of it. BUT those numbers represent viability and non-viability as a foetus outside the womb, and even at 24 weeks things are dodgy to say the least.
Here we had two parents, griefstricken by loss, but I can't help feeling that they had misplaced their grief onto something that simply was not capable of warranting it. For them it was a birth experience of a kind though, a labour, a delivery of a baby that was dead, that looked like a small, perfect baby. But at 22 weeks, was it? This is a huge can of worms to open up, and I hope I don't offend anyone by writing this. This memorial service for a corpse that never breathed was a horrible, horrible experience for me, and I found nothing healing or comforting in the service. Am I merely recoiling from death out of squeamishness? I don't think so. But I do know my strongest sense was of it being a public display of something I felt was crossing a line. I DO know they grieve and they have a right to grieve, but this was not a funeral in the ordinary sense, and I wondered if I should be part of it. I am glad that hospitals now treat miscarriages with sensitivity and acknowledge the need to grieve. In the old days miscarriages and stillbirths were whisked away before the families could see them. This, however, felt like a situation where things had been allowed to swing too far in the other direction. Taking the dead baby's body home with you? Would they let you do that with a grownup body? I grieve for these people, and I acknowledge their loss, but something about this whole thing was nothing short of creepy. The body is a shell. If you have never seen that shell alive, how can you invest it with a name and a life?
So I left the funeral with a little card printed up with his name, the day he was delivered, and on the cover a photo of his little dead body. But, unless you know he's dead, it looks like any sleeping extremely premature baby. Beneath his photo is his weight and length. We've all seen this before -- on birth announcements. Inside are his handprints and footprints. I understand the words inside: the 139th psalm's verses about how "you knit me together in my mother's womb", and the family's words of their feelings about him: "D. is God's gift to us. As sad as we are today, we want to celebrate the gift that he is to us." I understand that, of course I do. But...what's wrong with this picture?
OK, fair enough, he was fairly far along, but at 22 weeks this baby never drew breath outside the womb. I didn't go to the gravesite. By the end of the 40 minute service I had had all I could take. We sang some hymns, which I could handle, but I was already disconcerted by the fact that this had become more like a funeral service for a baby that never lived and weighed barely more than a pound when he was delivered than just an abstract grieving and closure event for the parents.
I really lost it when I had to sit through the 20 minute power point display (to music) of photos of the family embracing the baby's corpse, dressed up like a live baby. Pictures of the mother kissing the corpse, holding the corpse, the corpse at the hospital, the little corpse at home (they were allowed to take it home)... I am using that word, which is more disturbing, very deliberately. No one would do this for an elderly person who died, would they? If they did, we would probably perceive it as being in very poor taste.
I understood the family's motivations for wanting to celebrate what this baby meant to them in terms of hopes and dreams, and this was their way of showing that he was cherished and loved even if he didn't come to full term, but I didn't realise that for me they crossed a line until I was there and in the midst of it. These are good people, who clearly believe the soul begins at conception, but I couldn't help thinking how much more sense this whole event would have made if this had been a baby who had been born, breathed for even a few minutes, and then died. I would then have seen all of this as necessary. And I am still wrestling with the fact that I feel so conflicted about this. I know they could not have saved him at 22 weeks, but at 24 weeks there would have been a chance. He was (on the outside at least) perfectly formed, and looked like "a real baby" (forgive the phrase), and the numbers 22 and 24 seem too abstract along side of it. BUT those numbers represent viability and non-viability as a foetus outside the womb, and even at 24 weeks things are dodgy to say the least.
Here we had two parents, griefstricken by loss, but I can't help feeling that they had misplaced their grief onto something that simply was not capable of warranting it. For them it was a birth experience of a kind though, a labour, a delivery of a baby that was dead, that looked like a small, perfect baby. But at 22 weeks, was it? This is a huge can of worms to open up, and I hope I don't offend anyone by writing this. This memorial service for a corpse that never breathed was a horrible, horrible experience for me, and I found nothing healing or comforting in the service. Am I merely recoiling from death out of squeamishness? I don't think so. But I do know my strongest sense was of it being a public display of something I felt was crossing a line. I DO know they grieve and they have a right to grieve, but this was not a funeral in the ordinary sense, and I wondered if I should be part of it. I am glad that hospitals now treat miscarriages with sensitivity and acknowledge the need to grieve. In the old days miscarriages and stillbirths were whisked away before the families could see them. This, however, felt like a situation where things had been allowed to swing too far in the other direction. Taking the dead baby's body home with you? Would they let you do that with a grownup body? I grieve for these people, and I acknowledge their loss, but something about this whole thing was nothing short of creepy. The body is a shell. If you have never seen that shell alive, how can you invest it with a name and a life?
So I left the funeral with a little card printed up with his name, the day he was delivered, and on the cover a photo of his little dead body. But, unless you know he's dead, it looks like any sleeping extremely premature baby. Beneath his photo is his weight and length. We've all seen this before -- on birth announcements. Inside are his handprints and footprints. I understand the words inside: the 139th psalm's verses about how "you knit me together in my mother's womb", and the family's words of their feelings about him: "D. is God's gift to us. As sad as we are today, we want to celebrate the gift that he is to us." I understand that, of course I do. But...what's wrong with this picture?
posted by Bluenosegirl at
18:49
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