It was an oppressively hot summer day on a Midwestern farm. There was no breeze and the sun was baking the corn on the stalks. We hadn’t seen rain in weeks but the humidity level felt like water should be dripping out of the air.
I was 22 weeks pregnant, just past the half way mark.
The point where mothers begin to breathe more easily because they successfully passed that first trimester mark with no complications and things should be smooth sailing from here forward.
I was all too familiar with complications, as my early married life was punctuated by several miscarriages. Some bearing the grim reality of horrible timing in grey concrete industrial restrooms with gripping pain – one at work in those circumstances. I drove myself to the hospital at the end of my shift, not wanting to tell my male supervisor what was wrong and risk losing my job. “Female problems” were one of the excuses used to justify discrimination against the hiring and to justify the firing of women – and you certainly didn’t want to give anyone ammunition.
Miscarriages in that time and place were treated pretty much like a fact of life, no different from someone getting the flu and then getting over it. You marched forward, went on, didn’t look back and never let yourself think of that child that might have been. Actually that child that was, that you carried, but just for a little bit, unable to shelter them long enough for them to enter the world as a child. You would never know why, what was wrong, but you would always wonder if there was something you could have done, should have done or might have done differently, or maybe not done.
The prevailing school of thought was that you could always “get pregnant again,” in essence depersonalizing that “individual” pregnancy and reducing “it” to a commodity that could be replaced shortly.
If pressed or if you were “too upset,” you would be patronized and told that it was simply “God’s will,” “meant to be” or that “God needed the baby” and that was supposed to comfort you and make the fact that your child died alright. If nothing else, you very clearly got the message that it was time to be “over this” now and to either get over it or shut up.
Getting past that 3 month mark, and then the half way mark of 20 weeks, gave you permission to start dreaming, to start buying baby clothes, a new bassinette, making curtains and thinking about what color to paint the baby’s room.
The baby started to move around and kick, asserting its individuality. “Hi Mom, I’m here” with little fluttery butterfly wings that made you smile to feel them.
You started to guess and attempt to divine using all of the folklore and midwife tales available whether the baby was going to be a boy or a girl. Everyone had an opinion too – and stood a 50% chance of being right! Those were happy, joyful days ripe with laughter and stories, often of family members.
That was long before parents knew the gender of the new baby, before ultrasound, back in the days when, after that first cry, the first thing you listened for the doctor to joyfully proclaim was “It’s a girl!” or “It’s a boy!”
On that sweltering summer day, with the windows wide open, the sun beating mercilessly on the landscape and no air conditioning, because it was before the days of air conditioning in homes…I was doing laundry when I felt something run down my leg…sweat probably. I looked down to see a rivulet of blood, dividing into branches on my calf, already soaking into my shoe, and I knew I was in trouble.
I began to cry and left a message for my husband at work. No cell phones then. Someone went to find him.
I called my mother and asked her to meet me at the hospital. She was coming from the opposite side of the county. The hospital was between us. I was hopeful that if I got to the hospital quickly, that child could somehow be saved.
Maybe I was further along than I thought.
Maybe the child would live.
Maybe they could get the bleeding stopped.
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
Maybe…
Maybe…
Maybe…
Hope against all odds.
I remember in the emergency room, laying on the table when my mother walked into the room. She looked at me and began to cry. I didn’t realize how badly I was bleeding by that time, but she did. She knew. When I saw her face, I knew too.
They took me to delivery, because that baby was going to be born. I was hemorrhaging. I vaguely remember someone talking to my mother about blood types and transfusions. I remember seeing my mother standing in the hallway, clutching her purse and mine, sobbing, but trying not to, as they wheeled me inside and the doors closed behind the gurney, separating us…and how utterly terrified I was. I desperately wanted to reach out to her. But that was before the days of “family birthing” and even before the days of fathers being allowed in the delivery room. So, I was alone in the room with a doctor and nurses and deathly silence except for the noises the equipment and I made.
The baby was born alive, but barely, a fraction of an ounce less than a pound. The doctor was anything but joyful when he said to me, “It’s a girl. She’s alive.” There was no cry. No sound at all. In the brief glimpse I caught of her, she was grey. The team of nurses was working frantically.
They immediately gave her oxygen and put her in an incubator. They took me to a recovery room and another doctor explained the situation. This child was too small to survive. The only extremely slight chance that she had was to be put in a 100% oxygen environment with the hope that her undeveloped lungs would function enough with the assistance of a ventilator.
The result of that environment were she to survive? She would be blind and probably severely “retarded,” in the vernacular of that time. Regardless of what they called it, the meaning was very clear. The chances of her surviving at all were extremely minimal – or in the stark reality of the doctor’s painful words that felt like anvils on my heart as he spoke each one – “this child will not survive.”
The question quickly became one of her comfort in the time she had before death. We discussed options. There weren’t many.
In order to provide the neonatal environment she would need to attempt survival, she would have to be taken to the children’s hospital in another city, and I could not go with her. So, in essence, she would go alone and she would die alone after some number of painful medical procedures. The doctor held out no hope beyond a few hours or days. She was just too small. The future was horribly bleak, a life sentence or a death sentence, one or the other.
I could not condemn her to that fate. I knew without any doubt that if she stayed with me, she would pass over, but she would pass over being held by her mother who loved her and not alone. She was so tiny and fragile.
Today, some babies of about that size do survive, or at least have a fighting chance, but that just wasn’t possible then, and everyone knew it. I chose to accept the inevitable with as much grace as I could muster and do what was best for her.
I held her. My mother held her. We kept her comfortable. We loved her. We cuddled her. We talked and sang to her. She died, quietly, peacefully, without any needles or struggles…just slipped away and passed over wrapped in a soft blanket where she could hear and feel her mother’s heartbeat, surrounded by love. That was all I had to offer her.
I was grief-stricken that she died, but I had and have no regrets about my decision, although to this day, I can barely even write about it. I made the right choice for her, but it’s one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult decision I’ve ever made.
Oddly, I remember snippets of that time vividly, like they are burned in my memory for eternity, but much of the rest is extremely blurry.
After she died, they took me to a non-maternity floor of the hospital, thankfully. The nurses tried to be extra nice to me, bringing me books, flowers, boxes and boxes of tissues, and medicine. I fell into a fitful, medicated sleep.
The next day, I asked about funeral arrangements to be made for the baby. The nurse looked at me strangely, said she didn’t know and would ask. The doctor visited and I asked him. He said he would check, but I was unclear who he was checking with, or why.
He left and returned, telling me that the baby had already “been taken care of.”
“Been taken care of????”
What did that mean?
They told me that because the baby was under a pound, she never officially “lived” so she never “died” so the body didn’t need to be buried and has already been “taken care of.” They tried to explain it in a way that inferred “this is really for the best, you know.”
No, I didn’t know.
I became hysterical. They gave me a shot of some kind. I was still hysterical but in a slow motion blurry dream.
I screamed and wailed.
“NO, NO, NOOOOOoooo.”
It was bad enough that my child was born too early and died. It was bad enough that I held her in death. It was bad enough already. But now this too?
They disposed of her like trash – never even thinking to ask me or anyone else in the family? Really???? How could they do that???
I was insistent that they find my child, again hysterical. My mother told me it was “too late,” whatever that meant. They had what, already emptied the trash and couldn’t go through the dumpster?
They gave me another shot of something. They gave mother, who was also very upset, a pill. My husband had gone back to work, or someplace, leaving me and my mother to deal with the aftermath. It was over as far as he was concerned and this was all “women’s drama.” He was soon-to-be an x-husband.
As far as the medical community was concerned, I was the problem, and I needed to be sedated. I should have gotten up and walked out to search for my child, but I had lost too much blood and was too weak and ill and traumatized – not to mention, I was already sedated and hooked up to IVs.
I went home a few days later. My doctor’s final words to me were to wait 3 months to get pregnant again. Just like nothing had happened.
There was no birth certificate.
There was no death certificate.
No funeral or graveside services or comfort of any kind. She somehow had slipped into never-never land – a purgatorial hell between miscarriage and live baby.
No validation of pain or loss of either her life or her body afterwards.
No closure.
And somehow, I had become “the problem.”
“It” wasn’t a child, just a medical procedure. Under a pound was just another miscarriage of sorts. I should be used to this by now, right? Right???
Going home and seeing the baby clothes for the baby who would never come home and the half-finished nursery. Used to this?
Never.
I never got to bury that child. I never got to properly grieve, to say goodbye, to set a gravestone to visit at holidays or to honor her existence. I didn’t know when the nurse gently took her tiny body wrapped in the blanket after her death that I would never see her again and that she would unceremoniously be tossed away, in the garbage. Did they even leave her in her blanket or did they strip her of that too?
Maybe no one else needed to grieve, but I did. She was a part of my body. She was alive inside of me, until the unthinkable happened, followed by the unimaginable. She was and is my child, ripped from my heart and life way too soon.
Nothing eased the pain, made her death “alright” or compensated in any way for what happened. No one at the hospital even said, “I’m sorry.” The problem in their eyes was clearly “me,” not what they had done with her tiny body.
I felt then and still feel that their disposal of her was at best betrayal of trust and in reality a horrible dehumanizing violation of that child’s remains about which they did nothing when they still could. They could have found or recovered her body had they made the effort. They didn’t.
I named her in my mind and heart – the name I had selected for her, only to discover that my x-husband would one day name another child the same name – as if she had never existed. So, she got robbed of that too.
That daughter I generally think of as “the baby” would be approaching middle age today, had she lived. I think of her often in a positive light with a tinge of melancholy, of course, and wonder what life path she would have taken, given a chance. I wonder what she would have looked like and what her voice and laugh would have sounded like. Would she have married? Had children?
I think of all my children playing together in the warm sun of my parent’s farm, chasing in the sunlight and shadows of years now long gone. She is with my parents now. She is not now and never was invisible to me although she “never existed” to others.
There were no grief support groups then, no grief counseling…nothing. You simply went on. The bills had to be paid, the barn had to be cleaned, the crops had to be planted and harvested, someone or something always needed to be fed…there wasn’t time for anything else. Time for or “wallowing in” grief, as it was perceived, was a luxury no one could afford. One foot in front of the other…day after day. In time, it became less smothering, but it never went away.
Today, every funeral home has booklets and flyers about the stages of grief, how to handle grief and what to expect. Perhaps we were stoic then or simply in denial. Everyone seemed terribly uncomfortable with the topic. It wasn’t until then that I learned that my own mother had lost a child too at about the same stage of pregnancy. When I asked her what happened to that baby’s body, she didn’t know and I don’t think she had ever thought about it. Or maybe she was haunted by it and no one ever knew. Women suffered these tragedies in isolated cocoons of silence.
Every time I see a “missing” child on a census, that blank space of 4 years between children that silently screams of pain and loss, I think of the mother whose child died. And when I see 3 or 4 or 5 of those spaces, my heart grieves so for that woman. How did she survive that kind of devastation? How do you lose half your children and remain sane? Maybe for the sake of the other half, you just keep putting one foot in front of the other and go numbly on, fumbling through the haze of grief, going through the motions of life through rote memory because you can’t do anything more. After all, someone else is hungry and there is always laundry to do…
Today, there are local support groups everyplace. Even on Facebook, there are groups for everyone to find a kindred spirit. People grieve publicly, through articles, blogs and social media – sometimes too publicly. If anything, we’re awash in “help” today. Maybe the pendulum has swung the other direction.
The only kindred spirits then were the whispered voices of older women, more experienced, urging you on, to forget, to get pregnant again because “you’ll feel better.” They shrugged and said, “It happens,” and that was that. And to not accept that edict was to rebuke or question “God’s choice.” Not something one did in the Bible belt. So the grief became lonely, silent and unspoken, but never gone.
In a way, because I never buried her and she doesn’t have a known final resting place in a normal cemetery for me to visit, I have always kind of felt that she “went along with me.” Kind of like ashes I don’t carry but would if I could. In an odd sort of way, it made it easier to leave and make a life elsewhere, because there is nothing to tie any part of my heart there.
I’m glad that today women don’t have to go through such a dehumanizing victimizing experience when a premature child dies. The grief over her death was exacerbated and magnified exponentially by what happened afterwards. I’m still haunted by the thought of what happened to her tiny body and stunned at the inhumanity of that choice that I was never allowed to make, especially given how warm and caring the nursing staff was to me. It was just so shocking and unexpected. Who would imagine even for a minute your baby that had lived would be or even could be thrown away? And worse yet, it wasn’t a mistake and no one was willing to address the issue. Nightmare on top of nightmare.
I suspect that the employees in the hospital morgue simply looked at the birthweight or weighed the corpse and checked the appropriate box on the paper and did what they did under those circumstances – which was not to call the mortician. Nothing more or less. No thought at all. Just routine. Less than a pound = trash can. If they thought about it at all, it was probably that they were doing us a favor so we didn’t have to spend the money on a funeral and burial. I don’t believe that anyone’s acts were malicious in intent, just an unthinking and uncaring system in total with a devastating outcome for an already grief-stricken young mother. There was no compassion or humanity built into that system. And no one cared.
I can’t change any of that, today, but I can still do one thing.
That child existed. She lived, even if not legally or for very long. She lived for a few hours. She deserves a permanent name, her own name, not one stolen by someone else later.
So, I’ve named her.
Her name is Rachel Barbara Estes.
Rachel because I’ve always had an affinity for that name and I was pleased to discover that it’s ancestral. Rachel Hill on my mother’s side would have been her great-great-grandmother, a woman who lost many children and understands grief. Perhaps she comforted baby Rachel after her too-early arrival on the other side.
Barbara for my mother who was named after her mother, Edith Barbara Lore, and her mother’s grandmother, Barbara Drechsel and two great-grandmothers, Barbara Mehlheimer and Katharina Barbara Lemmert. Mother was always my anchor, always there, until she wasn’t anymore.
Estes because Rachel is my child and Estes is my birthright name.
Rachel Barbara Estes is no longer invisible. This is the story of her life, no matter how short, and her name. She will live until at least my death.
______________________________________________________________
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Dear Rachel Barbara Estes, you will live on and be remembered forever in your mother’s heart and by the people she has touched with your story. Thank you for giving us a happy ending to a very touching and sad experience.
I should have said “beautiful ending” to this sad experience, but I was so happy that Rachel is remembered now by so many.
beautiful, gut-wrenching memorial…
Thank you for your story. The loss of a child is one I think every mother fears… and too many understand first hand what that’s like. It’s the main reason why, in my putting together of genealogies, I always include the lost infants that I do find. They were here for so short a time, but they were here and should be remembered.
Sometimes that “blank space” is the only hint we have, today, that they existed at all.
Roberta that is one of the most moving things I have ever read. There is more honestly in these words of yours than I have seen anywhere in a very long time.
agree.
Beautiful tribute to your daughter and all children who were hoped for, loved and lost.
Thanks for your story. I lost my full term first daughter at birth. My husband did bury her beside my grandparents,
but the Dr. thought it best I never see her, I will always regret (and cry) that I never got to hold her. I do have three grown daughters, ten grandchildren and six great but I still have those same thoughts about the first daughter.
I can only imagine how heart wrenching this was for your to write. I could barely read it through the tears … but what a beautiful memorial to Rachel Barbara. Thank you for sharing her with us.
Yes, it was Nancy. Thank you.
Oh, Roberta, surely Rachel knew how much she was loved and still is.
I hope so.
♡♡♡
I’m so sorry for your loss Roberta. I can only imagine the pain you felt. I cried just reading your story.
My “Grace” is buried under the lilac bush at the back door. We were told to flush “it.” She was my last miscarriage. This was beautifully written. Thank you for sharing your soul with us.
I’m glad you buried her. I’m horrified at how heartlessly woman were and perhaps still are treated in their most vulnerable of moments.
Thank you for writing about Rachel Barbara – sad and hopeful – a beautiful memorial.
Roberta, this is such a touching, heart wrenching story that is such a beautiful Tribute to Cousin Rachel Barbara Estes. I too, have lost Angel Babies. This warmed my heart that you have named her and given her the credence of acknowledgement of her brief time here on this earth. Thank You for putting into words what has been hidden in our hearts.
Cousin Cathee
Angel Babies – what a beautiful term. Thank you.
I was an 18 year old “man”, wife in hospital, I was not allowed to go in to be with her, she was more than 7 months pregnant, and the doctor asked me if he should save my wife or my child. I chose my wife. My wife never saw or held our daughter, and was still in the hospital when she was buried. We understand.
Jay
Oh Jay – I’m so sorry. What a terrible choice to have to make. My heart goes out to you.
I am so sorry. Rachel Barbara was and is loved for sure forever. Thank you so much for sharing.
Thank you for sharing your story.
thank you for sharing. this story is more common than you know. appreciate your respect for her as for all and for teaching us to listen to the stories with compassion
My heart was broken over your previous baby girl. My mother lost her first baby. A sister I didn’t even know about until I got my birth certificate and it had baby born live before me. She is buried but I’ve never been to her grave. I live many states away. I recently got her notice from the paper. There’s no birth certificate or death certificate in Oklahoma. I imagine the dr listed her still born. My mother is now with her baby girl. To think I never knew her grief all those years. Her last years, she did talk about her. Thank you for sharing. Prayers for you.
Her grave could be listed on Find-A-Grave and if not, maybe one of the volunteers will take a photo for you. Your poor mother.
I am with you in your grief Roberta. Your pain brought me to tears because I’ve shared your loss.In 1971 we lost a daughter at seven months to stillbirth. We were not allowed to hold her or say goodbye. Like Rachel, our daughter was disposed of without our permission or knowledge, with the hospital’s “medical waste”. It’s a heartache that never completely heals
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same again. Nor should you be the same, nor should you want to.” ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
{{{{Roberta}}}}
In a way, it’s nice to know I’m not alone, but at the same time, I’m sad it happened to you too. That was the same timeframe. It must have been standard practice. So sorry and thank you for sharing.
Your beautiful Rachel is with my many miscarried siblings, all Estes surnamed, and my own babies, who my husband and I carry with us, wherever we go. He understands better than most, as the world classifies hubs an “only child”, while he views himself as big brother to Colin Matthew, lost 24 weeks into pregnancy. The horror stories from our child loss experiences, and that of other mis-managed losses, are stark and shocking, stretching from stories of ancestors, to friends currently in their 20s & 30s. Every October, during Pregnancy & Child Loss Awareness month, I share images and stories in honor of our lost little lambs. Without fail, friends’ stories come tumbling out. Like yours, they are vivid and heartbreaking. I am so sorry that your Rachel’s body was not shown the care and respect her existance should’ve afforded you both. I am so glad, though, that you’ve given her a beautiful name, with meaningful family significance. She is truly with you, I believe, and she matters. You have honored her with your love, and have given voice to her life. Thank you for sharing this precious little girl with us all.
What a story! Thank you so much for sharing your pain. This was shocking to read, noting how the hospital staff handled all of this. I am horrified. Thank you for loving that sweet baby and for having that kind of love in your heart. She is your family and you will see her again after you die! xoxo
What a beautiful tribute. You gave your daughter a wonderful gift by letting her stay with you rather than sending her off to the other hospital.
You have just given her a birth and a death record.
I gave the Wayback Machine a nudge so that her record will be forever saved in their archives at https://web.archive.org/web/20160403202316/http://dna-explained.com/2016/04/03/rachel-barbara-estes-the-invisible-child-52-ancestors-118/
Hugs.
Thank you Yvette.
Thank you for this story. It will most certainly come to mind every time I look at a notification on a churchbook of loss of a child in the future.
Roberta, thank you for sharing such an intimate part of your life. That was written straight from the heart. There really is no expiry date on grief.
Oh Roberta I could hardly get through the story of your miscarriage and reading of your dear daughter Rachel Barbara. I am so grieved you treated with such insensitivity and the unconscionable act of the medical team discarding your child in such a dispectifrul manner by putting her in the trash.
Your story brought back so many thoughts I had gone through losing our daughter Kathleen Lora albeit somewhat different. But, unlike your Rachel Barbara, Kathleen Lora was older and died just under 4 weeks. I too had thoughts similar to yours and wondered if I had done this or that different she wouldn’t have died. Unlike you we did have a memorial and burial.
The loss of a child no matter what stage of development they are in are a living human being and a part of your flesh. I believe and hope the medical establishment has changed their views and attitudes today and treat women who lose in a child in any stage of growth treat all with more respect and sensitivity. All life is precious. Rachel Barbara is still with us in the memorial you write of her life and I know she watches over you. Hugs, Kathy
So many women have had losses that we don’t know about. I’m sorry to hear about your Kathleen Lora. So grievous at whatever age. Hugs.
Roberta, your words were heart-breaking, as I ached for you. Something similar happened to me, everyone around me said it was for the best, my “babydaddy” and I broke up, and there was next to no support. Just one friend sent a condolence card, recognized my little unborn girl was a person to me. That one card allowed me to grieve sweet tears.
Your grief for your child has absolutely nothing to do with the father. I am surprised, in retrospect, how insensitive people were. I hope we are different today. Hugs Mary – for you and the baby too.
This moving tribute to your daughter will live on with her memory. Thank you so much for sharing.
Your story was so moving. I just cannot imagine going through that.
Not to change the subject, but I notice you have commented some when there have been postings on the Elder George McNeil of Wilkes Co, NC. Can you explain how you are related?
I descend from the Rev. George McNiel through son William who married Elizabeth Shepherd, their daughter Lois who married Elijah Vannoy and their son Joel who married Phoebe Crumley. Their daughter Elizabeth married Lazarus Estes who had my grandfather William George Estes. Nearly all of these people have a story on my blog if you search for their name.
I cried for Rachel Barbara and I cry for you.
Thank you for telling your story, Roberta — and Rachel’s. She existed and she was loved.
…still crying…. I believe that Rachel Barbara knows she is remembered.
A sad but beautiful story. My Mother lost two children I think. I don’t really know because my parents did not speak of it. Mother was RH Negative which was pretty much a death notice for many pregnancies in the ’40s and ’50s. I am certain that she had at least two pregnancies before I was born in 1950. In her jewel box is a diaper pin inscribed “Michael”. She did not speak of it. I was a very little girl at the time I found the pin while playing with my Mother’s jewelry, a thing she allowed. A few years later my Father’s Father died. I was eleven. I went to the funeral home with my Father to pick out a coffin. In that room of coffins the first ones we saw were tiny and white with pastel linings. I noted how sweet they were and my Father said something like, “No, they are very sad”. I knew then that he had felt the loss of an infant and I, who was sad to lose my Grandfather, was much sadder thinking about the burial of an infant. Both of my parents are gone now and I am alone except for many cousins, the aunts and uncles being gone too. I often think about “Michael”. I wonder where he is buried and what might he have become had he lived. I think of the fun we could have had. As a child, in my ignorance, I used to beg my parents to stop at the local orphanage to adopt a brother for me. I wanted a brother so badly. I felt that I should have one. I did not know then about the brother that was lost. Those pleas for a brother were mostly ignored. Now I know that the pain of those pleas must have been great and that is why my parents ignored them altogether. Now, many years later, I have searched for birth and death certificates for Michael with no luck. I do not know if he had either. I do know that his short life was a memory in the hearts of my parents throughout their lives and an emptiness in mine. I will never, however, forget my Brother.
You might check the obituaries or the news announcements in the local paper if they are indexed. Some libraries keep indexes of these kinds of things for the local papers. I’m so sorry. Also, check Find-A-Grave. I’m betting if there was a coffin, there was a stone too.
Even if miscarriage is common in a culture or in a medical practice, they are very uncommon for an individual and literally a life-and-death event that affects people for the rest of their lives. They are a grief event and while they can never be a positive experience, they can certainly be made worse by insensitive people, especially in a trust or caring position.
A very beautiful story. She will be remembered.
Miscarriages, still births, premature infant deaths – affect everyone – and recovery from losing a child is a long, healing process. Recently, my family experienced a miscarriage in the first trimester. The mother was upset as this was her third miscarriage, but more upset with how the doctor and staff were handling the condition – as though this was a common event. Immediately, the mother located a new doctor who accepted her and began to treat her through the miscarriage. This doctor and team showed more care, compassion, and understanding in helping her to heal, both physically and mentally. We can only hope that a child lost through miscarriage will be humanely treated, remembered, and noted.
Thanks you for sharing your story.
Oh Bobbi, what beautiful words for your little daughter. Of all the times we have been together and all the things we have shared, who knew that this would be one more. Another time when we can be together we must talk. I love you. Lola-Margaret
I love you too Lola-Margaret. I am so lucky to have you in my life! Cousins are gifts from God.
I’m not surprised we have yet another bond in common – but I’m sad it’s this one.
A truly amazing memorial to your daughter, Rachel Barbara Estes. Thank you for sharing something so deeply personal with us.
Tears!
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing. My “Grace” is buried at the back door, under a lilac.
Gentle hugs,
Melissa Jordan
If you didn’t hear me say it, don’t believe it till you check in with me.Melissa Jordan 12/18/2013
Date: Sun, 3 Apr 2016 18:46:10 +0000 To: melsi@hotmail.com
Thank you for sharing this very moving life experience. I sometimes wonder why the phrase
”health care system” is often used – the system has often seemed anything but ”caring” to me.
Hospitals are a form of ”community” and one that I don’t think any caring person would be able
to endure for any length of time. The work must have an adverse psychological impact on any
caring person who enters the ”health” professions. May Rachel rest in peace.
Beautiful.
Oh Roberta! I am SO SORRY… Your writing about this sad story is so touching, I find myself crying for this poor little angel and for you too… I’m glad that you found a way to honor her existence with a name and that other people and hospitals an funeral homes are hopefully more sensitive and educated on how to treat mothers going through a tragedy like this… Hugs! MaryPat
Roberta, you have given to your readers the gift of a sad but truly beautiful memory. Thank you for sharing with us. Rachel Barbara will always be remembered.
I am so deeply moved by the pain and sadness you have lived with since Rachel Barbara was born too soon to survive and was removed from you without respect and not afforded a ceremonial disposition of her remains for you to determine. I can’t believe how eloquently you were able to express your emotions and the narrative of the history. It’s clear that you wanted to blast out your pain at the indifference and callousness of individuals and the medical system. I, too, will never look at the blank spaces or known miscarriages or stillborns in the same neutral way. You and Rachel Barbara are remembered and make us remember the countless others going back in time in our families.
Roberta, this is so moving, beautiful, and heartbreaking. I am so sorry for your loss. Rachel Barbara’s memory will live on.
Roberta, your story makes me sad. I am a fellow Hoosier who worked in the health care industry all of my adult life. Your portrait of women’s health care in the US until the 1980’s was very accurate, although it did not become apparent to me until you took pen to hand. I ended up an optometrist, but during my late 20s I did research at the Indiana University Medical Center. During the last year there my wife was pregnant and had to spend a month in bed at the end of the first trimester. The child will be 46 shortly. In the same time frame, I went through the death of a newborn with my best friend and his wife. The baby was full term but had “tower skull” and live only a few days. Not equivalent, but your story brought those memories to the fore.
I am glad that you have found a way to bring some closure to your loss.
I cry now.
I cry for Rachel Barbara and for everybody in her family that never got to know her.
Roberta, this is a fine tribute to your daughter. And it is a fine piece of writing. I hope you will consider submitting it to some publication with a wider audience. I found myself happy that you left a husband who could not stay to share your mutual loss. You deserved better.
This past weekend I was looking through a family in my Estes-Mathes-Jordan line and came upon a line of 4 babies born in 4 years, apparently stillborn, and I grieved for that mother. She became very real to me. And I rejoiced when at last there was a child who lived into adulthood. But I knew how she must have watched him fearfully.
What you wrote is “literature,” memoir. It is well wrought, and it awakens in the reader the empathy that good art always awakens. We need more of that. Please consider submitting it to a widely read publication.
Bless you for persevering in your love of your daughter.
Gaye Rice Ingram
Louisiana
Thank you very much. Did you have a publication in mind that might be receptive?
I will check around. Please do the same. It should appeal to any of the “women’s” magazines, but they have such limited word-counts and when I scanned your piece with an editor’s eye, I couldn’t see more than perhaps a paragraph or two that could easily be cut and still maintain integrity. (That’s the mark of a good piece of writing!). Sometimes a syndicated columnist (e.g., Dear Abby) will pick something like this up. “Slate” or Huff Post even. It deserves an audience wider than this.
gaye
God bless you Roberta! Thank you for sharing your very soul with us. Your Rachel will always be remembered by all who read your words?
What a heart wrenching story. Thank you for sharing your story… and I hope your grief is somehow lessened by the knowledge that your story will touch so many others.. Peace
Roberta, thank you for sharing your story and the story of little Rachel Barbara. She lived, and she matters. God bless you both until you meet again.
Roberta, my heart grieves with you as I too lost a child. You wrote a beautiful memorial and I cried with and for us both. Bless you.
Bless you and your child too Vickie.
So sorry Vickie. I cried a lot of tears writing this article too.