From the Editor's Desk

The trees are budding in Indiana. The grass is slowly turning green. Spring flowers are daring to push through the protective, thawing soil, only to get hit by the next overnight freeze. Singing birds and the first rays of the spring sun again accompany my early morning runs. Nature is waking up and has begun its seasonal growth. What a wonderful time of year in the ever-repeating cycle of life.

Well, in my last editor's column, I shared with you some of my thoughts and feelings as I began to prepare myself for the next stage in the cycle of my life: becoming a grandfather. Unfortunately, nature does not choose a linear progression as a growth path, but has its unpredictable leaps and falls. My eldest daughter, Tina, was hit by one of its falls. She lost the baby that was growing inside of her at ten weeks of gestation. Physicians offered no medical explanation for her miscarriage, other than the less-than-helpful statistic that more than twenty percent of all pregnancies do not "produce a viable fetus." My daughter and son-in-law were devastated, totally unprepared, not knowing how to react. Tina called me as soon as they got home from the doctor, remembering that my wife (her stepmother) and I lost a baby during pregnancy about ten years ago. Tina and I cried together over the phone and across the Atlantic Ocean, mourning the death of a beginning human life and our fantasies and hopes about being parents and grandparents.

A few days later, my daughter had a DNC and, thanks to a still-generous German healthcare system, she was able to stay home from work for two weeks to go through the grief over the loss she was still experiencing. She felt guilt and shame that her body had failed to provide her baby with an environment to grow and make it into this world. She felt lonely and frustrated by the silence and helplessness around her. Yet, at the same time, she felt relieved when other women began to share their own experiences of having lost babies through miscarriage and stillbirth. For Tina, it seemed a strangely connecting experience for a woman to come out to her with the details of an important life experience that had until then been silenced by guilt and helplessness. Tina found out that those "twenty percent of all pregnancies" are real people and real-life experiences waiting to be shared when it feels safe. When a woman finds the courage to share her pain, others who meet her feel safe to come out and share their own pain. Often, this is a pain that has lingered for years in silence, and is allowed to surface only after it is reflected in the face of a woman who is in the midst of the grieving process they have had to keep private. I am deeply grateful for my daughter's courage to "go public" with her pain, knowing how helpful it is for her own healing and for the healing process of other women who did not have the courage and/or opportunity to share their pain when it was most debilitating.

I was equally grateful that my daughter did not hesitate to call me right away and invite me to mourn with her, to participate in her grieving process and to share my own grief with her. I truly appreciated this privilege. It brought back many memories about our own miscarriage. My wife, Edie, and I had battled with infertility for a couple of years before we had our now fourteen-year-old daughter, Erika. When we decided to have another child, we were delighted to get pregnant after only two months of trying, only to lose the baby after eight weeks of pregnancy. It seemed as though we would drown in an ocean of grief and helplessness—even close friends and family did not know how to deal with a death-before-the-birth of one who was supposed to have become my wife's second and my third child. We could find no socially accepted ritual to mark such a sad occasion and provide a way to channel the pain and helplessness.

I remember how we struggled and finally decided to create our own ritual. During a ceremony with friends and family, we planted a tree in the backyard of our house that would remind us of the growth our baby would have experienced in a fertile and nurturing environment. This was more than ten years ago, when we lived in Minnesota. Whenever we drive up to Minnesota to visit family and friends, we drive by our old house and notice how much "our" tree has grown. We have shared our story with the two families who have lived in the house since we moved away. Both have invited us to stop by and visit as often as we want. Two years ago, not too far from our "baby" that has grown quite tall, we noticed another little tree. The current resident came out in tears and shared with us that she had had a miscarriage a few months prior to our visit. She thanked us for helping her work through the pain of her loss. "Our" tree reminded her of ways to acknowledge the pain and begin to heal. Now there is another "baby" growing in "our" backyard. "Our" backyard has now expanded to two families, for many years to come.

As I remember, I also think about how different my experience of Tina's miscarriage is from what Edie and I went through together ten years ago. Being removed one generation doesn't make me any less sad for my child and her husband, but I have to admit that their miscarriage could not have had the impact on my daily life that it did on theirs. Tina and Dirk had gone out to look for baby furniture; friends had given Tina maternity clothes for the spring and summer. They had made plans how to redecorate what was to be the nursery. Now all the plans are on hold. Tina and Dirk have not given up their hopes for having children some day, but for now they have lost their first child. For me, though I've relived some memories about our own miscarriage, I haven't really lost anything but the promise that my fantasies might soon be realized—fantasies of being a grandfather who spoils his grandchildren without the responsibility that parenting necessitates. But these fantasies can wait to become reality, for a while.

Finally, I am grateful to AFTA for providing me with an outlet to process thoughts and emotions, and then share them with an audience that make me feel safe to do so. One of the perks of being the editor of the Newsletter is this column. It gives me an opportunity to connect with a community of colleagues and friends through writing that seems rather unique. Thanks for the opportunity and thanks for reading/listening.