What about miscarriage?
My heart is really tender around Mother’s Day time of year. Sure, because I have natural and step children, and now even grandbabies I love dearly. Each one gives such meaning to life. Each one is so uniquely different in their own gifting and abilities. I love family life!
But how do you remember, on Mother’s Day, the children you’ve lost ? Holidays truly are the hardest time of year for everyone whose experienced loss in any form.
But even more puzzling is how do you remember the child you carried but never got the chance to see his/her little face, touch their fingers and toes, or rock to sleep at night?
How do mother’s who had a miscarriage deal with Mother’s Day?
From experience and many observations, the answer is ’silently’.
As loud as silent can be, they walk among us never saying a word, but at the mention of the subject or the sound of another baby’s cry, they well up in tears and those around them wonder why because they’ve long forgotten what that mother could never forget.
Even in purposed miscarriage or decisive abortion, mother’s stuff their inner awareness and pretend it never happened because there’s no outward sign of that child’s existence.
Reality says different. A child was conceived. A life created. Who’s going to celebrate that life? and how?
No one did this for me, but I prayed and asked for a creative way to celebrate that precious, faceless life with mothers in pain or denial.
Here are the ideas I got:
1. Go to a florist and ask for their smallest vase and three unopened baby roses in a unusual color for your region. Have the roses arranged in a triangle where the mommy rose stands the tallest. (Yes, if appropriate, you can even add a ‘daddy’ rose, too!) Have the florist add some greenery and maybe a touch of babies’ breath to surround the roses. Then deliver your package personally to the mother and tell her the one rose on the side stands for the baby she lost and the other rose stands for the baby she will have soon. This costs under $10 in a grocery store florist, but is worth a million to a silently grieving mother.
2. Depending on the time of pregnancy when the miscarriage occurred, choose a scrapbook kit to put together with the mother, remembering and developing special icons of her pregnancy. Name the scrapbook what they intended on naming the child. Allow her to develop a reality closure to her baby’s life with memories of weather, music, food cravings and all the things that spoke to her of her pregnancy with this particular child. This also tells her, without a lot of verbiage, she’s not alone in cherishing the life who lived inside her, no matter how long the time duration. Here’s a couple of options to get you started: ScrapbookPal.com OR there’s Creative Visions
3. Next Mother’s Day, in all your festivities and celebration, don’t forget to include the mother who miscarried. Give her a corsage, a one stem rose, whatever it is you do for all the other mothers, do for her, too!
Now, it’s your turn to share some ideas. What have you done for yourself or others to celebrate the life lost in miscarriage or abortion?
