“人走带不走东西 但却能留下东西”
We were casually watching a talk show while I was trying to placate the guilt inside of me on my stationary bike trying to fulfil my cardio goals this week and the above-mentioned statement presented itself on screen.
Its just one of those I won’t say eureka moments but its a slight moment of epiphany’. How powerful is that statement. One usually liken death to a loss but its the intangible moments that death brings that resulted in the people having memories that will stay with them for a lifetime.
Its true that when we leave this world, we take nothing with us but we can leave something behind. We can leave behind our thoughts, our idea, our love and our spirit. Upon reflecting on this, I was brought back to the moment when we lost our baby to a miscarriage. The M word. The supposed common occurrence of a 1 in 3 chance of all pregnancies but no one talks about it. The feeling of intense euphoria upon receiving the news that I am going to be a father to the crushing blow that brings you to your very knees in one split second. The build up was there. We tried our hardest and darnedest. The lengths we went to. Summarising it just would not do the build up any justice.
There were times when we were lying on our bed and I could hear my wife praying to God or I could hear her silently sobbing but I continued lying on my side of the bed, trying to fall into the abyss of any form of sleep. Acknowledging things head on is not my modus operandi but such circumstances of grieving makes it hard for individuals to come together because we all grieve differently. And we all need to come to terms on our own.
I felt immense pain and it really messed with my head. How could one feel so much for a tiny being or scientifically an embryo.
God says in Jeremiah;
“I knew you before I formed you in your mother’s womb. Before you were born I set you apart and appointed you as my prophet to the nations.”
Conceiving has to be divine isn’t it. And if so why would God be cruel enough to rip it away from us. What happened to being the “prophet to the nations?” There were why questions copious enough to fill my entire grey matter. Trying to get out of this rut and getting some sense out of this is challenging.
They say time will heal. It really didn’t. Whenever I rehash this incident verbally to close enough friends, it always invoke that same emotion (that heart in your mouth, teary eyed state) and it will bring me back to that moment, that split second. That split second that shook everything to its core and broke me down to my knees.
Time doesn’t heal. Time masks. But time allows us to make sense of everything. With prayers and grace and enough support, we get through. With the death of our baby in the womb, it left behind so much more that one can imagine. A tiny embryo created a butterfly effect that would change the course of the lives that it was intended. Maybe “my prophet to the nations” doesn’t literally mean a prophet but an intent to serve God’s purpose. And that purpose could very well be 6 weeks or 6 months on this Earth.
With the death, I find myself returning back to the basics. I am human, I falter. I began to use this lived experience to share and support as much as I can. It made me a better person, a more selfless person, a more glass half full person. It made me appreciate the littlest positivity thats around a fallen world. We did as a couple suffered another M and I am not certain if this previous experience made us stronger but it helped me get through the second M a little easier.
All in all, retrospectively, it moulded me like the potter and the clay and now I am a vase with the capacity to be the support system for the living flowers in me. It prepared me for parenthood.
Cheers guys!
Happy 2021
