A Conversation About Loss and the Ensuing Grief

A little bit of background first.

My friend, Kathryn from Expectant Hearts, and I have both lost a son, both born in March.  We had this conversation the day after what would have been her son's second birthday.  In honor of her son's birthday they decided to collect needed items and take them to the hospital.

On to the conversation:

K: Did we talk much last night about my yesterday? I was SO tired.
L: No, we didn't.
K: We took ALL the stuff up to the PICU. It was a huge amount. HUGE.  And we took cupcakes for the nurses.  We had a nice visit with the day nurses, went out to dinner.  We went back with more cupcakes for the night nurses.  (This was just dh and I.)  One of our FAVORITE nurses was working but floated to NICU so we took a couple of cupcakes over there to her.
L: Cool!


K: She told us that BECAUSE OF US, they're working on implementing a program where after 5 days in PICU, families automatically get a care conference with social workers.
L: Cool.
K: She specifically said she didn't want other families to be like us.  We were in PICU for 7 weeks the first time and then 20 days before Seth's care conference in which we were told he was dying.
L: Wow!
K: and THAT care conference was the first one in which we met the social worker.

L: Our situation was so different; Harvey "happened" so fast.
K: I know I've read parts of Harvey's story and we talked about it, did you bring him home, knowing he was dying? You don't mind me asking do you?  You had him home for a few days, didn't you?
L: We brought him home knowing he was dying.  We came home on my birthday (24th) and he died around 2am on the 26th.  He was born the 14th.  So those 10 days are a blur really.
K: I'm sure. We could have brought Seth home. They offered us hospice care. DH said, "No, I would have to sell my house."  I could respect that. Plus he was worried Seth would die in the middle of the night and another child would find him before we did..
L: Yeah.  We were renting and had no real ties to the house (owned our own in town).  And we kept him near us the whole time.  We slept with the older two girls and put him in the car seat next to the bed.  I would reach down to make sure I could still feel his breathing.  I couldn't once.  It was just different.  J got up and moved him to the other room and locked the door.  I never saw him after we turned out the lights that night; not until he was "fixed up" at the funeral home. I need to put this in his birth story.

K: Was that weird to not see him after that?
L: Not from what J said.  J said that he didn't want me to see him and to trust him on that.  So I do.
K: Oh, that's sweet.
L: But some days it's hard, really hard.
K: Yeah.

K: I was holding Seth, but his appearance didn't change much; he was always a bit pale and dusky due to his heart defect.  What caught me off guard was how quickly he got cold.

K: Anyway... today I was thinking I should ask if I can write a letter or something.  I very much resented the fact that we never met the social worker. And then after one of the doctors found out we had social worker issues, a SECOND social worker came in and "social worked" us. It was more about the first social worker than our needs. THAT made me really angry because at that point Seth was already on comfort care.  I'm not conflict oriented so I never really said anything.


So, there was some healing that happened that night.  We were just two moms, sharing how we dealt with the loss, the grief and what to do to get ourselves heard in such situations.

Striving to learn and live God's purposes,