Personal Stories: Loss

I watched the screen as he moved the instrument around. “Here is the sack,” he said as he pointed to a roundness appearing in the screen. He continued to search, yet had a blank expression on his face. “I’m sorry, but the sack is empty.”

Dear Neshamal'e , decided to write you. I wanted to begin with 'My Neshama'le or 'our Neshama'le, but mainly you are His Neshama'le...

I remember crying and saying to my husband, that in a way it was a merit to have met such a holy neshama (soul). We don’t know why G-d does anything. But I am sure that He heard our prayers and tears, and watched with amazement...

Sometimes I look at my living family and feel so filled with love that I could radiate with it, overwhelmed with joy to the point of spilling incoherent tears because these people are just so amazing. But even those heavenly moments of crazy-lady love are so augmented by the constant presence of grief that happiness is now a completely different emotion than it once was...

I awoke suddenly with a strange feeling of dread. Momentarily I felt as if I could not move my legs and it began to dawn on me. I had been raped...

The internet is an amazing thing. In an instant, mothers from all over the world can connect with each other online. We share interests, tips, stories about our children; we compare ourselves and pick one another apart...

The night before my routine ultrasound, I cried for two hours, as waves of sadness crashed over me, and took me deeper and deeper into a sea of grief, a grief so deep there were no words...

When we walked into the NICU and saw the look on the nurses' faces it all of a sudden hit me that the sign was because of our baby. I couldn't believe it. That wasn't part of the plan. She was supposed to grow bigger and we were going to fly to Boston. I had not really considered the option of her dying...

This is a no man's land, a land where weight loss is truly a loss. I would happily trade places with my burgeoning neighbors, but I didn't make it to the third trimester...

It may seem odd that I am writing such a detailed letter. But I have noticed that it’s been very hard for people to talk about this, so I decided to step forward on my own and tell this story . . .

Happily contemplating the way our family was now growing on the fast track, I didn't honestly consider the second ultrasound as anything more than a technicality...

Six months ago I had a late-stage miscarriage, and gave birth to a baby that had passed away in the fifth month. I got out of the hospital, and began to write...

I place one foot in front of the other, and I walk forward into an uncertain future that contains moments of both pleasure and pain. This act takes courage...

When tragedy finally came, these rules could not protect me, and it forced me to confront the real costs of playing it safe. How much had I missed out on, I wondered, as I traveled the safe route?

We read the story of Chana and Penina on Rosh Hashanah, when we pray for a good, sweet year. We pray for abundant blessings. Yet I believe there is a lesson in their story, cautioning us that with blessings come responsibility...

Having lost a baby makes me more aware of the miraculous nature of birth. I pray for my friends, that their pregnancies be healthy and full-term. I pray for neighbors. And I pray for myself...

I didn't feel any pain, even though there wasn't even enough time to give me much in the way of anesthesia. I could see her, but I hadn't yet heard her...

Today for the third time in my life, I saw that magical pink line, that little line that will change my life forever. I'm pregnant. Again. Today is a special day. Today I ask G‑d that you be my first, that you will be born...

Without a candle to light, there is no external testament to these other two souls, who lived briefly and invisibly as members of our family. There is only a feeling of loss in the air...

Before this happened, I had never met anyone who had given birth to a premature baby or experienced the death of a child. It had certainly never occurred to me that this type of thing could happen to me...

I loved you, and I cared for you, deep into the night and day. I invested in you, and watched you grow as the months passed by. Then, one night, after our five o’clock feeding together, I put you into bed for the very last time...

I held vigil by her cribside. She was too fragile to hold, but we were encouraged to talk to her and gently stroke her hand. “She knows you’re there,” the nurses helpfully said as the hours wore on. I helplessly watched the machines pump air and life into her skinny and frail body, barely the length of my forearm . . .

When G‑d communicates with us from a place closer to His essence, we don’t understand Him clearly. Was that a hug? ’Cause it felt like a slap in the face . . .

Our beautiful baby Zushe developed with a disease known as anencephaly, a one-in-a-thousand anomaly which causes the baby to develop without a brain or skull. With shock and disbelief, we were made to digest news that escaped even the wildest realms of our imagination: that our baby had a disease that was “incompatible with life.”

Sometimes, when I see a little boy, I wonder who my child might have been. Precocious, talking at an early age? Maybe. Spoiled? Probably. Would he have been loved? Completely...