Touchstone 20
Love, loss, grief, and the way a family can hold one another when there is nothing anyone can do to fix the pain.
Touchstones — The Baby We Lost
Sometime in the middle of all the commotion in our family, my sister McGurk started a relationship with a gentleman who worked at the company.
McGurk had always wanted a baby. All of her sisters had children, and she still didn’t have one. Becoming a mother had become a very important goal for her.
Our dad was always especially protective of McGurk. She had significant hearing loss, and for that reason, Dad worried about her. She was his sixth child, and he had always felt a little more protective of her.
When McGurk decided to marry this man from the company, Dad wasn’t entirely pleased. The man was leaving a marriage to marry his daughter, and Dad didn’t entirely trust the situation. But Dad had become remarkably good at accepting our decisions as he grew older. Somehow, he had learned to accept the craziness his daughters continually dragged him through.
McGurk married him. We held a ceremony at my house, followed by a lovely reception at their home.
Not long afterward, McGurk became pregnant.
She was so excited. She wanted a home birth, just as her sisters had had, and everything seemed to be going well. I went with her to one of her doctor appointments. I don’t remember exactly why I was there. Maybe I was just so excited for her…
When her labor started, it was strong, even though she was only one centimeter dilated. I remember thinking that seemed strange. The nurse was there, and they checked the baby’s heartbeat. Everything seemed okay, and everyone began to settle in.
Then, about an hour later, the nurse checked again.
There was no heartbeat.
I remember thinking, No. No, no, no. This is not happening.
I wanted so badly for McGurk to have her baby. More than anything, I wanted to take away her pain.
Because she had planned a home birth, her doctor had privileges at specific hospitals. McGurk’s labor was becoming more and more intense, but there was still no detectable heartbeat.
I drove her to a hospital downtown.
There wasn’t much an ambulance could do to change what was happening. Either the baby was okay, or the baby was gone. There really wasn’t much in between.
When we got to the hospital, we learned that the baby had died during labor.
She was a beautiful baby girl.
Eight pounds, six ounces.
Absolutely beautiful.
It was the most gut-wrenching experience I had ever been through. If I could have taken McGurk’s pain and carried it myself, I would have done it without hesitation.
They initially tried to let her deliver the baby vaginally, but eventually, it became too dangerous for McGurk. Her kidneys were beginning to struggle, and the doctors decided she needed an emergency cesarean.
And then they let us hold the baby.
They bathed her.
They blessed her.
We had several hours with her.
My brothers flew in from California. Our entire family gathered around McGurk. We cried. We held one another. We grieved together.
I had never experienced that kind of emotional pain before.
And in the middle of all of it, I somehow went on a mission to find cabbage leaves for McGurk’s breasts so her milk wouldn’t come in.
Because what a freaking nightmare would that have been?
Get LiziBlue’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Even in the middle of unimaginable grief, there were still things that had to be done. Somehow, we kept moving through the practical details of a situation that none of us could begin to comprehend.
We held a funeral for her baby, and the whole family came.
McGurk was incredibly sore from the delivery. Her husband was remarkable in the way he supported her through that time. For a while, she was completely dependent on him.
One of my brothers tried to read a poem at the funeral, but he could barely get through it. He was crying so hard.
We were all having children ourselves. We understood, at least in some small way, what McGurk had lost. We knew the love that comes with welcoming a child, and we could only imagine the depth of the grief she was experiencing.
I remember thinking over and over:
If I could take this pain from her, I would.
After the funeral, McGurk turned her attention to healing her body, mind, and spirit. She was determined to try again.
We were all terrified.
She was terrified.
After losing a baby at full term, another pregnancy isn’t simply joyful. Every appointment carries fear. Every little change makes you wonder whether something is wrong. Hope comes, but it comes with a kind of worry you never wanted to know.
McGurk became pregnant again fairly quickly. This time, the pregnancy continued, and she carried the baby to full term.
And this time, everything went well.
She had a beautiful baby girl.
Only two people were allowed in her hospital room at a time, but that didn’t stop the rest of us from swarming the room whenever we could. We celebrated this new life with McGurk and her husband.
What a triumph.
And I adore that girl to this day. She is like another daughter to me.
It has been one of the great gifts of my life to watch McGurk finally become a mother.
Her marriage ultimately didn’t survive, and that’s okay. Sometimes relationships simply don’t last. They are still friends.
But McGurk and I became good friends, and I have had the privilege of watching her raise her daughter.
Looking back, what stays with me isn’t just the tragedy.
It’s the way our family showed up.
We couldn’t fix what happened. We couldn’t take away McGurk’s grief. We couldn’t bring her baby back.
But we could hold her.
We could cry with her.
We could stand beside her.
We could love her.
And maybe that’s what family really meant to me.
Not perfect.
Not uncomplicated.
Certainly not without its chaos.
But when something truly mattered, we showed up.
And sometimes love is simply being willing to stand beside someone in the worst moment of their life and say, “You don’t have to go through this alone. I am with you.”
