Goodness in the land of the living

Five years ago, I had bought a onesie for Aaron's birthday. Aaron is my spouse, and he is a pilot, so I bought a onesie naming our baby a pilot-in-training. I miscarried that child, our first child, on Aaron's birthday. When I got home from the hospital, I wouldn't let him open it. I balled it up and threw it under the bed. Eventually, this onesie made its way to my sister's house because it was too painful to keep in my house. She held it for me, returning it to me in time for my living child to wear it on Aaron's birthday last year.

Five years ago today, we lost our first baby. Four years ago last week, we lost Aaron's mom. This month, really, is one in which I feel I am drowning under the weight of the loss of first a child then a parent.

There is very little that is redemptive I have experienced along my journey of loss and infertility. Even holding a living child does not redeem so much suffering. Christians wax on about redemptive suffering, but my experience of suffering poisoned me. If redemption is to get back the goodness of the beginning, I did not get that. There is goodness, surely. But it is not the same. The goodness I have now does not cancel out the suffering. The goodness co-mingles with the suffering, teaching me how to keep moving forward to search for beauty in spite of everything.

And so yes, I still flounder in my grief this time of year. And I am buoyed by the immense beauty my family and friends have created as we celebrated anyway, clinging to one another.

I dressed my living child in the onesie intended for his sibling when we brought him home from the hospital. And it still fit him--- barely but it did fit--- two months later on Aaron's birthday, so I dressed him in it again, thinking it would be a kind of redemption. I handed our child to Aaron, and I just felt angry. As happy as I was for my living child to wear this onesie, it should have been stained with use from his siblings by the time he was wearing it.

But. And. This is grief, right? Anger but love. Anger and love.

There was still so much love in seeing Aaron hold our living child up to show off this pilot-in-training.

The psalmist in scripture declares, "I believe that I shall see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living" (Psalm 27:13). I don't know that I always believed that, but I have always experienced that goodness. And so again today, I wake up with sorrow and joy and bitterness and hope and anger and so much love.