The Love of a Quietly Grieving Man

I am convinced that I am a magnet for rude comments.

If there is someone who will say the wrong thing, I will meet them.


She was thinning out my hair about a month ago- ripping some final remnants of the Eden hormones from my head. She was telling me what a mane it was, asking why I let it get so thick and unmanageable. She was abusing my confidence, assuming self care is nothing to me. She said there was no wonder I kept having headaches. My hair was ridiculous. It went on and on for about ten minutes, through the wash, the initial trim, and into the middle of shearing my scalp.

"It's usually not like this," I said. "I mean, it has always been pretty thick, but this is mostly the accumulation from all my prenatals."

"Well, no excuses missy. You have to take care of this stuff. How old is your youngest?"

Finally, ready to snap, I carefully said, "She's just a few minutes old forever. She's in Heaven. If you're asking how long its been since I've taken the vitamins, its been almost two months."

"Oh, I'm so sorry."

A few moments of peace and quiet... then, backtracking.

"Was she your first?" Yes.
"Did you name her?" Eden.
"Do you have a picture?" Here.

"That is sad. But on the bright side...."
Oh God.
"On the bright side, you and your husband now have a little more time to just enjoy each other without kids getting in the way."

"I mean, I guess?"

"Yeah! You're young! Have fun! When your first kid comes, a man just turns into another child. You'll have your hands too full. Enjoy him as a man before you have to become his mom."

And all the other women's faces in the hair salon wore shocked brows and gaped mouths. I saw them in the mirror as my face turned deep red and I looked down to hide the tears spilling from my eyes.

"Well, I don't think so. I know my husband will be more than eager to help me parent our children. He was eager to be a daddy to her."

"You'll see. But who knows, maybe he'll be a good father one day All men are different right? Okay! All done. Feel better?"
No. Get me out of here.


I am a magnet.



-She was right about our age. We are young. We do have time to build our family. But we already started. This isn't a blessing in disguise- Eden was a very wanted baby: waited for, planned for, and prayed for. We are young, but we decided together that we were ready to be parents.

-When our next child comes, it will not be called our first child! We already have one! This time now is not "before we have children". That time was over a year ago. This time is the time between our first daughter that died and her siblings.

-"Maybe he'll be a good father one day."
Ryan will not be a good father one day. Ryan is an excellent father now. Just like me, he loves his daughter and dreams of her and talks about her and talks to her and misses her.

I wish I had told her what its really like in my house- I wish I'd told her what it's like to be a grieving mother living in close proximity with a grieving father.

I wish I had told her that I'm not worried about ever having to take care of Ryan.

I'll gladly pick up after him while I'm picking up after our babies. Because most days lately he has to pick up after me. The wife that used to wash, dry, fold, and put away all the laundry in one day now leaves a load in the washer that he restarts...then restarts again the next day after I tell him to leave it alone, I'll take care of it.

I can handle a man that acts like a child, because with that thought I picture him in the floor wrestling our kiddos, making them laugh the way he still works so tirelessly to make me laugh on days that I've done nothing but cry.

I will smile on the days when I've packed his lunch along with the lunches of our babes, remembering that in this season there are some days he goes without lunch at all because I haven't cooked all week to send leftovers and theres not time for him to grab take-out.

When he sleeps in on weekends and I am up early with the cartoons, I will remember now, when he is coming home half the days in a week to find I have not moved from the couch, the dogs have not been fed, and the blinds are still drawn.

I am not afraid of taking care of Ryan, I owe him for taking care of me. We get to take turns caring for one another. That's my observation in this season. We will just alternate picking each other up, though I haven't quite mastered the part where I pick him up and its been more of his responsibility than mine.
I don't anticipate having a man-child that cannot care for himself because that's not anything like this man I'm married to, but in the event I do for a while... well thats ok because he has been caring for this woman-child when I couldn't care for myself. Thats what marriage is: taking turns.
It's tough to describe what else our marriage is right now. I can say that his love is a few things.

It's knowing not to mention my new gray hairs when I start picking on his.

It's noticing that my brain is mush when I tell him to take the trash out since the truck will come tomorrow even though he knows it won't come for another three days, smiling, nodding, and taking the trash and recycling bins to the road anyway.

It's looking at me when the mixed company starts talking about parenting struggles and our eyes doing the communication: "you ready?"... "let's go."

It's embarrassing himself at any cost to make me smile and feeling like a king when I've laughed.

It's patiently waiting for me to get done telling him that I don't know why he isn't breaking down the way I am.

It's reminding me that we are both feeling the same pain but reacting to it in different ways.

It's approaching each subject carefully, but being adamant that there is no tip-toeing around each other- it's encouraging me to be gentle but real.

It's getting up in the morning with a heart as broken as mine and going to work and dealing with the world and coming home to screen the mail and changing the channel when a Pampers commercial comes on and making sure I really want to see the Pixar movies in public and giving me space when I need it but never leaving me alone.

It's tears and it's smiles and it's happy and it's sad and it's wild and it's mundane and it's neat and it's messy.

My husband has never been one for showing himself. He celebrates quietly, he mourns even more quietly. It is so difficult for me to accept that his grief isn't loud like mine. It doesn't scream. You can read it all over his face and see it in his eyes, but it doesn't often come out of his mouth. I have had a really hard time being ok with this:

"Are you not sad?"

I always think that I have to remind him that we have a dead baby. I don't have to remind him. He knows it every second of every day the same way I know it. He is living it in the same time I live it.
He never asks me to stop being so vocal and visible about my brokenness, so I don't know why I keep asking him to make a display about his.
Perhaps the way I can take care of him right now is to allow him to act however he needs to act without the demands of "normal behavior for the grieving", without the demands that he meets my grief criteria. Perhaps I can take care of him by giving him the grace he continuously puts into me: "It's okay. How you are feeling and how you are acting and what you are thinking.. it's all okay."

In the months following the birth and death of our child, I realize why the divorce rate among bereaved parents is so high. It's hard for two people hurting so badly to do life together so closely and not say things that just hurt each other more. Had we not had a semi-developed relationship before this, had we not worked steadily and intently on communication and patience before I got pregnant, we may not have walked in on this new normal with much of a chance.

But now when more children come, we will be husband and wife that have walked through the Refiner's Fire and we will be mother and father united to parent all of our babies. I will not ever become my husband's mom. I'm his wife and the luckiest one there ever was to be taken care of by him and to take care of him the way that spouses do.

My prayer is that I can learn to accept the love of this man in his quiet grief and not try to change how he acts. My prayer is that I will stop assuming he is not hurting and start realizing he handles his hurt in different ways from me. My prayer is that we both keep reminding each other that our daughter's life taught us more about our love than her death can tear us apart. And my prayer is also that strangers stop saying stupid things to us.

Conversations When Love is Complicated and Marriage is Messy

Once (sometimes twice) a week for the past few weeks, my husband has left work and come to sit with me in waiting rooms, then in exam rooms, then in our living room, then in our bedroom.

He will leave work once a week for the next few months to keep doing the same.
My life will come to revolve around the check-ups, as if they don't already.

We have been and will be sitting with each other. Unable to express feelings, unable to comfort one another. All we can do is be, and that is such a hard thing to do while so much is left unfixed.

In less than two weeks I'll be in my third trimester of pregnancy. It's all gone by so quickly, and now it is going by too fast.
While we should be attending baby showers, completing her nursery, stocking up on diapers... we will simply be walking past the vacant room that was already filling with gifts and DIY projects for her, trying not to linger too long next to the infant section in stores, avoiding conversations about parenting children past a day old.

The probability that our daughter won't come home with us is a hard thing we've had to admit to ourselves. We shared with our family, with our friends, with our entire village... and we still can't understand any of it. It's not like learning science or grammar- how if you repeat something enough it becomes knowledge. It's more like waking up every morning wondering what kind of nightmare you had, realizing that it was no nightmare and this is your life and you're one day closer to it blowing you away for real.

Out of order death is intolerable. Knowing that it's coming does not make it more tolerable- there is no "at least..." even though we know those who offer one only mean well. There just is not any *at least* when it comes to losing a child- whether it be at 4 weeks gestation or 20 weeks gestation or right out of the womb or 5 years old or 20 years old... so I encourage any friends reading this to try and find different comfort tactics, as this one does not really work.

As you can imagine, all of this makes our love complicated. It is no longer something that can be simplified into romance, or friendship, or even familiar love. It's all three of them at the same time, sometimes none of them at any time. It is happy and it is sad and we are in love but our hearts are also broken... and then we are trying to remember our love started all of this in the first place, and then we are mad at our love.

Hope is surely born of our suffering and there is not one piece of us that's given up, and we will not give up until it is all over. However, we cannot prepare for the most unlikely. Parenthood in a few months is the most unlikely. Miracles happen, we see them every day. But while we'd love to bring her home, we're not praying for any miracle. Eden is the miracle. Babies are miracles. We cannot pray to change one thing about her. We are praying for peace, understanding, and comfort in God's plan for our lives and our family. We are praying for our hearts while preparing for the likely. We are praying for the courage to make the best decision we can for her delivery and the moments we have with her. Therefore, our conversations are not those that we'd expect to have when moving into the final months of pregnancy.

Instead, our conversations are questions, "What are we going to do?"
Quiet and fun, like we're keeping secrets, "Feel her move. She loves your voice."
Reminders, "This is who called today. And we have cards from the mailbox."
Whispers, "Will this tear us apart?"

We talk about her. We want to talk about her, and we have to talk about her. She is not an elephant in the room, she is the human in my body. She shows us her personality so often already. She is shy, but when comfortable she is feisty. She loves us, we love her. She likes my singing and she likes hearing about her father's day. We enjoy her.

There is plenty of this that is sad and there's no use pretending it isn't. She has made a big mess of our otherwise easy marriage. BUT, I can say that she is making us more honest, more real, and more present for each other as we talk about her.

And along with all that there's the "What can I make you for lunch?"
The "All of the bills have come out of the account."
The "When was the last time the dogs had a bath?"
The "I looked at a few more properties in Washington."
The "Let's go to Redbox after we pick up a pizza."

It's only been a few weeks, of course, and we are not through the hardest part. But so far, our lives have not stopped. There are still things to be done and our life together does have to be respected enough to carry on. That does not mean we aren't sad... We are beautifully broken together but still have to find moments to be mundane and just eat regular supper or finish another season of Hart of Dixie on Netflix, mostly for sanity. We don't flirt too long with the sadness. We are trying to celebrate and enjoy the fact that we are growing a baby together, the fact that we can have a family and we love each other enough to do it. We still have normal married couple conversations.

But in-between the conversations about her and the conversations about life, there are the words that require no response.
There are the conversations that are not really conversations at all- as we are sitting with each other.
The words we speak knowing our love is a mess, the words we need to hear most inside the waiting room, the exam room, the living room, the bedroom:

"I love you."
"I need you."
"This will not tear us apart."