loss – Don't Gel Too Soon

Grief, Prince, Bruce and a Lost Friend

This is one of just many musical tributes to the loss of a great artist and since it’s Bruce, it’s especially meaningful to me.

When a celebrity dies, the public memories of respected peers add a kind of emotional gravitas that helps all of us who love the mourner or the mourned – or both.

Personal loss. though, has a weight and impact hotter, sharper and deeper.

Sunday, we went to a “shiva,”a home memorial services held for a friend. We’d met him and his wonderful wife on a cruise, sailed all through the Mediterranean and had a great time; we were so happy they lived nearby, especially since we shared so much: they’d been married as long as we have, also had grown kids and grandkids and, it turned out, lived just across San Francisco Bay from us.

Gerri Larry tender fixed2 — Gerri and Larry Miller Summer, 2015 Outside Gironda, Sp;ain

Larry was a blast to be around, intense, funny, smart and curious; he and his wife Gerri were a great pair and it was so very hard to see her grieving so intensely.

As I near my 8th decade with very little sense of age, I’m so aware of each loss of a peer and remember my dad telling me with astonishment every time one of his friends left us; it seemed to impossible to him. Like so many other things, I understand this so much more now.

Of course it’s easier to grieve the loss of a public person, no matter how admired: the sharp reality of a more personal one, deep feeling for his family and realigning of each memory of them, especially in the years that we become so much more aware of our own mortality, cuts and lingers so much more.

My Miscarriage: Memories that Don’t Fade

A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage - from The Nib — A Lost Possibility: Women on Miscarriage – by Ryan Alexander-Tanner, from The Nib

NOTE: In a newsletter, Nona Willis Aronowitz posted two stories about miscarriages. As I began to respond, this emerged:

My sons are 40 and 35. Between them I had a miscarriage. She was a girl. It was the first day I had told anyone I was pregnant and begun wearing maternity clothes.

It happened on Election Night 1978 and I was in the studio producing the “house desk” results.

When the pain got serious I raced home, lost most of the fetus in the bathroom, and called our OB. We went immediately to the hospital; in the morning I had a D and C. It was devastating.

Then came the reaction:
VP of News: You work too hard.
Secretary to Pres of News: What were you doing working all night? Didn’t you want this baby?

On the other hand, I also got notes from people ranging from my aunt to a colleague, all with the same message: “I’ve never told anyone before but I had a miscarriage (anywhere from 1 to 30) years ago.” The pain for each was still real.

I was lucky though. My OB was from Czechoslovakia. He had a real (maybe European, maybe Socialist, maybe just father of daughters) respect for professional women and, as he had been in my first pregnancy was wonderfully supportive. He ran a cell test to determine whether there was a distinguishable cause (there was – a serious genetic issue – although we didn’t learn that for months, it has been a comfort.) He explained the D and C, urged us to take time to grieve but also reminded us that we were far from finished with efforts to have more kids, kept me in the hospital an extra day so I could pull myself together before I went home and had to tell our nearly-three-year-old son.

He wanted to know where the baby went. I just couldn’t handle a literal answer so even though I wasn’t at that time religious at all I told him the baby was with God. I needed him to understand that she was somewhere where she would be as loved as he was on 79th and Broadway.

Several years later when I worked at TODAY, with the support of our Executive Producer, I produced a series about miscarriages. The narrator was an OB himself, one of the TODAY stable of experts. I’m not naming him because this is what he told me (to his credit:) “Thank you so much for doing this series with me. I’ve been an OB for 25 years and I never realized the pain that this causes women.” Seriously. I was grateful that he was emotionally available to admit this but can you imagine? Never realized.

One more thing – partners are NOT sufficiently supported when this happens. They need FAR more attention than they usually receive. My husband has said for years that he wished we could have had a funeral or some sort of service so he too could have a vehicle to grieve.

NONA thank you so much for raising this and for the links to those powerful pieces. The graphic one was particularly evocative as it reminded me of small moments I’d forgotten.

For the record – our second son was born 2 years later. Both my boys are fabulous men and exquisite spouses and dads. I am grateful for them both and the sorrow of our loss is not in any way linked to how I define my unambiguous and grateful love of them.

Even so – the fact that, 32 years later, the silence and shame and insensitivity remains is a travesty. Please share this with doctors, nurses, midwives, preschool teachers and others who are on the “front lines.” Maybe we can help to break the chain.,

SNOW AND SORROW

What a perfect Sunday. If you’ve never lived around snow, you can’t imagine the wonder of its first falling – big wet flakes piling up, covering dead leaves and dirt, silencing passing car noises and footsteps. You take a step and there’s a palpable give in the surface, and a wonderful squeaking sound. Here’s how our street looked and…

This is what our house looked like yesterday — the whole neighborhood was one big fairy tale. Some friends with (wonderful) small children invited us to come watch them slide down the local sledding hill.. an invitation we accepted happily. It was such a joy to watch them revel in the snow, the speed, the make-believe strawberry/snow candy, and manufacture of snowballs aimed, somewhat haphazardly (they are little) at us.

In the evening some friends who had parked their car in our driveway came over to dig it out and stayed for soup and toast. It was lovely. After they left, we both fell asleep during the Oscars and woke up in fine fettle. And then.

Of course, there’s an "and then." What did you think? At around 9:30 this morning my husband called me to tell me that his father had died. He was 87 and quite ill, so it was not, in that sense, a surprise, but it was still painful. He’s lived in LA for years, we saw him less often since we moved back east — and it was a complicated relationship, but still… I’m sitting here now listening to my husband make arrangements and work with his brother in Philadelphia and our rabbi to get things together — and worrying.

I have some strong opinions about all this myself and am having a terrible time keeping my mouth (almost completely) shut about it all. It was his dad and his reactions are the ones to be honored but as the one who usually does all these kinds of things it’s tough to stay on the sidelines – where he seems to want me to be.

I worry, too. How will it be when the arrangements are done, when there’s no place left to call? It’s my prayer that our new, observant life will help to support and protect him as he deals with the loss of the last of our four parents to leave us. And help us travel this newest journey together. There are rituals to follow for a year, so we will have some structure to his grief. For that I’m truly grateful. Not only does it offer us the comfort that comes with faith and the privilege of a community of loving friends – it also has served to bring Rick and his brother closer, since they also are observant – and that has made making all these arrangements much easier. You never know where the blessings are going to land, I guess. Wish us well.