shared tears.

Rusty and I flew to the Northwest for a few weeks to reconnect with friends and family. On the plane ride out we noticed that the women sitting next to us had a bag that looked like it was made in Thailand, so we asked her about it. Turned out she had gotten in Laos on a trip she had made to Southeast Asia two years ago. The conversation continued and eventually led to her asking what we do in Thailand and what we are doing here now, which lead to sharing about Olive. When she heard Olive passed away about a month ago tears started streaming down her face and she said, "I am so sorry. There are no words. I am just so sorry."

Every time that a women has responded this strongly to me after hearing about Olive, i find later that they have experienced some sort a deep personal loss themselves. I waited for a few minutes, then asked her, "have you ever lost a baby?"

More tears.

silence.

and then, "Yes."

more tears.

silence.

"I lost my first son at nine months...he was stillborn. Then two pairs of twins after that at five months."

She lost five babies. FIVE babies.

shared tears.

silence.

more quiet tears.

She shared that eventually she had chosen to adopt after losing her babies, then had two healthy pregnancies following that adoption. She looked to be in her 60's, had already retired from working for the city of Chicago, and still quietly weeped with a fellow stranger whose pain she was all too familiar with.

Grief seems to be understood most easily with simple stories and shared tears.

I've noticed that the quick, predictable and cliche answers tend to cause something in me to cringe the most...though I try to remind myself that people's intentions and motives are usually pure and good.

The day before our flight to Seattle another women  shared with me about losing her child at  20 weeks. After the doctors failed to find a heartbeat they sent her home and gave her a week hoping labor would start on its own.  I asked if that was horrible to carry her baby for one full week knowing that it had already died inside her. Her response was, "No. It was actually a beautiful week." And oddly enough, I could relate.

I remembered the night Olive died, and not wanting to let her go. Not wanting the nurse to walk her down the hall and put her little body in the morgue...all alone.  Rusty and I each took turns rocking her little body and sang the songs we would sing to her every day one last time. The reality that we would never be able to cradle her warm body in her arms...and the thought of her being put into a refrigerator was just too much. And yet there was a strange realization that sweet Olive wasn't in her little body any more and that her spirit had left it's shell behind.

Tonight we talked with a couple in Seattle who aren't able to have children and heard a bit into the pain they have walked through on this unexpected journey of unfulfilled dreams. The grief of what they thought was supposed to be. The painful loss of significant expectations.

A childhood friend of mine who lost three of her babies to miscarriages and is pregnant again carrying her current baby now at almost 28 weeks... and hoping to carrying him/her full-term.

Other friends who over the last few years lost their babies from miscarriages, molar pregnancies, and more stillbirths.

And then there are handfuls of you who I know are battling cancer...and those who have lost your loved ones to it.

Life has turned it's head on some of us and it has turned out to be much different than we ever thought it would be. Many of us have lost big dreams. The answers are missing. Pieces of our hearts are ripped out and can't ever be fully replaced or repaired. And somewhere in the midst of all of our questions and confusion, there is a sense of depth arriving in us that wasn't there before. Life has become much more fragile. Tears come more easily than they used to. Easy answers aren't as comforting as we hoped they might be, and most of it is out of our control.

But somewhere in all of this loss something beautiful is growing in me, and I have seen it in so many of you who have walked down your own unplanned personal losses.  I don't really know how to put it into words yet, but i hope that I/we can find ways to foster it rather than snuff it out.

Put more simply,  I don't want to allow cynicism or bitterness rob me of whatever this "something beautiful" is.