Tragedy. Acceptance. Grief. Pain. Love.
I know some people want to ask “Why?” when tragedy happens. I’m not talking about culpability for events surrounding the tragedy (if there is culpability to be found), but rather the bigger picture existential question. Sometimes I think those bigger questions – questions to which there are no certain answers – only complicate our grief.
Early on, I knew that asking “Why?” would not serve me. It would not heal me. It would not help me. I don’t believe that it can be answered, and I don’t find comfort or truth in generic spiritual notions like “God needed her in heaven”.
I’ve actually found it to be freeing, in my grief, to let go of those bigger questions. Sara, George, myself – our story isn’t about the bigger questions but about the truths that I know. I know that we were a family. I know that Sara and I were in love, and that our love and our life were beautiful. I know that Sara did not want to die, and the last thing that she said to me was that she loved me. I know that I am still loved and that I am not the only one grieving for George and Sara.
I know that we lost George because of the poor positioning of his placenta combined with continued irritation caused by a subchorionic hemorrhage that occurred early in the pregnancy that persisted until he was delivered. I know that many people carry pregnancies successfully to term having had subchorionic hemorrhages, but I was not able to. I know that George was alive when they did an ultrasound around 9pm on August 12th, and that he was not when I delivered him just after 4am on August 13th, 2019.
I know that Sara died because of cancer, which we didn’t know about until it was too advanced for modern medicine to overcome. Her doctor tried everything he could, and Sara wanted to overcome, but that fucking cancer was everywhere in the end. Her reproductive system, her lungs, her liver, her lymph nodes, her brain.
I know that I can accept what has happened while still feeling pain every minute of every day because of it. Acceptance doesn’t cancel out my grief. It doesn’t mute the pain or close the gaping hole in my life. If anything, without having to wrestle with the existential big questions, acceptance allows me to really feel my grief, let it be what it is. The only way I want to keep going is with authenticity – Tragedy, Acceptance, Grief, Pain, Love.