Madeline

I try to choose my vocabulary intentionally. Even so, I still catch myself referring to my son dying at 27 weeks as “loss.” It is the generally acceptable term, the one that doesn’t make people uncomfortable like the D Word does. But it isn’t the accurate term. I said this in my previous post: I didn’t “lose” Oliver, he isn’t “gone” — he is dead. Sitting in the discomfort of that mindset shift is hard, but it’s necessary. Death sounds ugly and messy. It sounds painful and tricky and just wrong, because it is all of those things. And if you find yourself uncomfortable or uneasy when it comes to hearing stories about the death of a child, then I want you to take a minute and imagine being that child’s parent. Whatever emotion you feel, whether it be pain or sadness or empathy or just being at a loss for words, I want you to remember that the child’s parents are feeling all of that and more, and it’s all multiplied by a million.

What you say matters. How you show up for others experiencing the unimaginable matters. Offers you make, trips to stop by, messages you send when you’re hurting with the parents, they all matter so much. Unfortunately, there is no step by step guide for how to help people who are grieving. I mean, I guess there might be, but every person grieves differently. There is no one size fits all approach to help support the people you love. Effort and intention matter, of course, but in the weeks since Oliver died, Jordan and I have come to learn a few things I thought might be worth sharing. There are approaches that don’t help, no matter how well meaning you may be. And the flip side of that is that there are gestures you can make, things you can say or do to help support grieving friends and family, that make all the difference in the world.

So, as you continue to read, I’m going to share ways people showed up for Jordan and I that were the most helpful and meaningful. Remember, grief and navigating life after the death of a child is quite possibly the most difficult thing a person can go through. No one grieves the same, and therefore no one’s life after is the same. What worked for Jordan and I may not work for others, and vice versa. But this is what I’ve learned so far.

1. Reach out. Often. It doesn’t have to be a long thoughtful message. It can just be something as simple as “I’m thinking of you today.” Something that lets the grieving parents know that while you can’t comprehend their pain, you support them and you’re there for them. Your words matter so much. Don’t let your messages drop off after they’re home from the hospital either. Continue to check in and ask how they’re doing weeks and even months following. Everyone wants to reach out and offer words of love and encouragement when a child dies. But reaching out long after the event will mean so much to the parents. It shows you haven’t forgotten about them and the enormous change to their lives.
2. Ask them about their baby. Talking about Oliver is hard, but it’s also my favorite thing to do. I don’t ever want him to become a topic people shy away from or are afraid to bring up around me. I love my son fiercely and as long as I’m alive, he will be talked about loudly. But that comes with the knowledge that maybe I’m oversharing or annoying people. Personally, I don’t care (and if you don’t like it you can mute me or unfriend me), but if you have someone in your life who has experienced what I have, then they may want to talk about their baby and just don’t know how. Ask them about their baby, invite them to share whatever they’re comfortable with. They might cry, they might not be able to answer right away, they might not even know what to say right then. But help them keep the memory of their baby alive.
3. Don’t expect a response. I know, I know, my last two points were all about reaching out and communicating. But you should do so without the expectation that a grieving parent will respond. Their world has just been absolutely shattered and destroyed in a short amount of time. They are absolutely reading your messages and they appreciate you and your words so much. But responding or even acknowledging you might be too much. After Oliver died, Jordan and I had so many amazing people reach out and send us words of love and sympathy and encouragement, but so many of those went unanswered, simply because my immediate focus was keeping my head above water and not letting my thoughts wander to the place they really wanted to. I was in survival mode, like so many parents are when they find themselves in the situation I’m in.
4. Clean their house while they’re at the hospital. This sounds so silly and you’re probably thinking, “Clean their house? Why?” Because like I said above, my immediate focus was keeping myself alive. I was in survival mode (and some days I still feel like I am). Grieving parents are so consumed by moving from planning a future with their baby to accepting the fact that the future will forever look completely different now. The last thing we had the motivation or mental capacity to worry about was if the dishes were done, if the litter box had been cleaned out, and if the trash had been taken out. Our family stepped in without being asked and cleaned our house for us. They intercepted baby items I’d ordered and moved them out of sight. They took care of yard work, stocked our refrigerator and pantry, washed our bedding, and even worked on our janky dryer.
5. Share their story. We’ve already established that the death of a child is a difficult topic. The unfortunate truth is, it’s more common than you’d think. 1 in 4 women will experience a miscarriage. 1 in every 175 births in the United States end in stillbirth. It’s so common that the couple in the hospital beside us was also experiencing a stillbirth. Odds are, I’m not the only person you know or have heard from that has experienced stillbirth. Share their story, both the good and the bad and the ugly. Talk about their precious baby. This will help the parents feel like you genuinely care about keeping the memory of their baby alive, and it could also help another couple going through the same thing feel less alone. You 100% have my permission to use Oliver’s story as a means to help support someone you know who has lost a child.

If I’m going to have to live without Oliver for the rest of my life and always have this hole where he was supposed to be, I want to make my experience helpful. I want my words to be a comfort to those going through similar situations. Or maybe you’re not going through something similar, but maybe you know someone who is. I hope what I share during my healing journey can help you support someone else. From the day I learned Oliver no longer had a heartbeat, to delivering him, to coming home, to every little thing in between and after, I wished I’d had a big sister to turn to who understood and could prepare me. But I didn’t, so I have mostly been navigating this alone and learning how to live again. Oliver and I both want to be that for someone.