How To Be A Good Friend When Her Baby Dies
Breathe.
Hot, steamy water ran down my body, as I showered. My heart thudding in my chest, I recounted the details of the unexpected phone call I had just received. The message I hadn’t expected to hear. The message I hadn’t wanted to hear.
Breathe.
I prayed to God to steady my heart and my mind so I could be present for my expectant friend.
Her co-worker had called me at home. My friend had been unsettled at work that morning and had headed up to the hospital for a check up on her baby’s heart rate and vitals. She was at the hospital now. She was 34-weeks pregnant with her baby girl. And for all those months, our women’s community group had been praying for this precious girl.
This baby was so wanted and so loved already. But I just got the call that this baby girl no longer had a heartbeat. My friend would now need to deliver her stillborn daughter.
I dressed quickly and waited for my husband to arrive home from work to watch our own little girls. As I walked to the door, I passed the sagging helium-filled balloon from our daughter’s recent first birthday.
Breathe.
I couldn’t quite imagine what the next hours would hold. How could I show her the love and support she would need?
But I knew that no matter what it would hold, I would go sit with her while she prepared for something no mother ever wants to imagine.
Breathe.
I drove to the hospital, the May sun shining brightly through the windshield, and the river, deep shades of blue, to my right. The air was still crisp but the sun was hot enough to promise summer was coming, though not yet here.
This can’t be right, I pleaded with God. Let it be a mistake, let her heartbeat be found loud and strong. I worried because I didn’t know anything about this kind of grief, and if I was honest, I could barely begin to enter into the thought of it. How could I be a friend to her through this? I had no answers, no experience, no words.
All I knew was that I needed to go be with her.
I arrived at her hospital room, timid and unsure of what to say. When she saw me walk through the door she cried and I hugged her; heart full. She asked me to stay.
I sat gingerly on the side of her hospital bed, fingering the green pile on the blanket, barely daring to look her in the eyes and see her anguish, but knowing it was all I could do to show her the love in my own. I listened to her talk through her morning at work, her concerns and then her fears realized, and we prayed together.
We waited: telling stories, laughing, sharing, forgetting for moments, until her medically induced labor made her gasp for breath; until her tears and anguish directed her body to do what it needed to do while her heart screamed against it.
Breathe.
I whispered from the corner of her room as the night settled onto the world around us.
Breathe, I whispered while I walked the brightly lit hallway to give her and her husband privacy.
I prayed for her husband and steadied his step as he watched and waited so helplessly.
Holy Spirit, breathe. I pleaded for His presence to be tangible.
As morning dawned, I watched and prayed as my friend delivered her sweet Norah.
I watched as proud Mommy tears traced her cheeks as she memorized her every feature. She soaked her in, every perfect little bit of her tiny hands and feet, her small ears and button nose. She was perfect.
I left them for a while, and when I returned she held Norah out for me to me to hold, and cherish, and even celebrate with her, just as she had with her firstborn. This sacred moment. She was still warm from her Mama’s body. Still pink with newness. Her lips were red and looked like they had been hand painted with the tiniest paintbrush by her Maker. Her hair was a striking full head of dark brown.
She looked as if she were sleeping and as the tears slipped down my cheeks my heart pounded loud in my ears . . . Please breathe.
Had I ever prayed so hard to see the hand of God move in a miraculous way in all my life? “Please, breathe!” I whispered aloud as I held her close.
The weeks and months that followed were my first exposure to real grief. Helpless, wordless, I often fell silent, my presence the only thing I had to offer.
If grief could be beautiful, this was.
This extreme love and humanity. This spiritual walk, a mixture of trust and anger. This deep hurt paired with gratitude. To witness her sorrow, to be welcomed into her grief, to walk by her side, it was a bittersweet gift to me.
A year of firsts brought her Norah’s birthday around that next Spring and she mentioned to me that though some might think it crazy, she was going to buy her a birthday cake to remember. I knew this was one thing I could do. She loved my white cake, raved about it constantly.
I could remember with this family, these friends in this way.
Every year my girls and I bake the biggest cupcake together, praying for our friends, remembering, and imagining together who Norah would have looked like and acted like and what she would have loved. We decorate her cake just like we would have had she lived, growing up alongside her older sister and younger brother, playing with our brood. We talk about heaven when my girls will get to meet her and watch their friends be reunited. I do my best to hold it together when I think of witnessing my friend reunited with her baby love. And then with a hug, a prayer and a candle commemorating her year, we deliver Norah’s birthday cake and I watch my friend, with her brave mama heart, as she lights the candle, taking in a deep breath, and I pray …
