United to the suffering of Mary.

his is a mem­oir about loss and grief, but please under­stand how dif­fi­cult it is to write. It is not mere­ly that the sub­ject is so dif­fi­cult. But it is that by tem­pera­ment I am a per­son who buries emo­tion under a sto­ic exte­ri­or. That’s my dad in me. I think of myself as an intel­lec­tu­al, rea­soned and calm in his analy­sis of things. I often joke with friends: “I don’t do emo­tion.”

RATIONAL THINGS TO DO

Being, there­fore, the very ratio­nal per­son I am, I did the ratio­nal thing and mar­ried some­one com­plete­ly the oppo­site: Kim is all emo­tion and no rea­son. That’s an exag­ger­a­tion; though, of course, she mar­ried me, which is not exact­ly the most sen­si­ble thing to have done. Once she said to me, “You think with your head, and I think with my heart.”

I grew up on the east coast, in north­ern Delaware, just south of Wilm­ing­ton. Lat­er, dur­ing grad­u­ate school, I moved to south­ern Illi­nois, then returned to Delaware in 1999. Final­ly I came to Cincin­nati in 2003. Peo­ple I meet often ask how it was I end­ed up in Cincin­nati. “Did you come here for a job?”

No; I just chased a woman.

Kim and I dat­ed long-dis­tance for three years, and then—without any thought in the world how I was to get to Cincin­nati or where I would find employ­ment once there—I pro­posed and Kim accept­ed. Three months lat­er, I quit my job, with­drew the entire­ty of my sav­ings, and moved to Cincin­nati on faith.

Well, as they say: faith and prayer. I found work. Not that mon­ey was in any way easy. When Kim and I were mar­ried, her son Tyler was thir­teen. We had used con­tra­cep­tion through­out our courtship, in the form of an IUD; Kim was not sure she want­ed any more chil­dren. We were in our thir­ties, and Tyler was already thir­teen, and Kim did­n’t think she want­ed to start over. “I’ll be in my fifties,” she would say, “when the child grad­u­ates from high school.”

Now, I did­n’t have chil­dren of my own, and I cer­tain­ly want­ed chil­dren. I had names already picked out; Kim hat­ed them all. She under­stood how deep my desire was. But I was will­ing to con­cede to her feel­ings on the mat­ter, so for the first year of our mar­riage we kept the IUD.

Then one day she looked at me and said, “I want a child. Will you give me a child?”

Of course, I knew that what she meant was: I want a daugh­ter. She had her son. And she also had, at times, a dif­fi­cult rela­tion­ship with her moth­er, so I think she want­ed the oppor­tu­ni­ty to make up for that through the rela­tion­ship she would have with a daugh­ter of her own. Nat­u­ral­ly, I want­ed a boy. Men gen­er­al­ly do, but for me there was a stronger con­sid­er­a­tion: I knew this might be my only child. I want­ed to have some­one to car­ry on my name.

Thus we had the IUD removed, and in Octo­ber of 2005 we learned that Kim was preg­nant. She knew I want­ed a boy; she knew I des­per­ate­ly want­ed a boy. But she was also mar­ried to me and knew my sins. In truth, she knew them far bet­ter than I.

“You need to have a daugh­ter,” she told me. “A daugh­ter will be good for you.”  Because, of course, she knew that I would be lenient with a boy; boys will be boys. I was. But a girl I’d keep in her room and say: “No dat­ing until you’re thir­ty.” Or, if I had been Catholic at the time: “Sweet­heart, can I intro­duce you to the voca­tion direc­tor of the Domini­can sis­ters?” I need­ed a girl.

Which the baby turned out to be. We decid­ed on the name Cait­lyn Elis­a­beth Alt. Elis­a­beth was after the cousin of Mary: the moth­er of John the Bap­tist.

A DIFFICULT PREGNANCY

Kim was not hav­ing an easy preg­nan­cy. Part of it was almost cer­tain­ly exhaus­tion: the phys­i­cal exhaus­tion of work­ing forty hours plus a lot of over­time, and the psy­cho­log­i­cal exhaus­tion of wor­ry­ing how Cait­lyn was to be paid for once she arrived. If Kim wore her emo­tions on her sleeve, one of her most fre­quent emo­tions was wor­ry. Once, in a pan­ic, she screamed at me, “I don’t want this child!” Which she cer­tain­ly did not mean; it was stress talk­ing; I knew that. But I did­n’t know how to han­dle such break­downs. I’m very log­i­cal, you see, very calm, and I don’t do emo­tion, and I just want­ed to get the fit (as I per­ceived it) to go away, rather than to com­fort and heal what was caus­ing it. Any­thing for a qui­et life.

Then, after find­ing out he was going to have a sis­ter, Tyler—who want­ed a broth­er as much as I want­ed a son—said to God in his room, “If I can’t have a broth­er, I’d rather my mom not have this baby at all.” He kept this from us at the time, but months lat­er he would come to Kim in tears and con­fess to hav­ing this thought and to say he nev­er real­ly meant it.

Four or five months into the preg­nan­cy, Kim start­ed to gain weight very rapid­ly and to swell around the ankles and wrists and legs. “I’m real­ly gain­ing weight real­ly fast,” she told me.

“You’re preg­nant,” I said. “You should be gain­ing weight.”

“But this is too much too sud­den.”

“I don’t notice it.”

Now, I know there are plen­ty of women out there who long to hear such words, but in this case it was cer­tain­ly a sign of a hus­band who was­n’t pay­ing enough atten­tion to his wife. Kim had bought the book What to Expect When You’re Expect­ing, and she would pore and obsess over it every night, and I thought her con­cern about weight gain was just her anx­i­eties and her over-emo­tion­al­ism get­ting the bet­ter of her.

“I’ve been read­ing this book,” she told me. (As if I need­ed to be told that.) “And it looks like I might have the symp­toms of tox­emia. That’s not good. You need to take me to the hos­pi­tal to get checked out.”

“The gyne­col­o­gist at your reg­u­lar check-ups says you’ve been doing fine. Every­thing’s com­ing along.”

“Yes, but some­thing’s not right. You need to take me to the hos­pi­tal to get checked out.”

So I did.

Toxemia—more com­mon­ly called called pre-eclampsia—is a con­di­tion of preg­nan­cy in which a woman will devel­op high blood pres­sure, sud­den weight gain, swelling, and a high con­tent of pro­tein in the urine. Left untreat­ed, it can devel­op into eclamp­sia, caus­ing seizures and some­times death. Prac­ti­cal­ly speak­ing, the only cure for it is to deliv­er the child, assum­ing the child is far enough along. Typ­i­cal­ly a woman diag­nosed with pre-eclamp­sia will be put on absolute bed rest or, depend­ing on the sever­i­ty of the con­di­tion, hos­pi­tal­ized for the dura­tion of the preg­nan­cy.

None of that was very appeal­ing to Kim. In the first place, she’s stub­born. (Nev­er a fault I’ve had.) In the sec­ond place, she can not endure to sit around, or lay around, with noth­ing to do. And she was con­cerned about the mon­ey she’d be los­ing from work; which, truth be told, we need­ed.

“There’s no lim­it to how much over­time I can get right now,” I told her. “Don’t wor­ry about it.”

“No,” she said.

Kim was six months along and all her co-work­ers were cer­tain they would­n’t see her back at work until after Cait­lyn was born. They knew that is what hap­pens when a woman has pre-eclamp­sia.

But that is not what hap­pened with Kim. She had gained a lot of weight; she did have swelling in her wrists and ankles and legs; her blood pres­sure was ele­vat­ed, and her blood pres­sure is nev­er ele­vat­ed. But, hav­ing tak­en a few tests, the doc­tor sent her home with only just these three instruc­tions: (1) don’t work over­time; (2) don’t eat salt; (3) send in 24 hours of urine sam­ples.

Well, what did I know about any of this? The doc­tor must know what he’s look­ing at; the doc­tor must know what he’s talk­ing about.

Kim was irri­tat­ed at hav­ing to col­lect her urine and at the sight of an orange jug next to the toi­let.

A month passed. On April 14, 2006—it was Good Friday—Kim was feel­ing worse enough to know that some­thing bad and not right was hap­pen­ing. We returned to the hos­pi­tal, where the nurses—informed about what had been going on—promptly put her into pre-labor. She was sev­en months preg­nant; sure­ly Cait­lyn was far enough along, and big enough, for the doc­tor to have mer­cy and end this. I was sure he was going to come in and induce labor, and that Cait­lyn would be born on Good Fri­day. What a great day to be born.

But the doc­tor did not come in. He lis­tened to the nurse read Kim’s test results and gave a release order over the phone. Watch the salt: Those were his instruc­tions.

Well, what did I know about any of this? The doc­tor must know what he’s lis­ten­ing to; the doc­tor must know what he’s talk­ing about.

Kim was hap­py to be able to go home.

 

 

Sun­day, April 16. East­er morn­ing. I had signed up for vig­il prayer in the sanc­tu­ary from 6:00 to 7:00. Kim and Tyler met me after­ward for East­er break­fast before church began. She was an exhaust­ed wreck, and every­one could see it. “She looks so tired,” our friends at church said.

“I just need to take a long nap for the after­noon,” she said. “And I’ll be okay. If you let me sleep this after­noon, I’ll make chick­en and dumplings for din­ner.”

Then, in the mid­dle of the night, she woke me up to tell me that she had a tor­tu­ous headache. “I’m going to take some Tylenol,” she said.

“Are you allowed to?”

“Yeah, Tylenol won’t hurt the baby.”

When morn­ing came, April 17, the day after East­er, the headache was no bet­ter. “You need to stay home from work today and sleep,” I told her. “I’ll take Tyler to school.”

“No,” she said, her stub­born­ness unef­fect­ed by the headache. “If I get up and start mov­ing and doing stuff, the headache will go away.”

God works, some­how, in incal­cu­la­bly mys­te­ri­ous ways, even through our sins. Look­ing back, I know that if I had been the hus­band I ought to have been, I would have insist­ed she stay home and sleep. I would­n’t have accept­ed no. And if she had, she would have died, and I would­n’t have known any­thing was going wrong, because she would have been asleep.

As it hap­pened, she called me from the side of 275, the Cincin­nati belt­way, to tell me that she had pulled over. She was­n’t able to see break lights. She had called the hos­pi­tal, and they told her she need­ed to get there imme­di­ate­ly. I need­ed to come and get her.

A VIA DOLOROSA AT BETHESDA NORTH

When I got there, she could no longer see at all and would­n’t even trust the sound of my voice to assure her that it was me. She asked to feel my wed­ding ring. That is all she would trust.

“You need to get out of the car,” I said. “Let me get you into mine so we can get to the hos­pi­tal.”

“No.”

“Yes. Now.”

“No. There are all the cars speed­ing by.”

“Well, you have to get out now.”

“No.”

Soon she became unre­spon­sive; her head lolled about from side to side, con­fu­sion in her eyes. I got into the car beside her and called 911. On the way to the hos­pi­tal, the ambu­lance she was in pulled back over to the side of 275. Kim had stopped breath­ing; she had no pulse. How­ev­er the EMT staff did so, they revived her; they got her to the hos­pi­tal.

After about a half an hour, the nurse brought me and Kim’s fam­i­ly into a con­sul­ta­tion room. There I was told that Kim had eclamp­sia, that she had had a seizure, that she was cur­rent­ly on oxy­gen sup­port, and that Cait­lyn was dead.

So what do you do? What do you do when some­one tells you that? If you are a log­i­cal person—which is what I am—you do the only log­i­cal thing: You do what the day requires you to do. You vis­it your wife, who is on a res­pi­ra­tor and does not know you are at her side. You talk to the hos­pi­tal chap­lain about how you met her. You call your sis­ter and your par­ents and wait for them to call back to tell you that they are dri­ving in all the way from Delaware because you have no fam­i­ly of your own in Cincin­nati. You fol­low your wife on a stretch­er from hos­pi­tal room to hos­pi­tal room as she grad­u­al­ly is able to come off the res­pi­ra­tor and get pre­pared for the doc­tors to induce labor so that she can deliv­er a dead child. You go through the motions and do what the day asks you to do.

You are not real­ly in con­trol of any­thing; you are just led.

I remem­ber that when Kim start­ed to become aware of what was going on around her and where she was, she was con­vinced that she had to go to the bath­room. She did­n’t; her blad­der was absolute­ly emp­ty and she was mere­ly feel­ing the pres­sure of the catheter. But she insist­ed she had to get up and go to the bath­room because oth­er­wise she’d go right there in the bed and embar­rass her­self. Tyler and I had to phys­i­cal­ly hold her still as she fought to get out of bed.

I remem­ber that I had to tell Kim what hap­pened to Cait­lyn. The doc­tors insist­ed that she should hear it from me, not them, and that she need­ed to hear it before they would induce labor. That was near­ly an impos­si­ble thing to have to do. There’s no log­ic that tells you how to do that. And Kim half under­stood what was going on any­way, so some­times she would say, “Why did Cait­lyn die?” and ten min­utes lat­er she would say, “Is Cait­lyn okay?” and I would have to tell her again and she would cry and say “No,” as if she were hear­ing it for the first time.

I remem­ber that when they did induce labor, Kim said to me, “Don’t look at her. Look at me.” And then imme­di­ate­ly she fell asleep. And since the labor was going slow, I stepped out into the wait­ing room to update my par­ents how things stood, and when I returned Cait­lyn was already born and I had missed it. It was 1:30 in the morn­ing on Tues­day, April 18, 2006.

“Does she have all her fin­gers and all her toes?” Kim asked me.

“Yes.”

“Who does she look like?”

“She looks like you,” I said.

When Kim saw Cait­lyn, she looked at me and said, “It fig­ures she would have to look like you.”

I remem­ber that the chap­lain came in soon after­ward, with Kim drift­ing between sleep and wake­ful­ness. We talked about that won­der­ful pas­sage in Job: “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“Would it be appro­pri­ate to have her bap­tized?” I said. Cait­lyn was lay­ing on a blan­ket on a table on the oth­er side of the room.

“Are you Catholic?” he said. The chap­lain hap­pened to be Bap­tist and did­n’t believe in infant bap­tism. Actu­al­ly, even Catholics don’t believe that you bap­tize the dead, but I did­n’t know any­thing about any of this at the time and was just ask­ing his advice.

“No,” I said. “And I don’t believe she needs to be bap­tized to go to heav­en, but I was just ask­ing what you thought because I would have had her bap­tized as an infant if she’d lived.”

“Well, if you want me to bap­tize her, I’ll bap­tize her. Oth­er­wise, I can just say a bless­ing over her.” Kim was alert enough to what was being said at this point to say, “No, just do the bless­ing”; and I agreed with that, so he pro­nounced a bless­ing over her.

I remem­ber that the nurse who spe­cial­ized in grief coun­sel­ing after fetal death (a won­der­ful and devout Catholic, by the way) talked to me about how for the rest of my life I would always be search­ing for Cait­lyn, as if she’d just be around the next cor­ner, and that it would be a good thing if I could write down, in a let­ter or poem, the things that I would want to say to her. So on Wednes­day and Thurs­day of that week I wrote a poem addressed to her, and the next week had it buried with her.

That week, at Bethes­da North, was my via dolorosa.

And on Sat­ur­day Kim was sent home.

THE HOUR OF LEAD

After great pain, a for­mal feel­ing comes,” Emi­ly Dick­in­son writes. “The Nerves sit cer­e­mo­ni­ous, like Tombs.” None have described numb­ness after loss bet­ter than she in this poem. “Mechan­i­cal,” she describes the feet. “A wood­en way,” she refers to it. “A quartz con­tent­ment, like a stone.”

This is the Hour of Lead—
Remem­bered, if out­lived,
As Freez­ing per­sons, rec­ol­lect the Snow—

That is how I remem­ber it. And all those descrip­tions of numb­ness cer­tain­ly apply to my habit—then, as at any time in my life—of bury­ing my emo­tions beneath a sto­ic exte­ri­or. I was wood­en; I was quartz; I was lead.

Kim, the emo­tive one, always want­ed to talk about her hurt. She was angry at God. God had per­mit­ted a bad, unjust thing.

Or, it was her own fault.

“No, it’s not,” I told her.

“She died inside me! How could it not be my fault?”

In fact, as I saw it, it was my fault. It was pun­ish­ment for my sins. After all, God pun­ished David by tak­ing his child away from him. Or, it was because I had­n’t tak­en good enough care of Kim. Years lat­er, I real­ized that this was a pret­ty self­ish thought: as though Cait­lyn’s death were exclu­sive­ly my own loss, and no one else’s.

Kim learned about a grief sup­port group for par­ents who had suf­fered pre-natal loss. It met once a month on Mon­day nights. She want­ed me to come with her. I did, only because I enjoyed the night out with her and going to a chili restau­rant before­hand: I liked what I hoped would be a rebond­ing time between the two of us. But it real­ly did help to hear oth­er peo­ple’s sto­ries. When you lose your child, one of the worst feel­ings you have is that no one under­stands. No one knows what to say to you. And in fact, it’s true: No one else does under­stand. Unless you’ve lost a child your­self, you can’t under­stand. It is a grief that can only be known by those who have shared it. So it helped to be in the pres­ence of oth­ers who felt what I was feel­ing.

But I was­n’t one to do any talk­ing; I just lis­tened. I know that both­ered Kim. And although she tells me oth­er­wise, I often wor­ry that she thought I was indif­fer­ent about Cait­lyn’s death. In truth, she just want­ed to con­nect with me emo­tion­al­ly about it, but we each han­dled our grief in very dif­fer­ent ways. She want­ed to emote; I want­ed to be left alone with it. It was not some­thing I ever want­ed to talk about.

Thus these dis­tances fur­ther hurt a mar­riage that was already hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties, and mag­ni­fied oth­er sins, most­ly my own. Less than two years after Cait­lyn died, Kim and I were divorced. We remained on friend­ly terms after­ward; I guess we felt we owed it to each oth­er because we shared a child and the loss of that child.

 

 

Two years after that, in 2010, I was begin­ning the process of enter­ing RCIA and becom­ing Catholic. Even still, buried inside me, was a lot of unad­dressed pain over Cait­lyn’s death and unad­dressed sor­row over my own sins. Noth­ing was stand­ing in the way of my becom­ing Catholic; I had­n’t remarried—I had­n’t even dat­ed.

“But we do rec­om­mend,” Fr. George said to me, “that you pur­sue an annul­ment any­way. It helps the heal­ing process.”

So I spoke to Kim about the deci­sion I was try­ing to make, believ­ing that in fair­ness I owed it to her. She was­n’t hap­py. She was con­vinced it would mean the mar­riage “nev­er hap­pened” and that Cait­lyn was ille­git­i­mate. Not so, I tried to explain.

“Yes it will,” she said. “I don’t care what those Catholics say.”

A CONVERSATION ABOUT MARY

Lat­er that night, she called me to fur­ther express her dis­plea­sure. And all she want­ed to talk about was the one sin­gle issue about the Catholic Church that I had­n’t ful­ly worked out in my own heart: Mary. I had accept­ed all the Church’s teach­ings about Mary the­o­log­i­cal­ly, but I felt an emo­tion­al dis­tance from her. Up to that point, I had approached the Church’s teach­ings log­i­cal­ly: I wrote down a list of every­thing I was hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty with, and went through the intel­lec­tu­al work on them one by one, cross­ing items off the list. Mary too had a check mark next to her name. But I still felt an emo­tion­al dis­tance, and I could­n’t fig­ure out why. Every oth­er teach­ing of the Church I had embraced with joy when I had worked it out log­i­cal­ly. That had­n’t hap­pened with Mary yet.

“Don’t Catholics pray to Mary?” Kim said.

“No.”

“Yes they do.”

“No. We talk to her. We ask her to pray for us.”

“Well, I can just talk to Jesus.”

“Kim, you talk to Cait­lyn, don’t you?”

“Of course I talk to Cait­lyn. But I don’t ask her to do any­thing for me; I talk to Jesus.”

“Then how come, when Tyler was in his car acci­dent and it turned out he was okay, you said, ‘Thank you, Cait­lyn?’ ”

“Well,” Kim said, “I don’t need to go through Mary, because I can go straight to Jesus, and I’m clos­er to Jesus than Mary is!”

“Oh,” I said—and you must under­stand, this was the first thing that entered my mind to say, and so I said it, and I did­n’t con­sid­er that I was say­ing these words to a moth­er who had lost her child and was still unrec­on­ciled to it—“I think that Mary’s clos­er to Jesus than any­one. After all, she car­ried him in her body for nine months.”

She said some angry words.

“You know,” I final­ly told her. “It would­n’t hurt you to spend some time talk­ing to Mary. After all, Mary lost her child too.”

She said some more angry words and hung up.

To this day, I don’t know where Kim is in her heart with any of these thoughts. But in look­ing back on that con­ver­sa­tion, it strikes me that God was also help­ing me with my feel­ings about Mary and my unre­solved hurt after Cait­lyn’s death.

I had spo­ken words that were meant equal­ly for my own ears.

Mary lost her child too.

I had always heard peo­ple, when the the­ol­o­gy of suf­fer­ing came up, talk about unit­ing your suf­fer­ing to the suf­fer­ing of Christ. I had con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of unit­ing my suf­fer­ing to the suf­fer­ing of Mary.

I real­ized: I had been approach­ing Mary entire­ly the wrong way. You know, you nev­er get over the loss of your child. Nev­er. You learn to endure it, and cope, but you don’t get over it. A lot of peo­ple ask “Why?” but that’s a non­sense ques­tion. Even if God were to come down to me and explain why, and even if I could under­stand it, I don’t want to know why: I just want to have my daugh­ter back. The right thing, though, is not to hide your suf­fer­ing away in the hopes that it won’t be there because you can’t see it. The right thing is to embrace your suf­fer­ing; or, more prop­er­ly speak­ing, to embrace the one who suf­fered.

And if that was Jesus, it was also Mary.

Lat­er in the RCIA process I final­ly began to work through a lot of the pain and guilt that I had buried inside me beneath my sto­ic exte­ri­or. I need­ed to learn to face that I was less than I hoped I could be; although I do hope that, how­ev­er imper­fect I was, my love for Cait­lyn would have been per­fect and that I would have been a good father to her.

As Fr. George had said, work­ing through the annul­ment ques­tions, and being forced to artic­u­late a lot of what had hap­pened, was very heal­ing. Both that, as well as pray­ing the Rosary every day to begin the process of devel­op­ing a rela­tion­ship with my Moth­er, to begin to talk to her, to begin to med­i­tate through her joys and her sor­rows. To heal my suf­fer­ing by embrac­ing it through the Moth­er whose sin­less­ness was made per­fect by her suf­fer­ing.

Then one day I was dri­ving home from RCIA and, prompt­ed by noth­ing at all, I began to sob uncon­trol­lably. Any oth­er dri­vers who saw me must have thought I had lost my only child. Which was­n’t the least of it. And although our last con­ver­sa­tion had not gone well, I had an irre­sistible desire to call Kim.

“I just want you to know,” I told her, “how sor­ry I am for all the things I did to make you feel ugly or unwant­ed or unloved. I just want you to know—”

“Scott,” she said. “You don’t have to keep telling me you’re sor­ry. I have for­giv­en you.”

THE PIETA: SUFFERING SWALLOWED UP BY LOVE

That was a tremen­dous moment of grace. The oth­er was mak­ing my first con­fes­sion, which of all the days near to the East­er Vig­il it could have been, hap­pened to be on April 18, 2011—Caitlyn’s birth­day. I was received into the Church on April 23, 2011, which also hap­pened to be the day that Cait­lyn was buried.

No one will con­vince me that those are just coin­ci­dences. Mary, I saw, had been pray­ing for me this whole time. But so had my daugh­ter. How won­der­ful to have that one more advo­cate for me before the throne of God.

Thus could I receive my first Eucharist in joy, for­giv­en and washed clean, and final­ly healed. And resolved to be a bet­ter man.

 

 

One of my favorite pic­tures is of Kim hold­ing Cait­lyn in the hos­pi­tal. She does­n’t remem­ber that; she remem­bers very lit­tle about her time in the hos­pi­tal. But at least she can look at the pic­ture and know that Cait­lyn was here, and real, and that she held her. What I love so much about it is that I don’t see any sor­row, any pain, any hurt in Kim’s eyes. All I see is the per­fect love of a moth­er for her child.

Maybe I have only noticed this because of being Catholic, but that pic­ture is the Pieta. And in look­ing at Kim hold­ing Cait­lyn, and at Mary hold­ing Jesus, I am remind­ed of how suf­fer­ing is swal­lowed up by love.

St. Cait­lyn Elis­a­beth Alt, pray for us.

Hap­py birth­day.