Loneliness and Loss

Kyle Cupp

Kyle Cupp is a former regular here at Ordinary Times who lives in a small rural town about two hours southwest of Portland, Oregon with his wife, kids, and dog. He enjoys studying and writing about the world of employment, which is good because that's his job. You can find him on Twitter.

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14 Responses

  1. wardsmith says:

    Kyle, no parent should ever outlive their child. Heartfelt sympathy might ring from lightyears away but it is still heartfelt and it is still sympathy. Believe in an afterlife so you can be reunited.Report

    • ktward in reply to wardsmith says:

      One’s belief in an afterlife doesn’t mean an afterlife actually exists. But I readily concede that for a whole of folks, simply the belief itself helps them to navigate through this life. I take zero issue with that. Whatever gets us through the day.Report

  2. MikeSchilling says:

    I’m so sorry, Kyle. It will be twenty-one years for us next month. All I can offer is that, eventually, it gets easier.Report

  3. BlaiseP says:

    Home Burial by Robert Frost:

    She withdrew, shrinking from beneath his arm
    That rested on the banister, and slid downstairs;
    And turned on him with such a daunting look,
    He said twice over before he knew himself:
    “Can’t a man speak of his own child he’s lost?”

    “Not you!—Oh, where’s my hat? Oh, I don’t need it!
    I must get out of here. I must get air.—
    I don’t know rightly whether any man can.”

    “Amy! Don’t go to someone else this time.
    Listen to me. I won’t come down the stairs.”
    He sat and fixed his chin between his fists.
    “There’s something I should like to ask you, dear.”

    “You don’t know how to ask it.”

    “Help me, then.”

    Her fingers moved the latch for all reply.

    “My words are nearly always an offense.
    I don’t know how to speak of anything
    So as to please you. But I might be taught,
    I should suppose. I can’t say I see how.
    A man must partly give up being a man
    With womenfolk. We could have some arrangement
    By which I’d bind myself to keep hands off
    Anything special you’re a-mind to name.
    Though I don’t like such things ‘twixt those that love.
    Two that don’t love can’t live together without them.
    But two that do can’t live together with them.”
    She moved the latch a little. “Don’t—don’t go.
    Don’t carry it to someone else this time.
    Tell me about it if it’s something human.
    Let me into your grief. I’m not so much
    Unlike other folks as your standing there
    Apart would make me out. Give me my chance.
    I do think, though, you overdo it a little.
    What was it brought you up to think it the thing
    To take your mother-loss of a first child
    So inconsolably—in the face of love.
    You’d think his memory might be satisfied——”

    “There you go sneering now!”

    “I’m not, I’m not!”
    You make me angry. I’ll come down to you.
    God, what a woman! And it’s come to this,
    A man can’t speak of his own child that’s dead.”
    Report

  4. Michelle says:

    My condolences on your loss. It’s heartbreaking to lose a child. And no doubt quite lonely at times.Report

  5. Mike Dwyer says:

    Having recently re-read Vivian’s story my heart broke again for you all. As you know, you have plenty of friends here whenever you need to talk about it.Report

  6. Katie says:

    “the very fact that each of these lives is wanted and grieved is itself a testament to a culture of life and a sign of hope.”
    http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/firstthoughts/2012/09/24/funerals-for-the-unborn/Report

  7. Johanna says:

    13 years ago, I miscarried in my second trimester. I offer you my condolences during this time.Report

  8. Tod Kelly says:

    Wow.

    I was about to write that I’m traveling today and so I’ll need to wait to comment more later, but realizing that I don’t have anything worth saying to add.Report

  9. Jeff No-Last-Name says:

    Many condolences.Report

  10. ktward says:

    When I was 6 weeks along with my second child, I started bleeding.
    Of course I immediately saw my OBGYN who hadn’t even seen me yet for my first official pregnancy visit. He ran a few tests (this was 22 years ago), but basically he told me that there might be something wrong with the fetus and that I might be miscarrying and that if I did, it was nature taking charge blah blah blah. It all fell on deaf ears because all I knew was that I stood to lose the child inside me that I already loved. But truthfully, I loved that child even before she was conceived.

    22 years later, that very child is a senior in college. Not a single day goes by that I’m not deeply thankful that I didn’t, in fact, lose her to “nature’s way”.

    I have a friend who lost her beloved daughter to a car accident. Her daughter was a freshman in college at the time, while my firstborn was just 18 months. At the wake, we didn’t just hug. We clung to one another in some kind of unspoken understanding of the unique pain that defines that kind of grief. In choking sobs, I told her I didn’t think I could bear the pain of losing my child. She said back to me, “For as hard as it is for you to imagine the pain, imagine how hard it is to part with your baby after 18 years.”

    It doesn’t matter how old they are. If we lose a child, we grieve in a way that we don’t grieve for anyone else. It’s a grief I pray I never know, and a grief for which I hold the very deepest of sympathies.Report

  11. Survivor says:

    And even in our sleep pain that cannot forget
    Falls drop by drop upon the heart,
    And in our own despite, against our will,
    Comes wisdom to us by the awful grace of God.
    – Robert F. Kennedy, interpreting ÆschylusReport

  12. Rose says:

    Kyle, thank you for writing about your loss. You always have my condolences and thoughts. I have never had the experience of losing a newborn. I can try to imagine, and all I know is that that pain is deep.

    Your line about happy inquiries struck a chord: between my first and second child, I had a pregnancy where a heartbeat was detected. Then, at the seventh week, a second ultrasound showed that there was no longer a heartbeat. Later that day of the ultrasound, and before I had a D & C, I went to a store with my oldest son. Someone asked me if he had any brothers or sisters. I don’t even remember what I said.

    Three months later, I was pregnant again, with the kiddo who turned out to have Ridiculously Rare syndrome. Whom I never would have had if the baby in between had lived.

    I miss the sense of pure joy and reassurance that everything about our kids will all turn out fine. I miss the light-hearted way I was a mother before I had sensed loss for my children.

    Now, when people see my kid with disabilities, sometimes they come and tell me something that has happened to them. Someone they know or love who is sick or disabled or who has died. Sometimes I don’t want to hear it. Most of the time, I do.Report

  13. Dana in NYC says:

    My beloved friend across the country was expecting her first child when I received the most awful message from her on my answering machine “something terrible happened”. It was the hardest phone call I ever had to return because I knew our impending joy had turned into the tragedy of a stillbirth. No reason, it just happened. I called her every few days and mostly we would just cry together through the telephone wires. Grief is so nonlinear. That was 15 years ago. I was in a cemetery recently tending family graves and stumbled on a section I did not know named Babyland. I read the little headstones and straightened up the stuffed toys and trinkets. The evidence of devotion and thwarted parental love affected me deeply in the late summer dusk. I sat on a bench and cried for them, and my much wanted 12 week old fetus that couldn’t hang on and for Kiera, my friend’s daughter, never to be born. Thanks for your stories. They help make the experience less lonely. We are so lucky to live in the modern age where these losses are relatively infrequent compared to the past.
    Cover her face.
    Mine eyes dazzle; she died young.
    John WebsterReport