My eulogy for Salome

Salome's Eulogy

Given by Sophia at her funeral on 12^th February 2010

This will not be a good eulogy. A good eulogy is about the deceased and not the speaker, but Matt and I didn't get a chance to know our daughter Salome. Some of you might think I'm mad for trying to give a eulogy today. But there wasn't much parenting I could do for Salome in her short life, so I want to try to do this for her.

Salome was born in very poor health due mainly to meconian aspiration syndrome, and she lived her 2 ½ days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. She had tubes down her throat the whole time and she never drank or ate. Right after she was born, she looked at me 3 times, and after that her eyes didn't open again. We didn't get to hold her right until just before she died. She never felt dirt beneath her feet or the sun on her face. This is vastly different from the life Matt and I wanted to offer her. We are left grieving not only the life Salome never had, but also the life she did have.

If Salome had lived, she may have had a moderate to severe intellectual impairment, she may have had cerebral palsy, she may have had damage to her liver and kidneys. No-one will ever know what sort of life she would have had, and what challenges and strengths she would have had. We will never know how capable we would have been of parenting a child with disabilities. We were not given that privilege or that cross.

Last Lent, I sat in this church and led a reflection on the Stations of the Cross, which is a ritual some Christians practice reflecting on the facets of suffering Jesus endured in the 24 hours leading up to his death. I talked about the Stations of the Cross as an experience of a mother losing a child, and about how the grief that comes from the loss of a child has so many different parts. Some of you might remember I talked as if I knew what I was saying. Now here I am, and I can tell you that in reality, when you lose a child there are far more than just 14 stations to grieve and to live. Some of the experiences we have had in the last 2 weeks would turn your toes. And in some ways we are only at the start of our grief, and we have ahead of us the post-funeral emptiness, the anniversaries, the bittersweet family holidays, and the awkwardness of re-engaging in every day family life. A downside of our professional backgrounds is that we have, I think, a realistic view of what lies ahead for us as a grieving family, and it is scary.

Of course this experience is making both Matt and I re-examine what we think about death, about afterlife, and this whole Christian faith thing we like to talk about. I don't know to what extent people who die continue to exist as the entity they were before, and to what extent the sacred elements of them just get subsumed back into God. But I am comforted to think that whatever extent to which Salome still exists as a brand new baby needing cuddles and caring for, that is also the extent to which my grandparents still exist as who they were. And if there is even a scrap of my grandmother Annie Lindeman still existing as Annie Lindeman, then Salome now wants for nothing, and is surrounded by family who adore her. The same goes for all our grandparents.

Now I want to talk directly to X and K for a moment. I want to say to X and K that both of you did a beautiful job in being big sisters to Salome while she was in my tummy and while Salome was very sick. Salome does miss you a lot, and she is sad that she could not stay with us to play with you and be your little sister. But her body stopped working because she was too sick, and so now she is with God. And Grandpa Charlie and Nanna and Ada-Kate will be looking after Salome, and Salome is happy now and isn't sick any more. Salome's death was nobodies fault and it certainly was not yours.

Salome Sweetheart, I can only say again what I said time and time again through your 2 ½ days with us: we love you enormously, and you are very precious to us. I told you that you needed to talk to God about what lay ahead, because none of us really knew what life held for you and what sort of physical and mental challenges you would have had. I told you that if you lived, we would turn our world upside down to care for you and give you the best life we could. And I told you that if you needed to go to God, we would find a way to be OK. I believe that you did talk to God about it, you made a decision, and then you left us. You called my bluff and you left us, and now I want to take it all back and tell you you have to stay with us because this sorrow is too big, and I can barely breathe. My love for you is too big to be left with nowhere to go, with no baby to hold, with no-one to breastfeed, and with no hope of seeing you grow and bring to the world as much joy as your sisters have. As I have said to X and K, Mummy and Daddy's sorrow is as big as the whole house. Maybe one day I will be able to thank you for fighting as hard as you did to stay with us as long as you did, but I don't have that in me yet because I am so sad that you are gone.

Salome I do believe you are with God. But God and I are not on speaking terms at this point, and I doubt things will improve between God and I for some time. So I will keep talking directly to you, and asking you and our ancestors who have gone before us to watch over our family as we wade through this awful grief.

Salome to have you in our lives we had months of trying, 9 months of nausea, all the usual strains and stressors that a pregnancy brings, and 7 ½ hours of labour, and we only held you for an hour before you died. Sweetheart, it was absolutely, absolutely worth it. Thank you for choosing our family to be part of. I will always wished you had stayed longer. Your Daddy and I will always grieve for you and miss you, and part of our hearts will always be buried at Catherine Hill Bay. But we will try to be happy again in the future, because that was what I told you I would do.

There is no way to end this eulogy. There is no satisfactory way to say goodbye to a daughter. There are no words, and nothing I can do to convey to you how deeply Daddy and I love you and how heartbroken we are at your death. We can only send you our love and our tears forever, and wish you the deep peace of eternal rest in God.