Sunday 7th March: Week 6 has begun

It rained heavily on Friday night. I lay awake fretting for Salome because she was all alone out there in the rain and the dark. My head knows that Salome is not at the cemetery in any way that matters, but a big part of my heart only knows that it's dark, it's raining, and my baby girl is far away from her mummy.

Yesterday I went to the cemetery to say hello, taking K with me (X does not want to go, fair enough). I said to Salome "I know you aren't here, but I have nowhere else to go". People refer to us as having 'lost a baby', but I am more lost than Salome is. She has moved on, but I am untethered.

Yesterday was 5 weeks since she died. The pain is enormous and unfortunately less sporadic, like labour pains intensifying and becoming more frequent. I remember reading in some McKissock resource that weeks 5 and 6 after a major loss tends to be hard, partly because crying stops giving a sense of relief. Crying usually brings a sense of relief because it triggers a release of endorphins (or is it seretonin?), but when a person cries a lot in a short amount of time, the body can't produce enough endorphins to keep up with demand. Apparently, this often happens in week 5 or 6.

This was the filter through which I heard this morning's sermon at Mass. Fr Peter is a good man, and he is not an idiot, but his theology this morning was frustrating to hear. He was speaking about providence. He reatierated Jesus' teaching that calamities and disasters are not God's punishment, and God's providence is not simply a matter of God diverting suffering from good people onto bad. Fr Peter said disasters and calamities were also a form of God's providence, providing an invitation to repentence.

The death our baby has been a disaster for us, a very localised disaster but still our world is on its head. What does this theology tell me? Did God bring about Salome's suffering and death in order to offer Matt and I a brutal invitation to repentence? If so, is there not a risk that I would think that if I had been a "better' Christian before hand, if I had only been nicer and tried harder, if I had not been in need of such a ruthless reminder from God, then Salome would not have suffered and died? Would God make a newborn baby suffer for 2 1/2 days just to get her mother's attention and subservience? This is God as the Cosmic Sadist that CS Lewis wrote about. I have never belived in a God like this. I would go further and say God is not like this. God and I may not be on speaking terms, but that doesn't mean I've forgotten who God really is. As angry and hurt as I am even I can recognise an inaccurate description of the God I used to be in relationship with.

The purpose of suffering and the role of God to suffering is a big fat knot that everyone on any kind a spiritual path has to struggle with. Salome's death has bought these issues into sharp relief for us. I remember in the week before the funeral, Matt was looking through his theological and spiritual books (of which he has many many as a result of his masters) looking for quotes to use in the funeral. I found him one day tossing his precious theological books onto the floor one by one, saying "Nothin'..... Nothin'..... None of these books have anything to say to me about our dead baby". This is the new litmus test for theology for me: it has to make sense in NICU. It has to hold up in the midst of rows of tiny suffering babies and grieving families. And it has to make sense in front of Salome's tiny white coffin. If it doesn't speak to this experience, it's out.