When a Baby Dies

Every tragic death, particularly if close to us by relationship, causes a wave grief, puzzlement and sometimes even anger. But incomparably more is the anguish when there is the untimely death of a baby who is a part of our family, clan or friends.

As painful as this is for the extended family, that is nothing compared with the anguish of the parents. With them, their grief has added dimensions. There is sense of being cheated. Long months of expectation and careful preparation of dreams and plans and ideals for the years ahead with this child all come crashing down. This altogether unique human being who is "flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone" is no more, at least in presence.

Recently, I shared that anguish with two families who throughout most of my life have been the closest to me outside my own family.

In the first of these infant deaths, baby Jenna, a twin, was diagnosed early on with a mild heart ailment. Doctors waited several months, until she was stronger to correct this. It was not expected to be anything to worry about, but in the course of the treatment, Jenna became seriously and painfully ill and kept deteriorating over seven days. Parents and grandparents watched helplessly as he life ebbed away and finally ended.

The second child in this sad account, Oliver, was born with a breathing problem which necessitated putting a monitor on him to alert his parents if he was in position that would impede his breathing. His father being a doctor, and hi mother a nurse, Oliver was very carefully attended, and his condition improve considerably. Then, one night a few months ago, his mother nursed him at mid night, saw that he was in good condition and sleeping soundly, and went to bed At 6 A.M., she went to his crib and found him dead. The diagnosis was Sudden Infant Death Syndrome - the mysterious crib death.

In such circumstances as these, there is at times a terrible sense of guilt along with the agony. There can be a blaming of selves. In other kinds of deaths out. side oneself there is an opportunity to blame the cause, but in a case like this there can be so much self-blame flooding into the parents along with the horrible sense of loss.

One can get no comfort in these moments in repeating "It's God's will" or "We were happy to have her/him for the time that he was alive". It is a terrible, terrible sense of anguish, possibly bitterness and anger. A few years ago, a friend complained to me about an experience when one of her children died. She said she was almost out of her mind with clergy and religious people at the wake saying to her "God's will be done". Tragedies such as these bring on broader questions: "Is there a good God?".... "If there is a God I can't understand why this is allowed to happen."

The daily recounting of tragedies dulls our consciousness. But when a baby dies particularly in a family we know, we feel deeply a sense of unfairness in such a death. A famous scripture scholar of this century, Romano Guardini, on his deathbed said to a friend "When I appear before God I will ask the question: why God, the suffering and death of the innocent?" That question, I am sure, nags every one of us when we are close to such a tragedy as the death of a child.

No non-parent, even this bachelor who wears a Roman Collar, can speak authentically on this particular mystery of human suffering. I stumble my way through what Sacred Scripture tells us, particularly the untimely and horrible death of Jesus and his Resurrection, but it is only that mother and father who have lovingly conceived that child, anxiously and joyfully counted the months, days, and ticks of the clock, until the day of birth, who are able to speak authentically on the tragedy of a baby's death. Even then, it takes them time to sort it all out.

As I reflect on these deaths I am recording, my thoughts also focus on the grandparents of the child. They are the ones closest in blood and grief, but are graced with a mature faith and understanding. They manifest in their sympathy and assistance the wisdom of experience, patience under trial, and the courage to keep going on. I have seen this in so many ways in the events of the lives of the grandparents. Through the love that these grandparents exhibit, the bereaving parents come to appreciate more fully and maturely how to suffer through traumas, grow through adversity, and maintain peace of mind.

As time goes on, the love of that child not only lingers but it expands one's complete capacity for love as described in a passage of scripture which, as I recall, both the bereaved couples chose for their marriage ceremonies. "There is no limit to love's forbearance, to its trust, its hope, its power to endure." (I Cor 13:7)

This is the special charism mothers and fathers have. They carry in their psyches forever that very profound realization that they have given life, have perpetuated their own selves even when a child has been taken from them for the time being. The love, the relationship, the intertwining of life never dies and it is observable in the expansion of love in parents and grandparents when faced with family tragedies.

There lingers at times the idea that such sufferings are the result of someone's sin and that God is punishing. This is so frequently exemplified with the spontaneous question: "What did I do wrong?" That is absolutely false! There are indeed many kinds of sufferings that are the result of child abuse and societal neglect, but the deaths of innocent children are not in any way a punishment inflicted by God.

The Mystery of Human Suffering

Suffering is a mystery which has perplexed humankind throughout its history. Countless myths, stories, poems, histories and testimonies have attempted to unravel the mystery. But it is only those who have suffered intensely who are able to give us some insights.

One of our renowned Passionist priests, Stanislaus Breton, formerly a Professor of Philosophy at the Institute Catholique de Paris, who was imprisoned by the Nazis, endured torture and suffered severe emotional problems for years following, was asked at a Congress on suffering if all suffering came as a result of the fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. Stanislaus answered with a playful smile on his face: "No, the first fall was creation!" Pressed to answer more fully, he added: "All creation, including human beings, are not God. Whatever is outside God is limited, is finite."

Limitation and death are a part of the human condition as is the sorrow and sadness which often accompany them. As great as all the accomplishments of humans are, there will always be tragedies, failures and death because of the inherent limitations of creation in general and of every human being. We are finite! We are limited! We are faced with choices that we ourselves determine and while it is important to overcome as best we can any of our limitations in health, in education, in technology, etc., we will never be unlimited - super beings.

Still, the mystery and the hurt remain through all the centuries in the lives of humans. Job complains to God: "Have I not wept for the hardship of others; was not my soul grieved for the destitute? Yet when I looked for good, then evil came; when I expected light, then came darkness." (Job 30: 25-26)

Jesus cries out on the cross: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?". (Mt 27: 46) And those strident complaints and cries are echoed in every place, time, culture, and human condition.

Others, in and through their sufferings, give us helpful insights. At the same Congress on Suffering alluded to above, Dr. Arthur McGill, formerly a Professor of Theology at Harvard, was one of the speakers. At the time, he was suffering from a fatal disease to which he succumbed not long afterwards. He had this to say: "Love your enemy, turn your cheek to receive the blows of others, have 'compassion' and accompany those who suffer even into their suffering....As Jesus truly joined us in our agonies, he directed us to follow the same course with one another. In his Passion Jesus exhibited what compassion, or suffering-with, really means."

Still another speaker at that Congress, Lowell G. Colston, former professor of Pastoral Care at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, who was a dialysis patient at the time of his reflections, and who has since died said: "The problem of suffering rises from the mere fact that humans never resign themselves to the inevitability of suffering in their own lives and those of others near and dear to them."

One of the most profound reflectors on the mystery of suffering is Victor Frankl, the famous psychiatrist who came to formulate his philosophy from his own suffering in the Nazi concentration camps. In his account of the camp experience in his book "Man's Search For Meaning", he wrote: "It seemed to me that I would die in the near future. In this critical situation, however, my concern was different from that of most of my comrades. Their question was, 'Will we survive the camp? For, if not, all this suffering has no meaning.' The question that beset me was, 'Has all this suffering, the dying around us, a meaning? For, if not, then ultimately there is no meaning to survival. For a life whose meaning depends upon such a happenstance -whether one escapes or not- ultimately would not be worth living at all."'

In another book, "The Unheard Cry For Meaning", Frankl further addresses the mystery of human suffering on a more philosophical level. It is most helpful in approaching the struggles of our earthly existence.

"Being human is always directed and pointing to something or someone other than oneself -to a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter, a cause to serve or a person to love. Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence is he or she truly human and becomes one's true self. That person becomes so not by concerning self with self's actualization, but by forgetting self and giving self, overlooking self and focusing outward."

This is the case with parents who lovingly bring forth new life. There is nothing greater than this even if the tragedy of early death occurs, there is a new creation, a human being who is altogether unique as is commonly illustrated by the fact that each human being has unmatched fingerprints by any of the world's 5 billion people. In our Christian beliefs this human still lives and will forever be grateful for his or her eternal existence.

Frankl goes on to say: "Life is never lacking a meaning. To be sure, this is only understandable if we recognize that there is potential meaning to be found even beyond work and love. Certainly, we are used to discovering meaning in creating the work, or doing the deed, or in experiencing something, or encountering someone. But we must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation as its helpless victim, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what then counts and matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best which is to transform a tragedy into a personal triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves."

"Changing oneself often means rising above oneself, growing beyond oneself....What I want to convey to you is a secret of life's unconditional meaningfulness which owes to the third possibility of finding meaning in life the possibility of investing meaning even in suffering and death...this is more than faith. It is true, my conviction is that life is unconditionally meaningful... There is a meaning in life that is available to everyone and even more that life retains its meaning under any conditions. It remains meaningful literally up to its last moment, up to one's last breath."

"Human freedom is finite freedom. One is not free from conditions but he or she -is free to take a stand in regard to them. The conditions do not completely condition him or her. Within limits, it is up to the person whether or not he or she succumbs and surrenders to the conditions. One may as well rise above them and by doing so open up and enter the human dimension."

A Schema for Dealing Creatively with Suffering

• Actualizing Values - Victor Frankl: "One's responsibility is always responsibility for the actualization of values -not only 'eternal' values, but also 'situational' values.
• Creative Values: realized in creative action, doing something, giving service, working.
• Experiential Values: realized in receptivity toward the world, e.g., to surrender to beauty in nature, art, human relationships.
• Attitudinal Values: actualized wherever the individual is faced with something unalterable, something imposed. From the manner in which a person takes these things upon self, assimilates these difficulties into his or her own psyche, there flows an incalculable multitude of value potentialities. This means that human life can be fulfilled not only in creating and enjoying, but also in suffering.

Every person views life as a task. The religious person can see his or her life as a mission given by God. This attitude, even in the most desperate circumstances gives meaning, and is what makes heroes and successes out of the most obscure life. Suffering persons are co-operators in the transformation of human suffering.

There is a twofold meaning in the destiny of a suffering person: "to shape suffering where possible; to endure where necessary."

To Shape: no suppressing, no running away, no narcotizing.

To Endure: knowing that it has immanent meaning and value; it is not an intruder on life, but a part of life, of one's own individual destiny. It leads to an emotional awareness of what ought not to be and to overcoming the suffering and its causes.