Little Girl Grief
I can still remember my daughter Clare’s exuberant joy at the news that I was pregnant. As the “baby” of our large blended family, she was thrilled at the idea of having a younger brother or sister. We got a mix of responses from her older siblings, from a restrained hug to shocked silence to an exclamation of “I hate this baby already!” But sweet ten-year-old Clare had the purity and innocence to see my pregnancy as the amazing and unexpected blessing that it was: a gift from God.
After her father and I divorced, Clare had given up on the baby sibling she always wanted, even when I remarried. Her eight older siblings frequently made awkward jokes whenever my husband Ralph and I said we needed to talk to them – “You’d better not be pregnant!” they would laugh. And now I was, and Clare, Ralph, and I celebrated with great joy. We knew the others would get there eventually.
It was only a matter of days after our family announcement that we received the devastating news of John Paul Raphael’s diagnosis of Trisomy 18 and our rejoicing turned to grief. Clare remained hopeful through my whole pregnancy, however, sleeping with John Paul Raphael’s stuffed yellow Duckie, innocently oblivious to the looming tragedy of his death.
She lived in the present moment, loving every belly-hug, ultrasound picture, and baby-kick she was able to feel. She loved her brother no matter what. Purely, fearlessly, steadfastly. She joined us in praying for a miracle of John Paul Raphael’s healing, and I learned so much from witnessing her peaceful trust in God.
John Paul Raphael was born alive on January 4, 2018 and Clare and her siblings were able to meet him shortly after his delivery by emergency C-section. The hospital broke every rule and allowed our large family to take over the recovery room. I can still hear Clare’s delight and awe when my husband Ralph unwrapped John Paul Raphael’s swaddle to reveal his tiny, perfect body. “He’s so small!” she exclaimed. One by one, our other children also slowly fell in love.
Clare spent the next two days either on the hospital bed with me or holding John Paul Raphael. Ashley, the child-life specialist at the hospital, came to our room several times, talking to Clare about what to expect in the coming days and being present to answer her questions and give her one-on-one support. She gave us pamphlets and a bag of books to help Clare and our other children through the inevitability of John Paul Raphael’s death. As I look back on those days, I am so moved by Clare’s trusting innocence. She was in love with her brother and, like the rest of us, suspended in the joy of his short and shining life. When John Paul Raphael took his last breaths, she was next to me on the hospital bed, as close to her brother as she could be. When we went to the funeral home for a private viewing the following Tuesday, she was the only sibling to come. She was not going to miss a chance to be with her brother, to hold him one last time. Her eyes were wide open to the miracle of his life even while she began to grapple with the agony of his death.
For the last six years, I have had a front row seat to my daughter’s grief. When I was ten years old, I lost a cousin to a drug overdose. When he died, he was 17 years old and had a two-year-old sister. In the years after his death, I remember his mother sharing with me that children grieve developmentally. This meant that his little sister Jennifer would re-process her brother’s death at each new developmental stage and that her grief wouldn’t be fully integrated until she reached adulthood and could face her loss with a fully developed brain and body.
This wisdom has been so helpful for me as I journey with Clare and my other children through the loss of their brother. In the immediate aftermath of John Paul Raphael’s death, her grief was as expected: many tears, easily upset, trouble sleeping, heavy sadness. We helped her cope by making space to talk about her brother or visit his grave. She slept with his yellow duckie. We got her a “Big Sister” necklace with his name on the back that she wore religiously. She had pictures of him around her room. We found an excellent trauma-based therapist and Clare began regular play-based appointments.
She seemed to be managing her grief in a healthy way, but as she entered adolescence, she no longer wanted to talk about John Paul Raphael. Other family issues became more complicated and she began to withdraw from me, especially during the second year of grief when my own darkness and depression were the worst.
Perhaps when she most needed me to be “normal” I was least capable of that. I also think her body recognized that she was not yet able to process the enormity of what she had endured, and so she stopped.
Her grief went underground and she went out of her way to be “over it”. Baby brother pictures came down. The necklace disappeared. The duckie was returned to my room. During one particularly bad interaction when she was 14, she told me she didn’t even miss John Paul Raphael anymore. She was fine. This coincided with her rejection of her faith and her emphatic decision that she would not be going to mass any more either. I could see her reject her trusting, innocent, younger self who had loved with reckless abandon. She rejected me too.
Two harrowing years went by when I relied heavily on the intercession of her saintly brother in heaven for Clare. The grief and trauma of death and divorce and the rejection of her faith led my little girl to some very dark places and some very bad choices. But one day, I saw the big sister necklace on her dresser. Another month I realized that she was wearing a cross necklace, designed to match her pierced, rebel look, but a cross nonetheless. Several months later, a picture reappeared in her room, taped by the doorframe, a precious black and white shot of her gazing down at John Paul Raphael. And then this past January 4th and 5th, the 6th anniversary of his birth and death, a text: “hi mom, i hope you are okay. john paul stuff has been kind of hard but i’m okay.”
And there it was. After years underground, her grief was bubbling back up to the surface. Her 16 ½ year old self was finally ready to touch it and look at it and consider the possibility of feeling it.
She still saw the same therapist and together we marveled at her growing ability to begin to connect with the terrible and tragic events of her childhood. Not all at once, but she had a new capacity to consider the landscape of her own worst moments with reverence and eyes-wide open. She began to curl up on my lap again and let me tickle her back. I see her heart opening not just to me but to the world again. And then just last week, she asked to go out with a friend after school to some shops and also went to visit John Paul Raphael at the cemetery. The two girls picked dandelions to lay on his headstone and she sent me a photo. I wept. Here she was again, finally, grieving. Loving and grieving.
Oh, the tenderness I feel for my grieving daughter, her little girl grief growing into big girl grief soon to be young woman grief. The ache I feel for my own grieving self, our whole grieving family. We have been through so much. YOU have been through so much. And here we are all – still moving through it. Still learning, still changing, still shaping around it and figuring how to touch it and carry it, just like my big little girl.
