i have written a lot about the pain and darkness of stillbirth. but in the last few weeks, i have learned a lot about kindness, too.
there was the kindness of food. for two weeks and two shabboses after menucha's birth and death, food showed up at our door every night. i remember debating through tears with a friend: "why should anyone make food for us? people adjusting to life with a newborn need meals. i have nothing but time." she said: "and the needs of newly post partum mothers just dealing with life-changing grief are less important?" it was the right answer, and i would not have come to it on my own. and it wasn't just a meal train. one friend left things like iced coffee and french toast or banana bread on my doorstep almost daily. another parent from my 5 year old's school brought a trunkload of costco snacks over for my kids. my closest friends from college - scattered across the country - got together and figured out how to sponsor food for an entire shabbos for my family, in a city with no restaurants or take-out.
there was the kindness of time. i was floored by the people who gave up their time to be with me or my family when i myself would gladly have hit the "eject" button. a friend with many children of her own came over the night before a long road trip and spent hours listening to my endless questions about what went wrong and why and sobbing with me. another volunteered to take my daughter to and from camp. people still healing from recent, searing losses of their own reached out to let me know that i was not alone in the nightmarish journey through grief, and they, too, spent hours crying with me, listening patiently to my litany of questions and sharing whatever answers and solace they had found on their own terrible journeys. one brought me a notebook and pens. "Write about this," she said. "Writing is how you make meaning of the big stuff. So write about this."
and i did.
there was the kindness of strangers. i posted a question about how to find a therapist in a parenting group on facebook, and received a flood of messages from other mothers whose babies had died. even though we'd never met, they continued to check in on me, messaging me to let me know they were thinking of me and of my baby. the founders of the group sent me a gift card in the mail. friends i'd lost touch with over the years messaged me to share their own devastating losses. "how do you get through this?" i asked each one of them. they all had something different to say, but they all understood. "it can be so cruel how everyone's world keeps spinning except yours," one said. yes, i thought, and felt a thousand times less alone.
there was the kindness of memory. there are no words to express the ache of feeling that day by day, your baby is forgotten, as if she never was. one day out of nowhere i received a note from trees for israel that read, "a tree has been planted in memory of menucha hecht - may this serve as a living tribute to her memory." it was the first (possibly still the only) piece of paper i had with her name on it. it is infinitely precious to me. i keep it by my bed, and sometimes i think of that tree, something still living with a connection to my baby.
one friend confided to me that she had the same hebrew birthday as my daughter and told me she would always think of her on her birthday. that was priceless to me.
i write these things down and reread them often. they are little pinpricks of light in my dark sky.