By Lawrence I. Charters
Seahawk, October 5, 1984, p. 8.
Health care has reached the point where it sometimes seems death is impossible. The average life expectancy in the industrialized world is over seven decades — a very long time to a young service couple. How, then, is it possible for a child to die? Television villains die, and old forgotten politicians die, but surely not children . . .
Yet children do die, and with them often die the hopes and dreams of their battered parents. In a service family, possibly more than most, there are pressures to “carry on” — to go about your daily routine and pretend nothing has happened. But the mind and emotions don’t like to be toyed with, and the sorrow, grief, and loss must eventually be faced. Helping parents face that grief is one aim of Project H.O.P.E.: Helping Other Parents Endure.
LCdr. Dave Cornish, one of the founders of Project HOPE in Yokosuka, patterned the group after a similar organization back in the U.S. He admits the project is, in large measure a form of therapy; he and his wife lost two children. By bringing parents together, he feels they can collectively find ways to deal with their grief, and with the painful complications brought on by the death of a child.
One of the project’s greatest services, though, is simply bringing afflicted parents together. At HOPE’s first meeting in July, many discovered, for the first time, that they were not alone.
It was their first pregnancy. Everything was going fine when he was called away to sea duty. When he returned, he learned she had miscarried three days earlier.
Her second pregnancy was a little easier. Both had survived the strains – and thwarted plans – of the first, and this time she was pregnant with twins. He was home now, and able, even eager, to help with the planning and preparation. They purchased two cribs, two high chairs, two car seats – two of everything. All plans came to an end when she suffered another miscarriage. Disposing of the collected nursery equipment was particularly painful.
Because of the miscarriage, she was infertile for a time. Eventually, they did manage to have two daughters – and another miscarriage. During this third miscarriage, he was again away, this time in the Philippines. They could try to console each other by phone, but it wasn’t quite the same as touching and comforting one another.
She was talking on the phone to a friend one day, and could hear her baby crying in the background. Listening, the crying seemed routine, and after a time it stopped. When she got off the phone, the baby was blue.
“I called my friend and told her my baby was dead.” She and others tried CPR, but nothing helped. Modern health care has solved many mysteries, but Sudden Infant Death Syndrome — “crib death” — isn’t one of them.
Her husband was in Alaska at the time. To this day, he still won’t talk about the baby’s death, and refuses to participate in any kind of counseling, claiming he doesn’t need it. She is not so sure. “Grief . . . it doesn’t go away if you leave it alone. It stays — it doesn’t go away.”
Her first born was a little girl. “I always wanted a little girl – to dress up and all.” One morning, the baby was strangely quiet, not crying or making any
noise. When she went in to see what was happening, her daughter was having a grand mal seizure.
The seizures continued, without explanation. At three, the girl was evaluated, and it was determined she would grow normally, but would be one year old mentally — forever.
The evaluation turned out to be optimistic. By the time she was seven, she still hadn’t learned to walk. Other people didn’t understand, or try to understand. “I would have to carry her into a restaurant, and ask for a high chair. The waiter would look at the girl — a pretty, normal looking girl, and say, ‘Isn’t she a little old for a high chair?”
Because of the girl’s size, eventually it was decided it was unsafe to have her at home, and she was placed in a state school. The father, since the time of the first seizure, had been very distant to both wife and child. After the child was placed in the school, he filed for divorce.
Now without a family, the mother decided to join the Navy and was sent overseas. One day, while at work, she received a phone call. With all her co-workers standing around, plus other people passing through the department, and with the officer in charge looking on, her mother casually mentioned that the girls had died at the state school.
Even this was not the end. Recently, she received a letter from a lawyer, asking for help in the wrongful death suit her ex-husband has filed against the state. “Maybe that’s his way of grieving.”
“It was my first pregnancy. Everything was going fine, just like it was supposed to.” All the usual first-time worries seemed to have been nothing more than false alarms. Then, at the end of the normal pregnancy, the fetal monitor went crazy. “My boy was born stillborn.” A blood clot on the umbilical cord had cut off the blood supply.
Eventually, she had other children, and thought she was over the grief – but it sneaks up on you. “During my second pregnancy, I thought, ‘Everything is going fine. What’s wrong?'” More recently, while substitute teaching, she saw one child and thought, “that could be my boy.”
Lieutenant Commander Janet Roberge. Photo by Lawrence I. Charters, scanned from original.
Chaplain Joan Wooten and Lieutenant Commander Dave Cornish. Photo by Lawrence I. Charters, from scanned original.
Project H.O.P.E. coordinators Lieutenant Commander Janet Roberge, Joan Wooten, and Lieutenant Commander Dave Cornish.
Her first pregnancy was cut short with the premature birth of their son. Right from the start, the baby had problems, but they convinced themselves these were due to his early birth and would go away. Just as things were looking better, they learned their son was suffering from a hereditary defect, and would probably not live to be a year old.
Both parents were health care professionals, but their reactions were quite different. The mother accepted the medical verdict, and prepared herself for the inevitable. The father, on the other hand, kept looking for something that wasn’t there. Eventually, he realized his frantic activity was useless; his son would die, and the best he could do would be to help his son have as peaceful a life as possible.
A little more than five months later, at home, surrounded by those who loved him, the child died in the arms of his parents.
Grief creeps up on you. Anniversaries of miscarriages and deaths are particularly bad. One year, everything will be fine, with no problems; the next year may be traumatic. “How can you prepare for grief?”
You also start thinking strange. Something happens in subsequent pregnancies and you think, “Oh, no, not again!” You slip on the ice and fall; you are involved in a minor auto wreck; you are ill with some vague problem. You ask, “Is this it?”
Among the hardest things to cope with are the thoughtless remarks of others. Some don’t know your situation, but the remarks still hurt. “It gets very draining to explain your situation over and over again.” And if you don’t explain, people think you are rude or insensitive.
People who know the situation can be just as bad or worse. For poor attempts at humor, few things can compare with a with “better luck next time,” or “Back to the drawing board.” With miscarriages, many people will tell you, in one way or another, that you “weren’t really a parent.” “It doesn’t count until it’s born.”
Appropriately, the first meeting of Project HOPE was held in Yokosuka’s Chapel of Hope. Under the banner of “Living our lives and being examples to others,” future meetings will cover such topics as: the loss of expectations (“We had such great plans . . .” ), the different grieving processes of mothers and fathers, the problem of how to tell others about a death (relatives, young children, nosey strangers), and coping with fears during future pregnancies.
The group is available for more than monthly meetings; they have collected medical and counseling information, and have parents willing to talk at any time. For more information contact Dave Cornish at 234-7141, Janet Roberge at 234-5311, or Chaplain Joan Wooten at 234-7040.
Article as it appeared in the Seahawk, assembled from several individual scans of the original printed edition.