I work in a school in which 70% of the staff is my own age or slightly younger (late 20’s to mid 30’s). I have attended numerous bridal showers, weddings, and baby showers for my co-workers, and I must say, it makes a little more authentic the “We are a family” mantra that administrators have attempted to force upon us over the years.
When I was pregnant with my first child, six other staff members were expecting too. The shared joy of expectation turned to sadness when I lost my baby, but I still feel a special connection to those people, as though our children are all of a “set.” A few months after my loss, a stillbirth, one of those staff members lost his daughter in childbirth as well. And then the daughter of a coworker lost her baby. It was staggering, so many children lost, all within a single work community, all within span of months. (All girls, too: Camille, Persephone, Aurora.)
There was one woman, a counselor, with whom I had had no connection at all – save that she was also expecting a girl, on almost the same date. An administrator had knit pink hats for the both of us, and given them to us at the same time, in a classroom after school one day a few weeks before my loss. When I returned to work after a four week medical (“maternity”) leave, circumstances kept seating me next to this woman, hugely pregnant still, as I should have been, at staff meetings. Her daughter arrived that Spring – I knew as much by the fact that I’d not heard differently – and the counselor eventually took a job at another school, in a different town. I never even knew her daughter’s name.
I received word a couple of months ago that a second daughter had been born to this woman, and had died of SIDS at the age of two months. Even though we had never been friends, I felt like I should send a card because of the terrible connection we shared.
I am now pregnant with my third child – I am mom to a beautiful and precocious 17-month old girl - and some of the people who went through the first cycle with me are pregnant again, or have recently had babies (including the ones who experienced losses before). Yesterday, one of those people, my people, my set, miscarried. She had apparently just started to tell people; she felt like it was “safe,” like she had come past all danger.
Part of what makes life special, though, is that we are never past all danger. Every day, every new life, is a miracle. Shared joy, shared loss, bind us to each other.
Today, I received an email from some friends, retired teachers whom I have known my entire career, and with whom I have remained close. Their daughter, pregnant also during that first time around, delivered her second child this morning: a healthy baby boy. God bless him. And all of us.
