I spuddle.

Some terrible things have happened this week in the blogosphere, though these things happened in the real sphere, in real life. I feel both like I ought not to write about them because there are so many who were closer to these people and their losses that on one level, I feel like it’s not my place, as just a reader of blogs, but also that it is my place because I can think of little else than this terrible sadness.

Two children — two babies — two different families. It’s the worst thing I can imagine and my heart goes out to these two families, the Spohrs and the Myers for their unspeakable, unimaginable losses. I’m so sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.

When I read the blogs of these two women who have lost their babies this week, I’m struck by the comments, the hundreds of voices all chiming in to say, “I’m sorry.” And at first the lists just look like long lists of the same thing over and over again, and I imagine being on the other side of that list seeing everyone saying really all they CAN say and still feeling the pain that no one can take away. Then tonight when I was putting my daughter down to sleep and thinking of the families of Thalon Bryce Myers and Madeline Alice Spohr and putting myself in their shoes and crying for them and for those gorgeous babies, I was also thinking of something I once read (or saw in a movie, or hey, maybe I’m making it up, I don’t even know anymore) about a cultural tradition somewhere (I don’t even know where) wherein when someone is in mourning, a group of women (I want to say eleven) come to their house and sit with that person in a room and all of them cry and wail and weep together for some period of time, perhaps simply until the mourner themselves is able to stop crying for enough time to begin to carry on. Obviously, I’m fuzzy on the details, but you get the gist. And it struck me that the internet is a bit like a room in Shana’s house and Heather’s house and all the lists of “I’m sorry” are coming from people who are all crying and weeping and wailing together with these families — for these families — just like we’re all in one room, and maybe all of us crying together for days or weeks or however long it takes will help just a bit. Somehow. To let these families know they aren’t alone, that people all over the country, all over the world — brought together by these blogs, this internet community — are thinking of them and praying for them in all different ways and sending them love and sharing their sorrow.

I don’t know. I don’t even know if I’ll post this, it just seems like I can’t really post anything else about Easter or how the kids have the flu or how we took them to feed the ducks today and The Birdy ate the bread intended for the actual birds. Or even crappy stuff, like how I just remembered how it’s tax time and I’ll have to face the receipt mountain one of these days or how I haven’t finished writing a book in over a year. None of it seems particularly funny or interesting or even that crappy to me right now because I’m stuck on thinking about all this sadness and wanting to reach out to these families and hold on to them tight and absorb just a bit of their pain.

None of it is right, there is no explanation, no fairness, no reason why. I remember when my babies were just babies how I’d listen to them breathe on the monitor and then go check them when they weren’t breathing loudly enough and how I was so shocked when they were still alive, shocked and so utterly relieved, each time terrified that this was the time when the breathing would have stopped. It didn’t make sense, and when I confided to my mum that I as often as not had to wake my son up just to make sure, she said, “Babies don’t just die. They’re tougher than you think.” I hate that she was wrong. I hate it. My baby didn’t die, and for that I’m so grateful, but babies DO die, and it’s random, and there’s nothing anyone could have done, nothing anyone could do. And that is the heartbreaking truth.

Shana and Heather, we are all of us so so so sorry.

There just aren’t enough words.

So if it’s OK, we’ll all just cry and weep and wail with you for a time in this virtual room, and maybe that will hold you up long enough to keep going, and at the same time, hold all of us up somehow.

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