When Grief Heals

How Holding My Daughter in Her Final Moments Taught Me the Power of Mercy

Oct 01, 2024

Image Created by Author, Hillary M. Ramos, and Midjourney AI

Grief is a strange thing, and healing from grief is stranger still. Many have tried to characterize it by dividing it into neat stages, packaging it into a seemingly beautiful box. Yet, only those who have navigated the deepest waters of sorrow know how far this is from reality. In truth, grief and healing are never linear experiences. They exist in tandem, cycling together through the hearts of those impacted by loss - a cycle in which we constantly ache in the ashes and yet find ourselves rising on the wings of mercy in the most unexpected ways.

When our daughter, Marsaili, passed, I found myself thrust into this very cycle. In her short two years, Marsaili taught us the power of joy through grief, that even grief itself can ironically be a path to healing. When she took her final breaths in my arms, a wound I thought would remain forever began to heal. A deep scar from the day of her birth finally began to mend.

GRIEVING THE EXPECTED

I discovered that I was pregnant with Marsaili in October of 2021. The joy of expecting another child quickly gave way to fear in February 2022 at my 20-week anatomy scan. My doctor discovered several concerning medical anomalies, which led us down the long and terrifying road of a high risk pregnancy and life threatening complications. Additionally, we knew that a NICU stay was inevitable. What we didn’t know was just how much that deviation from “normal” would leave us traumatized.

When the day of Marsaili’s birth finally came, we were elated. I had been in the hospital for monitoring for close to two weeks before the familiar feeling of contractions woke me from a coveted slumber on a Sunday morning - I was in preterm labor. We had known that preterm labor was a possibility. The fact that I had made it to nearly 36 weeks was honestly a miracle, and to say that we were ready to meet our girl was an understatement. We longed to see her precious face.

And see her precious face we did. Just a few short hours after my contractions started, my doctor successfully delivered Marsaili via cesarean section. A nurse brought her briefly to the head of the operating table for me to see her, and she was then rushed off to the NICU. My husband followed.

I held on to that image of her face for 12 hours. For 12 hours I sat in a hospital bed, waiting (im)patiently to be able to safely walk again and to be able to hold my child. It took every ounce of strength within me to suppress my motherly instincts. For months I had harbored this baby safely within my body, and within moments, she was ripped from the warmth of my womb and out of my sight. It was horrifying and unnatural. Necessary, but unnatural.

I was finally able to hold her. My nurses allowed me to hold her for about an hour before I went back to my room to rest. The very next day, she was transferred to a completely different hospital for further care and testing, where she would have to stay for an entire month before we could finally bring her home.

Those first moments of Marsaili’s life and that month-long stay in the NICU cultivated what could only be described as a traumatic birth and postpartum experience. The desire for a mother to bond with her child after birth is one of the most powerful, natural experiences in the world. Being robbed of this experience and having to navigate the heartache of a terminal diagnosis (one that was confirmed in the NICU just days after her birth) left a lasting wound that I unfortunately share with millions of other mothers.

In the years since Marsaili’s birth, I have begun to understand the impact of the trauma we have endured - not only emotionally, but physically as well. Birth trauma is more common than many realize. “According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), up to 45% of new mothers experience birth trauma” in some form, whether due to physical complications, emergency interventions, or emotional distress caused by unexpected events during labor and delivery (March of Dimes, 2023). Birth trauma can leave lasting emotional scars, leading to feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and even PTSD for many women.

While there are many factors that might contribute to birth trauma, delayed bonding between mother and child is one of the most significant contributors. A woman’s body and her child’s body are literally wired to work harmoniously in those first moments after birth. A woman’s body is biologically designed for this connection, with hormones encouraging immediate bonding, which can regulate both her stress and her baby’s vital signs (Winberg, 2005). When women are unable to have this immediate connection, when their most basic instincts are denied, it can feel like she is being denied something as essential as breathing.

After I was discharged from the hospital, my husband, Josh, and I spent the first night at home alone. Our son, Liam, was staying with family so that I could try and sleep as late as I needed the next morning. But from the moment I walked through that door without our baby, I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I knew I wouldn’t be able to breathe.

In the first few days after we came home, the empty nursery was a painful reminder of Marsaili’s absence. As I unrolled the wallpaper mural we had so carefully chosen, I broke down, overwhelmed by the gulf between what we had imagined for our family and the reality we were living. Liam, who was almost 4 at the time, rushed into the room, saw me weeping on the floor, and then ran to get Josh.

Josh tenderly knelt down beside me and cradled me in his arms as I cried out, “I want my baby!” over and over again. It was an agonizing pain - one went unhealed for a very long time. When Marsaili finally came home, I spent the next two years dedicating every ounce of my time and energy to her care, hoping that it would somehow heal that lingering trauma.

Loving and caring for Marsaili did heal me in many ways. She brought so much joy to our lives. Her smile was contagious, and she was the very definition of a warrior. We knew even before she was born that our days with her would be limited, so we cherished every moment we were given. Although the effects of my birth trauma continued to fester, the sting slowly dissipated as I focused on the miracle of being her mother.

HEALING IN THE ASHES

When the time came for Marsaili to leave this world in March of 2024, we knew that she deserved a peaceful transition from this life to her eternal one. Over the last several months of her life, her fragile body had grown weaker, and we made the difficult decision to focus on her comfort and peace. We worked closely with her palliative care team to use only the most essential of interventions for monitoring and comfort care. Josh and I took turns for days cuddling her in her hospital bed, singing to her, and stroking her hair. She looked so relieved, and on more than one occasion leading up to those final moments, we got to see that precious smile.

Marsaili took her final breaths in my arms. On the morning of March 19, 2024, I held her for hours, feeling her chest rise and fall more and more faintly. Unlike the morning of her birth, these final hours were quiet and slow. While there are hurtful pieces of those moments that I will certainly need to heal from over time, a weight was mercifully lifted as I watched her take that final quiet breath in my arms and witnessed a profound peace wash over her tired body. After two years of waiting for the wounds of birth trauma to be healed, the Lord mended those broken pieces of my soul in a way I never could have anticipated. In those moments, I saw mercy not only in her peaceful passing but in the way God’s grace had held us through every trial.

No mother should ever have to experience the loss of a child. It is a pain unlike any other. Yet, the truth remains that in a world that is full of suffering, God remains close to us in those moments. He rescues us. He heals us. He redeems us, and He does so far more effectively than we could ever do for ourselves (Psalm 34:18, Psalm 147:3). For years, I grieved over the fact that I couldn’t be the first person to hold my child when she came into this world. However, by God’s grace and mercy, my comforting touch was the last thing she was able to feel as He carried her to her Heavenly home.

There is not a single moment of darkness that is too far from the healing touch of God’s grace and mercy. The moment of Marsaili’s death catapulted me into a new phase of grieving, and it healed a part of me at the same time. In the depths of our sorrow, it can be challenging to remember that the One who created us, who came to this earth and experienced every ounce of temptation and suffering we could experience, understands us. He knows exactly what we need in those moments of grief.

In His final moments on the cross, Jesus cried out to God in agony, saying, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?” This cry was a fulfillment of Psalm 22:1 in which David says these exact words. How many of us have cried out to God in this way when we feel that we are sinking beneath the waves of our suffering? These words Jesus spoke are a testament to the fact that He understood the agony we feel in our grief and loss. They are also a forever reminder that grief never has the final say.

Matthew and Mark are the only gospel accounts that mention these words (Matthew 27:46, Mark 15:34), but in three of the four gospel accounts, the authors acknowledge that when Jesus took His last breaths, He gave up His spirit (Matthew 27:50, Luke 23:46, John 19:30). This is yet another reference to the Psalms and isn’t some passive resignation to death. On the contrary, the word in Greek that Luke uses is “paratithemai,” which translates to “commit” or “entrust.” In John we are told that Jesus’ final words were those of loving and faithful obedience - “It is finished.”

Even in His most agonizing and final moments, Jesus knew that death would not have the final say. He was fully aware of His Father’s sovereignty. Grace would have the final say. Mercy would have the final say. Redemption would have the final say. He who knew no sin experienced every ounce of pain we could ever experience for the sake of our transgressions and so that through faith in Him we would find everlasting life. The promise of eternity is sealed by the most beautiful paradox to have ever existed: by His wounds, we are healed.

MERCY TRANSCENDS

Grief is a companion I will forever carry. As I mentioned before, it’s a non-linear journey. The load of grief never truly changes, but as the Lord weaves in moments of healing to overlap with my heartache, that load becomes a bit easier to bear. As I learn to release the burden of that grief into His most capable hands, it lightens, teaches, and mercifully nurtures so that I can extend a helping hand to those walking similar journeys.

In the wake of unbearable loss, it can be tempting for us to feel that we will never see anything beyond the darkness of that heartache. It is completely and utterly human to be blinded by that overwhelming pain. The hope we can cling to in those moments rests in the truth that Jesus knows that pain, too.

We are not asked to heal ourselves before we can experience joy again. Christ offers us joy that we can experience in tandem with our troubles, grace that we can experience alongside the grief. His mercy transcends even death, assuring us that we will never walk through the shadows of even our deepest valleys alone.

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CITATIONS

The toll of birth trauma on your health. March of Dimes. (2023, March). https://www.marchofdimes.org/find-support/topics/postpartum/toll-birth-trauma-your-health#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20National%20Institutes,long%20after%20the%20birth%20itself.&text=There%20are%20many%20factors%E2%80%94both,was%20not%20what%20you%20hoped
Winberg, J. (2005). Mother and Newborn Baby: Mutual regulation of physiology and behavior— a selective review. Developmental Psychobiology, 47(3), 217–229. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.20094