A few weeks ago Alex and I made a trip to Louisiana to visit family. It'd been 5 1/2 years since we'd visited, and growing up, my family went at least twice a year, so it had been a really long overdue visit. Outside of seeing family, the purpose of this trip was to celebrate the life of my stillborn aunt, my Mom's older sister. I remember learning about her when I was probably 14 and being told not to ask Gramma about her, so I of course did. At the time, I didn't understand the pain she must have felt, and Gramma passed away when I was 15, before I was old enough to know how to talk to her about it more. The older I've gotten, and the more we've wanted a child of our own, the more I've thought about her - baby Mary - the aunt I never met. The more I've been able to get some idea of the grief Gramma must have been drowning in.
Stillbirths were handled very differently in the 1950's than they are now. By the 1950's, women had started giving birth in hospitals much more so than their mothers had before them. It was also when twilight sleep was the norm. Fathers had to wait in the waiting room and were not allowed to be with the mothers during any of their labor and delivery. A laboring mother would be put into twilight sleep when it was time to deliver, and when she woke up, she would be handed her baby, with no memory of having delivered. By the time Gramma went in to deliver her second child, she had given birth to my Uncle Bubba and had also had some number of miscarriages. She carried her daughter to full term, not knowing that the umbilical cord had wrapped around her neck in the womb, killing her three days before she was delivered. At the time, it was believed that a mother should not see her dead child, so Gramma woke up from Twilight sleep to the news that she had a daughter, but would not be able to see her because she was stillborn. Uncle Bubba said that he remembered PawPaw
talking about holding him on his knee in the waiting room while
PawPaw was crying after Gramma gave birth, so he guessed he was around 2
when baby Mary was born. Gramma never got to see her. The pain of that tears at my soul.
Mothers spent many days in the hospital recovering after childbirth, so PawPaw had to arrange burial for their daughter on his own. A nurse gave her the unofficial name "Mary," but as far as anyone knows, my grandparents did not name her. I tried to ask PawPaw more about baby Mary, but all he would tell me was that he did get to see her and that she was beautiful. When PawPaw was dying, a few days before he passed away, I remember Mom saying that PawPaw starting talking about the baby, like he was seeing a baby. They say that the veil between Heaven and Earth gets thin close to death, so maybe it was baby Mary he was talking about.
Burying a child was probably the last thing on my grandparents' minds when they were faced with losing baby Mary, so it is likely the reason she was buried in a tomb already purchased by my Gramma's parents, where my great-grandfather had been buried a number of years before. However, her spot in the tomb was never marked. During a time when losing a child was not talked about, this is not actually very surprising. The idea was likely to have her buried in the Catholic cemetery and then just move on. They knew where she was. Grief was not handled then like it is now. In the 1950's, you took grief, and you put it in a drawer, hid it out of sight, and you didn't talk about it, as if that would make it disappear. We know now that grief doesn't go away just because you try to shove it out of sight and pretend it's not there, it actually just internalizes and destroys you from the inside.
As I've gone through my counseling, I've learned how the scope of what I needed to work through was much larger than what I initially thought I started counseling for. I learned how pain can be passed down through generations. I know that my Gramma was not a nurturing mother, I know that the nanny was in many ways more of a mother to my Mom and her siblings than Gramma was. Some of that was the time, 1950s and 1960s South Louisiana. But I have to believe that some of that was because Gramma couldn't be the Mom she needed to be, she was too broken emotionally. I know she struggled with depression. I have also heard stories of how cold she could be. Everyone does the best with what they have, but Gramma did not have the tools to deal with what she was going through, and one of the ways that came out was in how unavailable she was to her children. I have to believe some of that came from not being able to talk about the child she lost. Not being able to grieve in a healthy manner. I can't even imagine losing a child, much less losing a child and having to just move on like it never happened. I can love Gramma with everything in me and still admit the ways her pain caused pain to her children and then to me. To celebrate baby Mary, to honor her, feels like bringing this full circle, closing this chapter of grief and pain in my family.
I decided some time ago that I wanted to have baby Mary's grave marked. I know where she's buried, my family knows where she's buried, but after we're gone, she would be completely forgotten. It just pulled and tugged at my spirit. She mattered. Her life mattered. She was my aunt. She was my Mom's big sister. I've wondered so much about her, what she would have been like, what our family would have been like with her in it. She can't be forgotten, it's just not right. I let the thought just sit in the back of my mind for a long time before it just got louder and louder in my head, before I couldn't push it aside any longer. But she had no name. We didn't know her birthday. There's so little we know. What was I supposed to do with that thing tugging at my spirit?
I started digging for information. I found out that a cousin had been at the funeral with her father, my PawPaw's brother, but she was young and had no idea of when it took place. Just to hear that she was there, that she saw my aunt, was an unexpected blessing, but it did not solve the mystery of her birthday. I contacted the funeral home that buried her, the funeral home my family has used for as far back as I know. They were wonderful, and they went into their archives, but their archived stopped a few years after baby Mary likely was born. I contacted the church where she was buried, thinking they would have burial records. I was told that they didn't keep records of burials, they only had records based off what was written on tombs. Since nothing was written on baby Mary's tomb, they had nothing. Had their been a funeral mass, they might have been able to give me more information, but there was not a funeral mass, only a burial. There was no obituary. My Uncle Bubba found nothing in my grandparents' paperwork anywhere in their house relating to baby Mary. I was going to contact the office of Vital Records for the state, but I found out that it wasn't until 2003 that any certificates were given in the case of a stillbirth. 2003, the year I graduated high school. It's been less than 20 years that they have created this. "In 2003, the Louisiana Legislature enacted the
"Missing Angels Act," which established a new commemorative certificate
entitled the 'Certificate of Birth Resulting in Stillbirth.'" Prior to 2003, no birth certificate was given because the baby was not born alive, and no death certificate was given either because the baby was already dead when he/she was born. How painful this must have been to parents, as if their baby did not exist at all in the eyes of the state.
So then what? We still had no exact birthday. I contacted the funeral home for advice. I contacted the church for advice. A deacon gave me the words he thought her tomb should say, and they were perfect. The funeral home and the church gave me the same name of a granite company to contact. Once I finally got ahold of them, they told me that supply chain issues are impacting their business as well, and they were not sure they would be able to get it done in time. By a miracle, they did. Everything just fell into place, piece by piece.
June 11, 2022, around 67ish years after baby Mary was born, we celebrated her. Alex, five family members who love me enough to come celebrate with us because it mattered to me, my Mom via FaceTime, and me. Eight people gave Baby Mary recognition, celebration, and honored her life because she mattered. It was beautiful.
This is what I read at the ceremony:
Thank you all for coming here today to help me honor the Aunt I never met. A funeral was held here around 65 years ago, but that's not why we are here today. Today I want to celebrate the life of Baby Mary in a way the prior generations were never able to.
Baby Mary was born sometime in the mid 1950s, but she never took a breath on this side of Heaven. No one alive knows her birthday, only that she was born between Uncle Bubba and my Mom. The only name given to her was by a nurse, we are not aware of my grandparents speaking a name out loud for her. However, we are here today because her life mattered.
Gramma and PawPaw got married in February of 1952 when Gramma was 32 and PawPaw was 37. For the times, they were old newlyweds. I imagine how hard it would have been for Gramma to watch most of her sisters and friends get married young, as was expected then, and wondering if it would ever happen to her. But then she met my grandfather, got married, and by June 1953, they had Francis Earl, Jr., my Uncle Bubba. Sometime before and after Bubba, Gramma had a number of miscarriages. She then got pregnant again, this time making it to her due date. PawPaw's mother, Mon Briggs, had a terrible dream 3 days before Gramma had her baby, and because of that dream, she believed there would be a death in the family. PawPaw tried to calm her and tell her that it was just a dream, but Mon was still distraught. Then three days later, Gramma delivered baby Mary, stillborn, with the umbilical cord wrapped around her neck. The doctor said that the baby had died 3 days prior, the same time Mon had her dream. We know this would have been sometime between June 1954 and May 1956, but no one alive knows the exact date.
In the 1950s, Gramma would have been put in twilight sleep when it was time to deliver her baby. Normally, a woman would wake up to see her newborn, having no memory of the actual delivery. Gramma awoke from twilight sleep to a nightmare, the news that she had had a daughter, but that she was not born alive. She never got to see this baby girl. During that time, the belief was that it would be too traumatic for the mother to see her dead child, so Gramma didn't. Gramma spent many more days in the hospital recovering from labor and delivery, and because of the need to have the baby buried as quickly as possible, it was left to PawPaw to arrange burial for their baby girl. A nurse unofficially called the baby "Mary," so we sometimes use that name, but as far as I know, Gramma and PawPaw never named their baby girl. PawPaw did get to see her, but all he ever told me was that she was beautiful. A small burial was held right here somewhere around 65 years ago, with only PawPaw, his brother, Curtis, his niece, Vera Mae, and we can assume a priest and someone from the funeral home. Vera Mae was about 14 at the time and is the only one still living who was able to tell me anything about this. She said she just remembers the baby girl, her cousin, looking like a baby doll in her tiny casket.
The belief when Gramma lost baby Mary was that you just move on. You were pregnant, but you're not anymore. Your baby didn't make it, focus on the baby boy you do have, Francis Earl. You will have another baby. This stunted grief from the beginning. We know now that not allowing the grieving process, trying to "Just move on," can cause deep and lasting effects such as depression, anger, stomach problems, addictive behaviors, emotional numbness and apathy, among other things. Grief with no place to go can eat you from the inside out. From every mother I've talked to who has lost a child at any stage of pregnancy, you carry the pain of that loss for the rest of your life, often always just feeling like something is missing. Part of your family is in Heaven while the rest is here on Earth. For PawPaw, the grief would have also had no place to go. Fathers were not present in labor and delivery in the 1950s like they are now, and it was not assumed that they take a large role in child rearing, since that fell on the stay at home Mom. The father's role focused on providing financially for the family. But it’s not fair to assume this didn’t impact PawPaw greatly as well. Perhaps PawPaw threw himself more into work or his Boy Scout Troop to distract himself from his own grief. If Mothers didn’t have a place for their grief to go, fathers would have had even less of a place for their grief to go. We know now how much this kind of loss can impact even a young toddler like Uncle Bubba would have been. Cognitively, he has no memories from this time, but he was physically there when Gramma was expecting another child, when Gramma came home without that child. He probably was told about being a big brother, and then they would have tried to somehow explain to him that he wouldn't be a big brother yet. At his young age, while his brain was still developing and he was learning how to form attachments, he would have been very affected by the change that happened in Gramma and the grief permeating his household. We are even learning now how much the anxiety and mental health of a mother can impact a developing child. I can imagine the emotions Gramma would have felt during her next pregnancy, when she carried my mother, worried about whether she would be able to take this baby home, afraid of another loss. Even newborns can act as if they have sustained trauma if their mothers were under emotional duress during their pregnancy. And, as it directly impacts me, we also know that a woman is born with all the eggs she will ever have. One of those tiny eggs, the egg that later became me, was grown inside my mother while she was growing inside my grandmother. The loss of baby Mary has had ripple effects through our family.
I don't remember when I first learned of baby Mary, but when I became old enough to start asking questions, I was told not to ask Gramma about the baby. So naturally, I did. As a young teenager, I couldn't comprehend the loss of a baby, of your own baby. I knew it was sad, but I just didn't have the ability to understand the depths of the pain Gramma must have felt. Now Alex and I are almost four years into trying to be parents and struggling with infertility. The desire to be a mother constantly becomes stronger, and at 36, I am now likely around the age Gramma was when she lost baby Mary. The thought of finally becoming pregnant and then losing the child at any stage is overwhelming. Most women I know have said that a woman becomes a mother when she finds out she's pregnant. You start thinking about your future with that child, planning names, wondering what they will be like, thinking of your life with that child in it. We already have a room picked out, I have names that already roll off my tongue. And just as we’ve excitedly waited with our friends to meet their babies, we’ve also grieved with friends who have lost babies, both miscarriages and even stillborn, like Gramma experienced so many years ago. Our friends who have had stillborn children have been allowed to see their babies, hold their babies, take pictures with their babies, get their feet prints and handprints, whatever they needed. While this may seem morbid, for the parents, it's all they have of their child. It's all they will ever have. They have had funerals where their communities have surrounded them with support. They have encouraged their friends to speak the name of their child, celebrate the life of their child. They remember birthdays. They are able to grieve however they need to in a healthy way. They will forever carry the pain of losing a child, but it will not destroy them. Unfortunately, Gramma’s experience was starkly different.
I loved my grandmother dearly, but I know that she was not a very nurturing mother, and she did not know how to show her love easily. The pictures of her with Uncle Bubba as an infant show Gramma with an easy smile on her face, radiant, loving. There are so many pictures of Baby Bubba, but after Bubba, the pictures of Baby Mom, David, and Pat are much fewer. I've heard some of this is normal with each child, but somehow this seems more extreme. This also goes along with the stories I hear of a mother who kept her children at arm's length. My heart breaks that my Mom and her siblings did not have the mother they needed. Gramma softened in her later years with me, she was much more nurturing with me, and I'm thankful I was able to see that part of her. But it doesn't change that she was not able to be the mother her children needed. Everyone does the best with what they have, but unfortunately wounds parents carry often get passed on to their children.
I have asked a lot of questions about baby Mary over the years. For my Mom and her siblings, it was just a fact, a part of life, that Gramma had lost a baby. For me, one generation removed, I have grieved for the Aunt I never got to meet. Wondered what she would have looked like. What would her personality have been like? Would she have been book smart, an athlete, a musician? Would she have fished and been brave enough to swim with Allie the alligator at the camp? Would she have taught Mom things only big sisters can? What would it have been like for Mom to grow up with a big sister and a little sister instead of being the big sister herself? What did we miss out on not having Mary as part of our lives? What would Gramma have been like as a mother had she not suffered that terrible loss of her second child?
The Bible says in Genesis that God created everyone, male and female, in His image (Genesis 1:27). In Psalm 139, it states that God knits our innerparts together in our mother's womb and knows every day of our lives (Psalm 139: 13,16). Baby Mary was knit together in Gramma's womb, but she took her first breath in Heaven, leaving behind a broken family. It's well documented in the Gospels how much Jesus loved children and welcomed them close to himself. Matthew 10 says that not a single sparrow can fall to the ground without our Heavenly Father knowing it, and that we are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows. Baby Mary was created by God, known and loved by God.
On this side of Heaven, it doesn’t make sense why she couldn’t stay here with us, but she woke up in Heaven. She has never known any pain or brokenness we know here on earth. I Corinthians 13 says, “But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless. Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” (I Corinthians 13: 10, 12 ) One day we will meet her and understand the things that don’t make sense on this side of Heaven. “Our earthly bodies are planted in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever. They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies. For just as there are natural bodies, there are also spiritual bodies. Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ!” I Corinthians 15: 42b, 44; 15: 54-57
Lastly, I give you this. “To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory. Isaiah 61:3
One day, when my time on Earth is done and I go to Heaven, I will finally meet my Aunt. I will finally see her face, learn what my grandparents named her, and have plenty of time to get to know her. I hope that she is standing there with Jesus waiting for me when I get there, just as excited to meet me as I will be to meet her.
Baby Briggs can now never be forgotten.
Judy and Nell were so sweet to come, Baby Mary is not even on their side of my family.
I was so incredibly touched by Colleen and Vickie coming in from New Orleans for me and so glad to see them.
Uncle Bubba, one day shy of his birthday! Kind of like a birthday present?
Gramma and PawPaw looking like terrified and excited new parents with baby Uncle Bubba
I've never seen Gramma so beautiful and radiant like this
Uncle David, Uncle Bubba, Mom, Aunt Pat
Mom, Uncle Bubba with Pat in front of him, and Uncle David on Gramma's lap.
