On Losing Our Granddaughter

And the Weight of Grief

One year ago today I became a grandmother.

Less than forty-eight hours later, our granddaughter passed away.

Since then, whenever someone asks me if I have grandchildren, there’s an awkward pause. I don’t know how to respond to a question that contains so many layers and so much grief.

Our son and daughter-in-law learned that their long-awaited child had developmental anomalies during a routine ultrasound at twenty weeks. My husband and I were making dinner when they called. I immediately started sobbing.

Every ultrasound after that revealed more issues and sucked away our hope that perhaps the first test results might have been incorrect.

Their medical team advised us that due to her life limiting condition, her time with us would be brief: seconds, minutes, maybe days. We are praying people. We prayed for healing and we prayed that God would give us the opportunity to meet our granddaughter and tell her how much we loved her.

That first moment of holding Pippa shredded me. I felt awe and gratitude, but also sadness.*

How does one say hello and goodbye in the same sentence?

She rarely cried and her movements were limited, but Pippa made eye contact with everyone who held her. She also “talked” by making a wonderful humming sound when she was in her parents’ arms. Given her limitations, this level of responsiveness was a miracle.

Our son and daughter-in-law were fully present to the joy of having a child. Leading up to Pippa’s birth, they articulated they wanted to be the best possible parents to their daughter for as long as she was alive. And they were. I believe Pippa knew she was loved.

They were fully aware that the choice to love and embrace this baby would also mean their hearts would break. And they did. Is there any loss more painful than losing a child?

Her death was an anti-creation moment for me. The world constricted and got dark. Children aren’t supposed to die before their parents. My deep faith and the hope of heaven offered no balm. I didn’t want to lay her little body down or say goodbye. I wanted to keep holding her. I wanted to nuzzle her neck and hear her laugh. I wanted to see her crawl and take her first unsteady steps.

The days and weeks that followed were unequivocally the most painful of my adult life. Some mornings it took me more than an hour to get out of bed. There were no categories to contain the grief and no words to explain it. It was a tsunami of grief and I thought it would pull me out to sea.

I think about her all the time. I know it’s futile but I can’t help but wonder who she might have been on this day, her first birthday. Though we cannot celebrate with her, we do celebrate her and the gift of her life.

When someone we love dies, it can feel like we not only lose them, but the identity that connected us. But the defining identity does not change. I will always be a daughter, even after both of my parents pass away. From now on, when someone asks if I’m a grandmother, my answer will be yes.

The depth of our grief reflects the depth of our love. Pippa, we love you. Today and always.

Pippa and her parents had the best group of doctors and health care workers anyone could ask for. The team at Beth Israel was respectful, kind, and honored our son and daughter-in-law’s wishes. We were enormously grateful for their expertise and care.

If you are friends with someone who has lost a baby through miscarriage, still-birth, or as with Pippa, fatal medical condition, I’d like to encourage you to be present, be practical, and don’t pretend to have any answers. (There aren’t any.) What most grieving parents need is someone to help them hold their grief without offering false hope, empty platitudes, or jumping too quickly to comments about future children. Grieving is hard and lonely work.

*I’m relating my experiences, not Pippa’s parents. By God’s grace, they were able to be completely present to the joy of meeting their child. Grief came later for them.

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Header photo of Pippa holding her dad’s hand by Sarah Olson.