Terror and Futility

Since my two-year old daughter, Lizzy, died nearly a month ago, I have felt as though I am nothing more than a flayed, inhuman remnant of what and who I was before. I no longer know myself, nor do I know or have conviction in anything that I did before her death.

I feel I am suspended between the terror of death and the utter futility of life. We live on this razor’s edge where a few minutes of oxygen deprivation can end in total brain death of my brilliant and beautiful two-year old and yet children and people survive disease, deprivation, and abominable living conditions every day. Life, so fragile, persists against the odds all of the time, and yet death is this enormous, encompassing, totally omnipotent force.

I no longer recognize the things I cared about before Lizzy’s death. The enormity of death has caused everything to retract into near invisibility and total meaninglessness. I no longer see a way to live without death haunting every step, ready to seize an opening at your least mistake or minute of unwariness. I see terror and suffering behind this veil of “normal” that most people live in every day. I see the victims of war, rape, murder, cancer, disease, and death as the real reality.

My unborn daughter, Cecelia, is still not here. Needless to say, the terror of being able to keep her alive in this reality, the real reality where death and suffering are everywhere, is beyond crippling. I am terrified of her birth, terrified that she won’t survive past 24 hours, more or less past the age of two. How is it that so many children survive to adulthood? My child did not. And you can tell me it was a tragedy, an unpredictable, rare occurrence, and none of it makes a difference to me. I no longer believe that children just survive.

Life can end in a matter of seconds and no philosophy or religion can change that fact or make it better. I laid down next to my daughter as the life support machine that was breathing for her and beating her heart was unplugged. I kissed her face as her body failed. Do not tell me that life persists or finds a way.

As parents, we are told many lies to convince us that what we do or what we buy our children gives them the best possible life. The reality is that most of what we do as parents is utterly futile. The reality is that we, as parents, cannot save our children from death. While I acknowledge that there are terrible ways that babies and children can suffer and die from neglect, abuse, or, most horribly, intention, the other reality is that we can try to do everything in our power and possibility to protect and preserve the lives of our children, and there is no guarantee. We can guarantee and ensure nothing. So there is a terrible futility behind parenthood, a terrifying helplessness where we must surrender our children to an unpredictable and uncontrollable world.

I know this is why people have faith, to try to survive this terror by feeling that there must be some overarching, benevolent force and purpose that can temper and even conquer this horrifying, terrifying, factual reality that death can come in at any moment to take what you love most.

For the past 48 hours, I have been struggling with the terror of how to live in a world where nothing and no one can stop your child from dying. I do not know how to survive in it as an adult, and I do not know how to raise a newborn in it.

There seems to be a futility behind every option in front of me, combined with a helpless compulsion to do the utmost (which is pathetically and devastatingly inadequate) to preserve and protect life with whatever tiny and ineffective tools we have at our disposal. I do not know how to straddle this line of feeling such purposelessness behind everything that I do and yet doing it nonetheless because I cannot feel any truth other than the truth that Cecelia’s life is precious and worth protecting and preserving.

And yet Lizzy’s life was infinitely precious, infinitely worth protecting and preserving, and I could not save her.

And still my swollen belly is moving with Cecelia’s kicking as I write this, giving testament to the fact that I am being asked to surrender myself and her to this vast, terrible world in which life may be stripped from us both within moments.

Sometimes, at the end of a day like this, these are the best answers that I get. Terror. Futility. Surrender. Helplessness.

Those closest to me have said my mind is like a spinning compass. And I guess all I am left to feel is that of course it is spinning. I am broken. And I no longer believe there is a north to point to.