That last time I was invited to speak at a writers’ seminar, the coordinator of the event asked me to provide a short bio they could use both for advertising the seminar and later for introducing me if anybody came.
Quickly I updated a long-standing vita sheet in my computer and faxed it to the lady. At the end of a long, dry list of my credentials I concluded by telling the organization’s potential audience that my wife and I at that time had “10 perfect grandchildren.”
Seminar participants always chuckle at that bit of boasting, but the truth is that my bio sheet wasn’t true. My grandkids are perfect, but instead of 10, I actually had 11. One of them, a perfectly formed little girl, entered this world 9 years ago, about a month too early to survive.
“Spontaneous abortion,” the doctors called it. Not the sort people pay for and rejoice when it’s done because another mouth to feed would strain the family budget or interrupt mama’s career. This natural, God-ordained end of a five-month pregnancy was the sort you cry about and never quite get over because of the deep sense that you have lost a child you had prayed for and were already learning to love.
When you ask my daughter how many children she has, at least in her heart and mind this tiny granddaughter we lost is always included in her count.
Are we just a nutty family, or is this the way most people think (but never feel like they can say so) about their little ones who don’t grow up to run and play and laugh with the others? Is my precious daughter the only mother who remembers a birthday the rest of us forget to celebrate?
“Sometimes,” Christian writer Janet Meils says, “I can hardly wait to get to Heaven. I want to see Jesus, certainly, but there’s one other person I think about—the child I miscarried five years ago. I think Heaven will be a place ringing with the laughter of all the children whose lives were cut short.
“All the memories of sadness and hurt will have been erased,” she dreams, “and I’ll watch them run and play with the One who loves them best. When I get there, I imagine I’ll see one child break away from the group and run toward me, arms open—my own sweet child whom I never knew. She’ll take my hand and the music of joy will bubble up in our hearts—and we’ll dance.”