Walk to Remember: 'I wanted to be allowed to grieve'
Editor's note: Joe Wilfinger of Plainfield will take part in A Walk to Remember on Saturday, Oct. 10, in Naperville. The walk benefits the SHARE Program at Edward Hospital, which helps parents through their baby's death by helping them preserve the few memories fate affords them and offers parents a place where they can share their experience, grieve and possibly rediscover hope.
By Joe Wilfinger
Plainfield
As a male, I am expected to “suck it up,” “rub some dirt on it” and “be a man.” I don't even know what those statements mean anymore.
After the loss of a child, the world changes. Your life, as you knew it, ceases to exist. As I once told an Edward Hospital Employee Orientation group when discussing infant loss, three people died in the room that day. That really sums it up quite succinctly.
The person I was up until the day I lost Ava is dead. I am a new man. I view the world differently. I react in different ways to things than I used to. I have lost friends who don't understand why I don't laugh at their jokes anymore or why I don't come around as often. I take one day at a time and deal with my grief as it comes.
Now, more than two years out, it has gotten easier. Things will never be the same, but instead of trying to get back to where things were and to resume my life as it was on March 31, 2013, I have learned to embrace the “new normal.”
My story begins on Easter night 2013. My wife, Kathleen, woke me around 11:45 p.m. to tell me her water had broken. We drove to the hospital and were admitted to the ER. I, being completely uninitiated in the ways of pregnancy, actually asked the doctor if we could just “pump the water back in” to delay delivery until closer to the due date, but I was told that isn't how it works.
I'm the type of person who is a firm believer in modern medicine. When I found out that modern medicine had let me down, I was devastated.
We sat through one final ultrasound where we got to hear our little girl's heartbeat one last time. After that, the doctor told us Ava hadn't reached viability and there was nothing we could do but give Kathleen medicine to induce labor and wait — wait for our daughter to die.
The next 12 hours didn't feel real. We just sat in the hospital room and waited. Every time a baby was born on the floor, a lullaby would play on the overhead speakers, which was incredibly hard on us to sit through. It was the worst day of my entire life.
The evening of April 1, 2013, came and Kathleen delivered Ava. I cut her cord and we both held her. We cried and cried and cried. We talked to her, I read her a story and Kathleen rocked her gently. When the time came for her to be taken, I cursed God and begged him to let me switch places with Ava. My prayer went unanswered.
After I dried my eyes and composed myself as much as I could, I went into the hallway and did the hardest thing that I have ever had to do in my life: I called a funeral home and made arrangements for my daughter's cremation.
The hospital was great throughout the entire process. The chaplain came and said prayers with us, social workers spoke with us, and the nurses were the greatest on the planet.
We went home the next day and had to face the reality of life post-Ava. The first week or two were fine on the home front because it was fresh on the minds of our family and friends and we were constantly being checked up on and taken care of.
After that, things got a little more challenging. The real world didn't stop for everyone. Slowly but surely, people who had been steadfast supporters stopped calling and texting, or worse, when they did, they acted like nothing had happened.
After a few days, it was time to go back to work. I am a special-education teacher and, at the time, I was working in a district that didn't treat their employees particularly well. When I returned to work, I was able to do my job normally, and I didn't act grief-stricken in front of the students at all.
During my plan period or my lunch, it was a different story. I guess you could say that I was (understandably) a little melancholy. My second day back, the assistant principal asked me, “When are you going to get over this?” I was dumbstruck.
I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, though. Our society is more accepting of a woman grieving the loss of a child. The man's societal expectation is to help his wife. “How is your wife doing?” “Kathleen must be taking this so hard.” “I can't even imagine what your poor wife is going through.”
Now, don't get me wrong here, my wife has every right to be grieving, and it is nice so many people were thinking of her. It's just that I was hurting, too. I wanted people to care about my feelings, too. I wanted to be allowed to grieve. I shared this issue with Kathleen, and she tried to help me grieve openly at home, but it was no use at first. It was an involuntary response, if I saw Kathleen crying, my body turned off my emotions so I could be her rock.
I was able to get the grief out, eventually. I remember exactly how it happened. I was in our backyard and thought of something that made me laugh. A few minutes later, I realized I had been laughing and felt horrible. I felt guilty for laughing instead of being sad. The tears came flowing like a river.
A few days later, I realized I hadn't thought directly about Ava the previous day, that she was just in the back of my mind. Again, guilt overtook me and I cried until I couldn't cry anymore.
Those two instances really helped me. As a man and as a father, I'm a fixer. It's simply in my nature to fix any problem I see. I realized I felt so horribly guilty not because I laughed at something or because I hadn't spent several hours thinking of Ava, but because I was powerless to save her. There was a problem I couldn't fix. It was a problem nobody could fix. Coming to terms with this was beyond my power to do alone. I needed to talk about my issues; I needed to “share.”
SHARE is a grief counseling group at Edward Hospital that deals with miscarriage and infant loss. We started going to the meetings about three weeks after our loss. At first, we were nervous to attend the meeting, as we didn't know what to expect. As the first few meetings came and went, we realized it was therapeutic to be able to share our story with people who truly understood.
That's not to say that our friends and family didn't care, but unless you have been through this terrible tragedy, you really can't know what we go through.
A few months post-loss, we weren't the “newbies” in the SHARE program anymore. We still got to talk about our story and our current struggles with grief and recovery, but listening to the stories of others and being able to help them through the initial stages of loss actually helped us continue to move along on our own journey to the new normal.
The other couples who attended the meetings quickly became our closest friends. We have been there for each other at the lowest points in life and the highest points. We have formed a special bond that can never be broken. When I was still attending meetings and new people would join, I would call it, “The best group you never wanted to be part of,” and that moniker really hits it on the head.
I know I can count on my fellow members of the “SHARE Class of 2013” for anything I may need, and vice-versa. I have spent Christmas night bowling with two other SHARE couples, I ran my first 5K to honor the life of our friends' daughter, I helped two different SHARE couples move into new houses on the same day, I went to my first Chicago Bears game with friends from group, I've been on an amazing indoor trampoline adventure, where I dove headfirst into a giant foam pit and only lost one sock, we have had couples' game nights that allowed us all to blow off steam with people who have actually been in our shoes, we have done balloon releases for our angel babies, held birthday parties for our little ones, we have had friends from group bring us delicious chili dinners when Kathleen was on bed rest while pregnant with our “rainbow babies,” the entire group pitched in and bought us a butterfly engraving memorializing Ava in the Edward Hospital Wings of Hope Angel Garden, and (most importantly) our “rainbow babies” get to be playmates with each other.
The SHARE program has done wonders for Kathleen and I. It brought us out from the pit of despair into the new normal. And while it didn't turn us back into who we were pre-loss, I don't think I want to be that guy anymore.
Over the last two years, I have grown tremendously. There has been much change in my life. Although we lost Ava, we gained an additional golden retriever and twin “rainbow babies,” who are called that because they are the rainbow after the storm.
Ava has taught me that it is OK to move on with my life. She knows I haven't forgotten her, and that I will see her again one day. She wants me to be happy. She wants me to be the best dad I can be for her little sisters, Paige and Riley.
I will spend every day for the rest of my life trying to make her proud of me.
If you go
What: A Walk to Remember
Why: Proceeds support the Wings of Hope Garden and the SHARE program at Edward Hospital for families who have lost babies during pregnancy or soon after birth
When: A memorial service begins at 9:30 a.m. with the walk at 10 a.m.; on-site registration starts at 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Oct. 10
Where: Riverwalk Grand Pavilion west of Centennial Beach, 500 W. Jackson Ave., Naperville
Cost: Free, donations and pledges requested
Info: napervillewalktoremember.org