A beautifully written piece. So emotional.
To perform the Taharah when a woman has lived out her life, has seen her Children Grow and have their own children, seems part of the natural logic of life. The first Taharahs I took part in were just that. This next Taharah, however, involved someone who had not lived a long life, had not lived to see her children grow, and this time, I was to be alone.
The call stunned me. I knew she was Sick, but this wasn’t expected. Now the mortuary was asking, could I be the one to take care of her? I had never before performed a Taharah on a baby. My experiences with babies were of life, not of Death. There was always joy, a new beginning. Here was unimaginable sadness, an ending.
As I looked at the tiny garments, it became real, and I worried about how I would react. My mind remembered my nursing training, when we were doing a rotation in the NICU and how I just couldn’t bear to be with sick babies. All I could think about were my own babies and I had cried to my instructor, “Just get me out of here!” Now I was going to be with this fragile body, with this baby who was no longer sick, but was actually gone.
Continue reading A death that was also a Birth – Salon.com.
This post first appeared on B-loss-om | A Personal Blog About Babyloss, please read the originial post: here
