NO DEATH RITUALS: Miscarriage has no funeral

by Susan Fox

My poetry teacher said, "Blues poetry is about being in the hard place. So now we are going to write about death …." 

Death Rituals celebrated in context of community are necessary for healing deep grief over the loss of a loved one. Unfortunately, in a miscarriage these rituals do not take place. I had two miscarriages.  My father died when I was four, and my mother tried to protect me by keeping me at home during the funeral. This was a mistake. 

Lunch at the Space Needle; second child lost.

I was sitting on the toilet, bleeding his loss.

No sitting with the body; no praying for the dead…

My son saying, “Mommie, in your belly, the baby’s dead.”

When my Daddy died, I bounced on his bed.

Got home from New Orleans: “No funeral,” Mom said.

Under a grey blanket, I was left behind.

No sitting with the body, no crossing the line.

The first child came out whole.

Took him to the doctor: they want to know.

They took my baby’s body, his familiar head.

No sitting with the body, no crying for the dead.

Mom had a funeral; came the town.

Amazed, mourners passed me, greeting the crowd;

“Didn’t she love her?’ I wore red.

I was finally sitting with the body and praying for the dead.

"The blues is an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger its jagged grain, and then transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism. As a form, the blues is an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically." (Ralph Ellison)

Read another Blues Poem for An American Lost by the same author.