Tina's TEOTWAWKI Journal, day 53

It's rare that a TV show makes me want to ugly cry, but there are two of them that push me to the brink.

One is This Is Us.  The other is Call the Midwife from the BBC.

I cry because both shows bring life and death, tragedy and humor all together at once.

For those unfamiliar with the show, Call the Midwife is the story of a group of British midwives based in a Catholic convent in London.  It is based on the memoirs of Jennifer Worth, who served as a midwife there in the 1950's.  The show has aired since 2012.  I don't get to see it until it comes to PBS, many weeks after it finishes airing in the UK.

The midwives and the nuns of Nonnatus House, where the women serve, handle a number of issues; most dealing with pregnancy and childbirth, some dealing with the culture and history of the time.  They have dealt with the effects of thalidomide (a drug that caused major birth defects in the 1960's), the subject of abortion, the rape of a nun, the introduction of the National Health Service, the care of a mentally handicapped young man, adoption, and many other topics.

I just finished watching the latest episode. 

One of the storylines featured a mother who wanted desperately for her child to be born on her father's birthday.  Her father had died many years earlier and thus had not been able to get to know his grandchildren.  So, she took castor oil in order to induce labor.  It worked, and right before midnight on her father's birthday, she gave birth to a baby boy. 

Two days later, the boy was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with multiple birth defects.  It turned out that she had been exposed to German measles early in her pregnancy.  The baby would die within weeks. 

So the family decided to bring him home and enjoy the time they would have with him. 

Which they did. 

This storyline was intertwined with the efforts of the members of the Poplar community, where Nonnatus House is located, to put on a flower show.  The elderly Sister Monica Joan insisted on doing an exhibition from Nonnatus House, and she insisted on doing it alone. 

At the end, all you see at Sister Monica Joan's spot is the small statue of St. Nonnatus (the patron saint of childbirth and midwives) . . . until a group of women come bringing their babies to lay at the base of St. Nonnatus's statue.  These were the "flowers" of Sister Monica Joan's exhibit.

One of the midwives had been closely involved in helping the family of the infant who died.  At the end of the episode, the father gave her a picture of the baby, and she attached it to a potted plant and laid it with the rest of the babies. 

I have never lost a child to death, nor have I had a miscarriage, but I know many who have.  The day I'm writing this, May 4th, is the anniversary of the birth and death of a little girl named Hope, the first child of a couple I met at my church.  I know of other women who have lost children to stillbirth and to SIDS.  My own grandmother lost a little girl to illness at three months.

Call the Midwife begins and ends with a voiceover monologue from the elderly Jenny (voiced by Vanessa Redgrave).  The ending monologue moved me close to ugly crying.

"Some seeds are more predictable than others.  We plant them and they send up shoots.  We water them and then we watch them grow.  They reward us with abundance, with joy, with pleasure, in the rhythms of life itself.  Water them and they will flourish.  Nurture them and they will thrive.  Love and light and rain and air are all they need.  Flowers take many forms.  Each one has its story and its roots.  Each one unfurls from its bulb or its kernel, revealing itself and all its promise as it will.  Each is entirely precious and unique.  Each is the best and the only.  Each will linger in the mind.  Each will teach us what it is to love.  To be torn, to nurture, and let go.  Not every garden blooms as we expected.  Despite our care, not every child can thrive.  Tears take the place of rain and the sunshine fails us.  But the buds, however delicate, were prefect.  They were real, and their fleeting scent will live forever on the air."

Today is not the day to end with a snarky rendition of "It's The End Of The World As We Know It", because this is not a subject for snark.  It is a time to reflect on the delicate buds that, although they did not thrive, were real, and to detect their scent that still lives on the air.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.

Baby Rapp and Bobbie Lee

Between my birthday and Christmas money, I was able to reactivate my Ancestry.com subscription. Since then, I've been poking around and clicking on links, trying to create my family tree with new information.  

I just found a death certificate that blew my mind.  

Actually, I found two death certificates that blew my mind.  

The first one, I discovered when I was tracing my husband's line backwards.  While investigating his grandparents' family, I found a death certificate reading simply, "Baby Rapp."  

I had not known, until that moment, that the first child of my husband's grandparents was a stillborn son.  No name except "Baby Rapp."  No record except on a death certificate issued by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, file number 44012.  Date of death, April 9, 1927; time of death, 9:30 a.m., cause of death "stillborn (at term)".  In other words, Baby Rapp was a full-term boy that was born sleeping.  He was buried two days later.  

My mother-in-law was born the next year, the first of four living children.

The other death certificate rewrote a small portion of my own family history.

You see, I'd been under the impression that my maternal grandparents had had a daughter who was stillborn or died right after birth.  I don't know if my grandmother had told me she'd died at birth or exactly how she'd told me the story, but that was how I remembered it.

This morning, while looking up my grandmother's information, I found a link to a Billie Lee Chitwood's death certificate.  I wondered if that was actually Bobbie Lee Chitwood, because this particular daughter was named for my grandmother's father, Robert Lee Thompson.

So, I clicked on the link and found a death certificate, issued by the Commonwealth of Kentucky, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, File No. 27041, Because of the handwriting on the death certificate, "Bobbie Lee" was probably misread as "Billie Lee" when it was transcribed for the Ancestry.com site.

Her date of death was November 13, 1935, around 10:30 p.m.  Cause of death: gastro-enteritis.  Age: Three months, 12 days old.

She didn't die at birth, like I'd always thought.  Instead, she lived with her family from August 1, 1935, until November 13.  And she died of a disease that would probably be easier to treat today but that, in rural Kentucky in 1935, was probably harder to deal with.

My mother was born two years later.  Then, my uncle.  

So now I know that the second child in my grandmother's family was Bobbie Lee, and she died before my mother was even conceived.  And not only did she die, she lived for a little while.  And then, around November 5th, she got sick.  A Dr. Bailey first saw her on November 8th.  Five days later, she was dead.

How do you go on after losing a child?

I now know that my husband's grandparents, and my grandparents, faced that question.  And somehow, they went on.  Because they went on, my mother and my husband's mother were both born.

I find it fascinating how death and life intersect, how just one moment, one decision made, one unforseeable circumstance can change a person's life in ways we can never, ever forsee.

Had Baby Rapp not been born sleeping, his parents probably would not have conceived my mother-in-law.  If Bobbie Lee hadn't died when she did, it's possible that her parents wouldn't have conceived my mother.  It takes one particular egg, one sperm cell, and one particular moment in time to make a child.

So, in reading the account of Baby Rapp and Bobbie Lee, and thinking about when they were born and when they died, I find myself asking the question:  Would my mother and mother-in-law have been born if these two babies had not died?

If they hadn't . . . I probably wouldn't be here writing this.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.