Some excerpts:
“My grief felt eccentric, if not unique: The whole world was trying to organize a response to a pandemic, and all I could think about was that little bundle of potential that had died. I loved the idea of that baby and everything that, for a little over two weeks, I had been able to imagine would follow.”
“I tried to pray for understanding. Sometimes I prayed for Elijah. I had read A Severe Mercy over the summer, a book I thought might help me figure out what to do, how to think about bereavement. The writer Sheldon Vanauken had lost his brilliant, beautiful young wife; was it wrong that I felt my loss equivalent to his?”
“I read something by the food writer Nina Planck about planting bulbs after a miscarriage as a kind of poetic mourning ritual. In October we carved three jack-o-lanterns: one for Ella, one for Isaiah, one for Elijah Nowell. When we turned on the battery powered tea lights at night, it felt like a prayer, the least I could do to reassure this baby that we hadn’t forgotten him.”
I am the father of four wonderful children. We would have had a fifth, a little girl whom we never got to name, but my wife suffered a miscarriage. This piece by Teubner has helped me understand my own grief over that baby who was never born.
Whether or not you or your family have ever gone through a miscarriage, I strongly recommend you read this remarkable essay.
Last modified on 2026-02-12