Infants Remembered In Silence (IRIS) - Poems

Limbo

Kathleen Rosso Gana

Once after two of my five children were stillborn, I was kindly told not to worry about Limbo because in God's house there are many mansions. I remember nodding and feeling that I had to believe my son's and daughter's soul was with God. It was my only sanity - if there was anything sane left in me.
However, looking back I realize that there is a Limbo, but it's not for the stillborn babies. It's for their parents. The Limbo which is very real is the one in which we are placed by many of our friends and families, neighbors and clergy. Here we stay, in pain an din anger, but powerless to escape, powerless to tell them we don't belong here...because we start to believe we do.
We gave birth - sort of. We had a child - sort of. Our child died - sort of. We struggled through labor for a birth, but to speak of it is wrong. We may upset someone. Then we are judged. We struggled through a burial because of a death, but to speak of it is wrong. We may offend someone. Then we are judged.
So we grope for the right words to say, the fight way to act. We have already failed ourselves; we don't want to fail you. Your eyes beg us to spare you. Soon we learn to speak of things somewhere between birth and death, as we live in our someplace between heaven and hell.

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