Rumpus contributor Melissa Chadburn has a heartbreaking and beautiful essay at Buzzfeed about how she is learning to grieve for her nephew who was stillborn and how to use that process going forward:
“I’m reminded of a gospel that personifies Death: Death, this being that rides a pale white horse, the clomps and gallops leaving a trail of lightning behind him, and then Death picks up the dying person or animal or baby, the person in pain, the baby that is too tired for this world, and Death brings them to rest in the bosom of Mercy and the gospel asks us mothers and sisters and fathers and sons and brothers and lovelorn and grief-stricken and lonesome — not to weep. And each time I read it, I allow myself to weep. Because when I do that, it’s not the end of something but rather the beginning. “
