Look in vain for the instruction book

You probably have heard of the amazing book on baby loss by Elizabeth McCracken.

My friend BookishGirl sent me the following link to McCracken's book excerpt/article in O magazine (yes, BookishGirl loves the Oprah Book Club unabashedly, even though our book group has mocked her for it in the past - I mock her no more).

Elizabeth McCracken starts with a description of a woman who has a book idea: a book of "funny stories" about loss -- those quirky things that you think or remember after you lose a child, omens or signs. It sounds crazy, McCracken thinks. And this woman is clearly not meant to be a sympathetic character.

Then comes a line that hit me hard: "She wanted an instruction book." '

I got a little defensive at this point. YES! Yes I DO! I DO want an instruction book! Is there something wrong with that?

A survival manual. Please. Anyone... and of course it's not that easy.

(By the way, the article later redeems this woman to some extent. I do have a few chuckly little anecdotes from losing Grace -and lots of 'signs' that I find comforting. Am I just like the crazy lady in the story?)

But OF COURSE we want a manual on how to do this. How to survive this. And we are notoriously bad at it - as a society, even as families. Losing a baby, remembering a baby, explaining the baby, explaining our role to the baby, explaining where the baby is. I do yearn for an instruction book.

The only heartening thing about this is that this desperate desire for a manual and answers is just parenting. I am finding a way to be a parent to Baby Grace. I am a mother to this baby. I have to make decisions. I can read all the books and get all the advice in the world, and then I have to do what feels right for me and the baby.

Yes, in this case, there's no baby right here, in front of me, to get to know. And that is a hard hard hard thing to come to terms with.

So like any good mother, you make it up as you go along, you read, you ask grandmothers, friends, wise women and men, you collect. And then do something that feels right, even though you really don't know what you're doing. See? Mothering, I tell myself. I half believe it.