Funeral

J and i are doing something no one ever expects to do - planning a funeral for our own son. after the birth a number of difficult decisions had to be made. what do you do with the placenta and your son's body? how do you pick a funeral home?

originally J wanted to keep the placenta and later bury it in the ground, then plant a tree on top of it. remembering her wishes i asked the doctors not to do any invasive or destructive testing of the placenta. i think they took some swabs for some cultures but that was it. once J came out of her post-seizure fog and had a couple of consults with our doctor we sort of understood that whatever clues were to be had about our son are probably going to come from the placenta, so we allowed them to do a full pathology on it. it was sad to let go to a part of the body shared by J and Soren (or anything connected to Soren), but we knew that we both wanted any answers that were out there for what happened.

a similar decision had to be made for the autopsy. without any discussion we both knew that we wanted cremation, which i guess makes the concept of an autopsy a little easier to deal with. our doctors advised us that the "yield" was low, which means that there is a good chance that it will tell us nothing we didn't already know. but J has seen enough cases of serious issues that don't manifest themselves externally. we both agreed to an autopsy and a karyotype (genetic screening).

the hospital pushed me to pick a funeral home ... how is one supposed to do that when you are in an ICU, no Internet, no sleep for 36h, not going to leave your wife's side for any reason and just dealing with basic emotional/physical/mental survival? i ignored them for a while until i got my laptop back and looked up some information that i could show J.

we narrowed it down to two choices, based on location and reputation. problem is, one of them is visible from my office window! we chose (what we thought was) a family-owned home in the Ballard neighborhood. so far, so good. the funeral director has been compassionate and explained everything clearly, including our options and costs. it helped that J and i spent a little bit of time in the hospital talking about what we wanted. J even went to the first meeting with me, which was difficult for both of us and tremendously brave on her behalf.

(it turns out that most Seattle-area homes seem to be owned by a single firm, Bonney-Watson, but they don't really advertise that. go figure.)

my aunt and uncle are Methodist pastors. they baptized me and my brother. they married me and my brother. they flew up just as we were getting out of the hospital and went with us to the funeral home, and are going to deliver the service for Soren. they are tremendously kind and have their own way of looking at the world but at the same time will respect our wishes for Soren.

i know the service will be difficult. i do not expect "closure" or "putting it behind me" or anything like that. there was a very real temptation on my behalf to do something quick and expedient, something with little family and no friends, to get it over with as quickly as possible. i think looking back doing something inclusive will be the right thing to do, for us and for Soren.

tonight, J and I picked out some photographs to send with Soren as he is cremated. there are photos of J and I at our wedding, on our honeymoon, and sitting on the steps of the Seattle home as we moved in, probably taken right when he was conceived. there are pictures of J's pregnant belly. and we wrote a letter to him telling him how much we loved him. after looking at his pictures, this was almost too much for one day.

to the letter, i added a quote that someone on the mothering.com forums had sent to J. i thought it was beautiful.

Every soul that comes into this world comes here with a very specific mission. When that mission is completed, the soul can leave. The holiest of souls need so little time here in this world that some never even make it outside the womb, others only need their heart to beat once, others not even that.

Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh