Baby K’s death, my experience with the cold room, and the visualization of her with the Jizo Bodhisattva was only the beginning of my grieving journey. I had a few days off but spent them distracted at a friend’s wedding out of town and then at the Japanese Garden. My first shift back, I felt a dark, distant cloud over my head. It was difficult to take care of my assignment. I knew I needed to work through what had happened but had no idea where to start.
So after work I called my dad.
Our conversation was filled with concern for the difficulty of this job and how to process the greater problems in life. My father, who also works in healthcare, has a remarkable way of balancing eastern and western medicine, acupuncture and anesthesia, hospital and healing, life and death. He gave me ideas for ways to say goodbye to Baby K and my experience with her.
I don’t remember the details and probably didn’t take much of his well intended advice but at the end he did say something I took seriously: And if you need, just go to the beach and watch the waves come in, remember how big the world is, how life goes on, how we continue…
It couldn’t hurt to try. The next day I turned off my phone and went to the beach. I sat on a blanket with my journal and some snacks and stared at the sea.
It felt slightly forced but it was a start. I focused on each wave, my eyes squinting as I tried to follow individual ones, watching how they disappeared, impermanent, fleeting. I whispered little prayers for this baby, letting her go. I only lasted a few hours. Later, I took a long walk along the cliffs and then a nap. After dinner, I watched a movie. I tend to tear up at anything sappy but it helped opened the half wall I had created around this pain. Suddenly, the tears arrived. I cried till my whole body shook, trembling breaths between sobs, kneeling over on the living room floor.
In the midst of my own waves of sadness, I called our employee assistance hotline (a number off of a pamphlet we had been given during orientation that I happened to find while cleaning a few weeks prior) and made an appointment with our hospital faculty therapists. Now that I had opened the floodgates, my grief consumed me. It also manifested as intense anxiety, debilitating basic decision making.
As I confronted this anxiety and sadness, I practiced self care: I wrote letters to myself and to the baby; painted her picture; typed up the experience in the first person, second person, third person; cried; took deep breaths; went to yoga; and talked with my family and friends.
During therapy sessions, I recounted the experience in the cold room but as I walked down that long hallway, I was filled with love and surrounded by warm light. This time, I was not alone.