The Poppy Collection
“Let love find you
In its sunshine
Or in a poppy flower
Loved so much by bees
That is embraced by the earth
I know love returns
Because flowers do
If a little flower
Smaller than a fingernail
Opens
It feels happy as a butterfly
Who knew nothing of time”
Luke Levi
This collection is driven by grief, sorrow, love, and overwhelming ache. It is a body of work I would never want to do… but the one I cherish the most. Every month of the year has a flower associated with it, and since our baby was due in August, we decided to name her Poppy when we lost her. It gave us the opportunity to have something physical to cling to and associate with the baby we got to see but never got to meet. It became a symbol for us to cherish whenever we saw the sweet red flower blossom in the wild.
Even as I sit here writing, my chest aches. As this series comes to a close, I find myself grasping at the finishing details to prolong it in some way. Even though my mind knows that finishing this collection does not mean saying goodbye to my sweet baby, it does have a feeling of finality to it. She will continue to live so deeply in my heart. Poppies never used to be a favorite flower. My mother loved them. She used to have a little fake bouquet in our sunroom. However now, I can't think of a more precious flower now that my baby bears its name.
The past few months of my life have been incredibly difficult… There have been many moments when I felt like I was drowning. I have never poured so much of myself into my art…so many days spent crying over my pottery wheel. I was looking at my future… the future I had planned out. I had gone full time as an artist in January. I'd continue that until August… I’d make a small little savings… I’d build some connections… and then I would be a small batch potter come the end of August, and I would proudly be a stay-at-home mother and artist in whatever capacity I could be…
Then suddenly I was alone… no little body growing in me… no little future with them. I had all this time back in my hands that I never wanted and honestly did not want to utilize. I resented that time.
It's always been a habit of mine to sketch when I don't know what to say. So, after the miscarriage I started drawing Poppies and dreaming up a way to celebrate her. I had remembered a painting I had seen a while back with bright red poppies in front of a deep ultramarine, blue sky… I wanted the pieces to feel like that. Like a bright ray of hope in the midst of the sorrow. I wanted my sweet Poppy to be able to be shared with other people. I wanted her to be celebrated, loved, and seen by others.
“It’s a club you don't want to be in, but the closest of communities" My sister comforted me with this after the miscarriage. I wouldn't wish this sadness on anyone, but I can speak firsthand that these mothers were so quick to seek me out, embrace me, cry with me, and pray for me. I wanted to be able to give them a way to treasure their own heavenly babies. I heard someone once say… “I hope this grief stays with me because it's all the unexpressed love that I didn't get to tell her.” I don't think many people know what to do with grief… Not many know how to meet someone in the midst of it. Grief craves silence honestly, not in the sense that you ignore the topic of the grief… but you give it space to breathe… to feel…to share... Grief needs a community to meet it with patience… It does not need solutions. It does not need careless dismissal… It needs a gentle, persistent, and caring hand. This community of parents has known great sorrow, and I think we have a unique experience to empathize with grief.
Death was never meant for us. It shocks me how quickly someone can dismiss death. “It happens to us all in the end.” God never wanted us to experience this. He aches with us over death. When we get to heaven, He will wipe away our tears for a reason. He seeks to comfort us from all of the pain this broken world holds. I myself cannot wait to reach him, and hear him say “Someone has been waiting for you…”
This life is a vapor, and I'll see you soon my sweet Poppy, not in the way I hoped for, but I ache for the day.
May this grief ever be my friend… May my heart never mend
(Every Moment Holy, Volume II Death, Grief, and Hope, Pg 158-161)A Liturgy for those who have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth
O Christ Who Gathered Children in Your Arms, You know our ache. You know this void of human words can fill.You understand this grief for our little one, lost while in the womb. You were witness to our rising joy. You saw our crumbling hope.Now you behold our sinking sorrow. Christ be merciful, for we are frail. And in our frailty, we have suffered such loss.
Heavenly Father, see what room our love had already carved out - in our home and in our hearts- for the welcome and the wonder of this child, whose face we have not kissed, and whose tiny hands we have not held, but who had already grown so precious to us. Were we not radiant with anticipation, o Lord, building forward to the day when we would finally meet and cradle our sweet child? Only to be met instead with this cratering heartache of sudden loss, this unexpected death of our little one before birth: and with it this dying of dreams for all that might have been.
For here we have entered a communion, O Lord, a fellowshipNone have ever wished to join, of all mothers and fathersAnd families across time who have wept for their lost children.We lament so much that now will never be. This child we lost will be for us in this life like a song unsung, and a story untold.And yet, even in our deep loss, O Lord, you have notAbandoned us or left us without light and hope.For we remember how you, Jesus, loved and welcomedLittles ones, touching their heads and blessing them,Declaring that the kingdom of heaven belonged to these.And you have told us your promises are for usAnd for our children. And this one whom we lost, Was this not also our child, O God?Our hearts ache even to ponder such things, but is it possibleThat when all creation is made new, we will find fellowshipThere with one we could not hold in this life? Could theRedemption of this world’s harms run so deep? So, beyond all Imagining? Your word says little of such mysteries. And yet, in what is revealed we find good reason to take heart.For even amidst uncertainty, this we know to be trueOf your woods, O Father, and this we cling to:However, we might try to conceive such joys, That conception will be either errant or incomplete,Because we, in our finite knowledge and capacity for hope,Will limit the picture we paint in ways that you, in yourLimitless joy and relentless grace will never be bounded by.However, we might envision the redemption of this loss, theActual redemption that you effect will be still more glorious.So let us learn to steward will this holy sorrow,Assured that it is some way the buried seed of a flowerThat will blossom into eternity.
Indeed, this future hope will not end the pain we feel today.It does not negate the emptiness of the womb where new life stirred. It does not fill the empty cradle. But it does declareThat the empty cradle and the empty womb will not havePower to grieve us forever, for our day our eternal joys will flower backward in time, even to this broken place.And then those joys will fill every emptiness and everyHeartbreak the children of God have ever endured.
Now, O Lord,We remember your past faithfulness.We receive your present comforts.We await your future redemptions.Let us, it this and in all our sorrows, Be met by your lovingkindnessAnd consoled by your hope.For yours, O Father, is the kingdom,And the power, and the glorious redemptionOf all our losses.Even of this one.
