The child who has no name

A few weeks were all he had.

He has no social connections in life, no friends in school, no colleagues and no children that bears his features.

There are no social media pages set up in their name to document the growth of their precious little one.

There is only silence, a callous silence. It was as if he had never existed.

In the still air, there lingers pain, loneliness and a deep abiding sense of emptiness.

Hearts were once full of anticipation and love. Today, there is only hurt.

A wife who loses a husband is called a widow.

A husband who loses a wife is called a widower.

A child who loses his parents is called an orphan.

There is no word for a parent who loses a child

That’s how awful the loss is.

To us, he was a miscarriage and has no name. He is invisible to the larger society.

This is grief carried alone, borne solely by the ones who conceived.

This is grief so lonely and so difficult to share, no less because of the stigma and the hushed tones around a miscarriage.

This is grief so insidious, always present but without a form.

This is grief so unspeakably and immeasurably painful - it continues not to be socially sanctioned, openly acknowledged or publicly mourned.

There is no name. There is no funeral. There is no obituary and no legacy whatsoever to speak of.

Society forgets every single one of them. Their deaths have been delegitimised by society. Their deaths have been disenfranchised.

Society, embedded in its norms, rituals and networks, takes the agency of grieving away from the bereaved parents.

If death in itself was a societal and cultural taboo, then a miscarriage is a taboo multiplied many times over.

The grief from miscarriages is very real and it doesn’t matter which trimester the miscarriage takes place.

A pregnancy loss is, in fact, a birthday, the celebration of a life regardless of how fleeting it was.

Let’s celebrate and honour this little one.

Let he who has no name be given a name and allow their parents to shape the grieving process on their own terms.

We should embrace their loss like any other and support them in these trying times.

There is nothing right or wrong in a miscarriage. It happens and parents, especially a mother, have to bear the consequences of it for the rest of her waking days. The child will always be a member of their family.

No time or distance can and should deter a mother from celebrating the life and death of her own child. This child will be remembered forever.

A stillbirth deserves to be accorded with dignity that a life accords.

Celebrate the child's life, regardless of how short it was before it was so rudely extinguished.

The pain of a child dying inside of you. The pain immeasurable. No words can console you.

He who does not have a birth registration number.

He who did not survive the protection of a mother’s womb.

He who has no name.

A miscarriage is as much a personal loss as it is our collective grief.

He must be recognised and whose death and his parents’ miscarriage must no longer be stigmatised, disenfranchised and delegitimised.

May our society render greater support to grieving parents, in particular to those whose children have no name.