Did I Choose My Grief?

By choosing to carry, did I choose my grief?

I have thought about this question often during the past few years. By choosing to carry my daughter to full term despite her immensely poor prognosis, did I choose the anticipatory grief that accompanied the final five months of my pregnancy? Did I choose the grief I experienced while caring for her during her life, and after her death? The grief I am still experiencing now? While I did choose one path over the other, I believe that either path—choosing to carry, or choosing to terminate for medical reasons (TFMR)—would have led to significant, life-altering grief.

I actually think that one of the things I didn’t have a choice about was the fact that there would be grief. No matter what, when we received that diagnosis, there could be no path forward without grief. There could be no path forward without loss. Because with that diagnosis, we lost the future we had been imagining for our daughter, and for our family. We lost the relationship we expected to have, and the milestones we expected to celebrate. We lost our innocence—our belief and our trust that if we did all the right things, that everything would turn out ok. We ultimately lost her too; either choice would have led to losing her.

If there could be no path forward without loss, without grief, then other questions logically follow. Did I choose the path with more significant, damaging grief? Would I have “recovered” more quickly if I had chosen the other path? Would it have been easier to process, and easier to integrate that grief and loss experience into my life moving forward? I think these questions are probably impossible to truly answer. Just like it is impossible to compare two different types of out-of-order losses, or even to compare when two different people experience the same type of out-of-order loss. Everyone is different, everyone experiences life differently, and furthermore, there will always be variables across situations that are different, even if the situations themselves are similar. How can I really compare what my grief journey and motherhood experiences would be like as a result of one choice versus the other? How can I really compare them, really know them, without actually living both paths?

So no, I don’t believe that I chose my grief, at least not in the sense that it would have been less severe somehow if I had chosen TFMR instead of choosing to carry to term. I would still have experienced grief if I hadn’t chosen to carry, it would have just resulted from a different loss experience. It would still be a life-altering, devastating, painful grief. Loss itself is a universal human experience, and the combination of love and loss equates to grief. Grief is the price of love, and of loss. It is unavoidable in general, and it was unavoidable for us.

I did make a choice, however, and I think there are other, more important (and related) questions. Did I choose the right path for my daughter? For me? For my family? Did I make the best decisions I could with the information I had available every step of the way? Was I the best mother I could be for her? Am I still the best mother I can be for her? Because after all, I am still her mother. I will always be her mother.

The one thing I have never questioned was the fact that I made the best decisions I could every step of the way with the information I had available. That didn’t mean it was easy, but that knowledge helped carry me through. And ultimately, it is that knowledge that has continued helping me move forward.