Finding comfort through faith when we lose a little one

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Amy Meyer sprinkled the ground at Resurrection Cemetery with holy water from an aspergillum. Amy and Gary Meyer lost their second child through a miscarriage this past July. “Amy means beloved,” explained Amy Meyer. “When the ceremony began, the priest said, ‘Beloved we are gathered together today with God’s children.’ I felt like my children were talking to me by name and I started to cry.” The Meyers are parishioners at Our Lady of Providence Parish in Crestwood.

The ultrasound image overwhelmed me and pierced my soul.

It was the moment two years ago that my husband and I had been waiting for — to see our first child, growing for almost eight weeks inside my womb. But instead I witnessed what no mother ever wants to have to experience in her lifetime. Our child had no heartbeat.

Most doctors will say that anywhere from 10 to 25 percent of all confirmed pregnancies will end in miscarriage. Most occur during the first trimester. But regardless of when that child is lost, there’s a sense of pain that never leaves those who have suffered the loss of a child.

One aspect of losing our child that came as a great comfort to me as a Catholic was learning that our child’s remains were going to be buried. Through an arrangement with the hospital we went to — St. Anthony’s Medical Center in South County — we discovered that our baby would be buried at a plot the medical center maintained at Resurrection Cemetery, one of the Catholics Cemeteries of the Archdiocese.

Dr. Michael Dixon, a Catholic obstetrician and gynecologist at St. Anthony’s, once explained to me that the medical center, like other Catholic medical centers in the St. Louis area, offers the service because “they want to show respect for all children. This is from the corporal works of mercy and our mission to bury the dead,” he said. “These are infant, human beings, and not just gall bladders and appendixes removed on a given day.”

Earlier this month, St. Anthony’s and the Catholic Cemeteries came together for a blessing of a new memorial marker at Resurrection that honors babies lost through miscarriage. Presiding at the blessing was Msgr. Dennis Delaney, director of the Catholic Cemeteries.

In section 16, the marker rests at the foot of a larger shrine monument to the Holy Family. The marker is inscribed with the words from the Gospel of Luke, in which Christ says to “Let the children come to me.”

About 40 people attended the service, including Nicole Bogad of High Ridge, who said the experience brought “a lot of closure for me.” She said she intends to visit the site every year on the anniversary of when she lost her child.

Amy and Gary Meyer came to the blessing in memory of their second child, whom they lost through miscarriage in July. The Meyers are parishioners at Our Lady of Providence Parish in Crestwood.

“Amy means beloved,” explained Amy Meyer. “When the ceremony began, the priest said, ‘Beloved we are gathered together today with God’s children.’ I felt like my children were talking to me by name and I started to cry.”

“Regardless of whether a baby lived to be 70 years old or died in the uterus, that baby has had an impact on the lives of parents and family, and we honor and respect that,” said Sister Sandra Straub, a Sister of St. Joseph of Carondelet and director of mission integration at St. Anthony’s. “We believe there is hope for families who have lost babies in the message on that marker — hope in knowing their children rest with God.”

As Catholics, we are taught that there is hope in eternal life after death. In the Nicene Creed, we confess that “we look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”

For parents who have lost a child before birth, our hope is that we will someday be reunited with our children in heaven. It’s one of the great mysteries of our faith. Until then, the very best we can do as parents is to pray for their souls and honor their lives here on earth through the sacredness of our Catholic Cemeteries, if possible.

I invite you, in these following pages, to journey with fellow Catholics as they share how they cope with the subject of grief, our understanding of the great mystery of death and the hope that we have in the Resurrection and life everlasting.