"Before, nobody talked about it": women from different generations discuss the most invisible form of grief

TonEvery time someone enters, the door blows out a blast of cold air. The greeting is instant, familiar, and, for a moment, interrupts the noise of the coffee maker and the clinking of spoons. So do the shouts of children, equally unpredictable. It's early enough for a Saturday.

"What are we celebrating?" a neighbor asks, noticing the crowded table in the middle of the bar.

Around them, the unified murmur of people having breakfast. But the middle table, long and tightly packed with women, stands out for the exact opposite reason: the raw weight of its silence.

"Mireia couldn't come; her son had some important swimming tests," the first voice begins.

"They were putting on a play yesterday for November 25th," says another.

Short, polite phrases test the waters. A man and a woman arrive with a stroller. They have Nico with them, who is asleep. They greet us, sit down, and order from the waiter. They are neighbors from the village, but today they haven't come for a casual chat.

Hardly anyone imagines what they share. Berta, Olga, Maria Àngels, and Jordi are well-known to the villagers. Perhaps someone has a hunch about what has happened to them, or is surprised to see them together in the Oriente bar in Tona's main square. Those who know them might even believe they understand. At the table, however, the truth is different: there are unspeakable pains.

Berta is 67 years old and retired, but she remembers the past with precision and without any sugarcoating. This December marked 32 years.

"Back then, nobody talked about it." I had a placental abruption and my baby died during childbirth at 36 weeks gestation. I left the hospital after thirty days.

Her husband, Jaume, was told to prepare to say goodbye. He had just said goodbye to his daughter, Claudia. Berta, in the end, survived, and now she can tell her story. Back then there were no protocols, no specialists, no words of comfort inside Sant Pau Hospital. But neither were there any outside. Only the emptiness upon returning home.

Olga, 55, speaks with a clear voice.

"After I got the news, the gynecologist told me to go for a walk around Vic to decide when I wanted to give birth. He didn't think I was capable of facing a birth like that. And he said, 'Well, if you're not sure, come back tomorrow.'" And she couldn't go home because the whole room was ready for Pol. The year was 2004.

The words begin to flow. And so do the sadness, the frustration, and the grief they carry from a sudden death. A death that appears in diapers, at an uncomfortable intersection between the beginning and the end of life. It's perinatal death, the kind that occurs during gestation, childbirth, or the first week of life.

The conversation progresses, and so do the silences. Silences that linger. For a while, time is measured by how long it takes to verbalize a painful memory. Or two. No one wants to interrupt.

Now it's Maria Àngels who breaks the silence. She's 44 years old and lost her first daughter, Carla, two and a half years ago.

"It's worse in a private clinic."

–There's enough to get a bucket of gasoline –says her partner, Jordi.

–Although a friend of ours had a miscarriage at 18 weeks and was very well supported –adds a third. It's not like before, but it's not enough either.

All of them have been able to get pregnant again after the loss, but that doesn't change what they went through.

–We have an existential void that no other creature will fill. All the love a child gives you can't fill the void that remains; it can't be replaced. Anyone who tells you otherwise is just trying to console you – says Berta.

–When people ask me how many children I have, I always say two – adds a voice.

–Many people have told me I was brave for having another one. And I feel very selfish because if I had been brave, I would have jumped – says Olga. –I've turned my back on God; I've been angry for 21 years – she adds. The conversation picks up speed.

–Many people tell me they can put themselves in my shoes, and I don't think so – says Jordi. –Christmas is coming. I'd put up all the lights. We're leaving at Christmas – he says angrily.

–For two years I disappeared at Christmas,’ Olga adds. In 2006 she became pregnant with a girl. ‘When you’ve had another daughter, people forget. I’ve needed support ever since,’ she says.

All of this has a name. American researcher Lynne McIntyre, specializing in perinatal mental health and based in Barcelona, ​​describes it in her doctoral thesis on rituals surrounding perinatal loss in Spain. She speaks of desinfranchised grief, a concept that emerged in the eighties that could be translated as private duelA loss that cannot be acknowledged or openly expressed because society does not validate it. "Although not developed in the context of perinatal grief, it has a clear relationship with that experience," writes McIntyre.

"No one ever talks to you again," adds Olga.

"The vast majority of my participants, who were women, suffered more from the lack of respect, questions, and acknowledgment than from the experience of the loss itself," adds McIntyre.

"If you're in pain, you have to get it out, you have to be able to let it out," says Berta.

"What's needed is recognition. You need witnesses to your experience. If we're going through a profound experience that marks us for life, and people, friends, or neighbors aren't saying, 'I see you, I recognize what you're going through,' I think that's one of the hardest things in life, when people..."

"Talking brings peace; otherwise, it festers," Berta insists.

"Talking stirs everything up," Jordi says.

"We must embrace all the emotions, the emptiness, the sadness," Berta replies.

Create a space for remembrance

Silence. Cold cups and visible emotions. Their words don't linger in the air, but are gathered by the artist Alícia Casadesús, also at the table, also a witness: her family experienced a perinatal loss. Beside her is Judit Sardà, First Deputy Mayor of Tona, who has taken on the proposal to create a space, a common place.

–When she died, we put her name on the obituary. When we saw it written down, we said, "Wow, there were four of us," says Alicia. A wound closed, not healed.

–But just when you think it's over, it comes back. And it comes back –Olga replies. As if grief were a long process, which it is, only visible in the early stages, before fading away.

In her thesis, McIntyre incorporates the view of the leading researcher on the subject, who states the following: the primary function of a ritual is to ensure that we fully attend to the important passages in life. If this is not attended to, a significant life passage can become a profound chasm, draining psychic energy and distorting the course of one's later life.

And how do we recognize this grief? The thesis offers an answer, particularly for the initial phase, geared towards the healthcare sector:

"How are you experiencing what is happening to you? How do you understand what is happening? Was what you carried inside you a pregnancy, an embryo, or a child? If it was a child, did it have a name? If it had a name, do you want me to use its name? How are you?" McIntyre asks.

It is so simple it is almost unsettling.

Rituals in fetal death

“Whenever I saw a flower that had her name on it, I would say, ‘Look, it’s pretty, it’s saying hello!’ We created a ritual, she and I, without any outside authority,” says McIntyre. What led her to investigate the role of ritual was the stillbirth of a friend’s daughter. “Some women with fairly late miscarriages told me they didn’t need to do a ritual, but some, five minutes later, would tell me, for example, that every night before going to sleep they talked to that baby,” she adds. There is a body of work on ritual, mostly written by white European men, that says ritual must come from an authority figure. “I had a hypothesis before I wrote my dissertation, and I really like to say that this isn’t correct: you can create a ritual for just one person, you don’t need any authority, and you can do it just once; it doesn’t have to be repeated to be a ritual. I think this is very important,” McIntyre points out.

But many women don't even have the words to express themselves, not because they lack eloquence, but because there isn't, or wasn't, a vocabulary to talk about what happened.

She recalls the case of a woman who went to the beach every morning to take a small sip of seawater. Or that of another, who spent her life going to cemeteries. "She was searching for her son symbolically, driving thousands of kilometers, and her husband didn't want to go with her. She knew she wouldn't find him. It was a ritual," says the researcher.

Now, at the table, and with the midday sun settling in through the windows, the sculptor seeks to ground that grief, to interpret it and give it form. And in her case, to give space to that ritual, for the victims, or even for the community.

–Perhaps I had an idea, but it's good to talk about it, especially to know what to prioritize: an intimate space or recognition. It leads us down different paths –says Alicia. Hesitantly.

–In the Bible, it symbolizes overcoming winter –she explains, regarding her proposal: to sculpt a small almond tree, a symbol of death and rebirth.

Where should it go in the park? In the cemetery? The proposal sparks debate, a push.

–Either inside the cemetery, or far away –says Jordi.

–I would say a park, a normal one –says Olga.

–I think it should be a space without children –points Berta.

–Perhaps there are parks where children don't go to play –says Maria Àngels.

–I perhaps see it as a space for recognition. I don't need a place to go and connect with my son; I can already do that in other places, – says Olga.

–Some vandal will come and step on it, – Jordi fears.

–Well, we'll do it again, – says Olga. –We're survivors; nothing is worse than that.

Berta returns to the cemetery, but through memory:

–While I was in the ICU intubated, my husband and my brother had to bury her. The law didn't allow my daughter to be registered at the cemetery. They made us pay to bury her, but nowhere does it say that my daughter is there. She doesn't exist in the registry.

McIntyre includes similar cases in his thesis. She explains, for example, the story of a woman born in Asturias in 1920 who lost a brother at birth. They were able to baptize him, bury him in the church cemetery, give him a name. He was always part of the family. He was Ángel. There was a space, a name, and a place for mourning.

"The recognized and authorized rituals of a place and time gave some families space, while others, because they couldn't baptize, had nothing," McIntyre concludes. Some buried their children in the garden at home, where they grew vegetables. They were children without a recognized right to be mourned.

Four years ago, Berta returned to the family niche to bury her father. After several minutes of chipping away, the worker shattered the partition, and silence fell. After the pinch, a small sarcophagus, evidence of Claudia's existence, came to light after almost 30 years living only in her parents' memories.

I had never seen it. Nor had her son, Claudia's brother, who is writing these lines.