Illustration by Alex Chen
Nine years ago, my son Liam arrived and departed in a fleeting moment.
Liam was stillborn.
When the doctors explained it, I did not know how to respond. I was a father to a son I had never held or spoken to. I hadn’t carried him on my back, or told him stories of how I grew up. I had imagined that I would take him to the market on Saturdays.
We were in a room at London’s Victoria Hospital. My partner lay in the bed, enveloped in a thick, seemingly impenetrable wall of grief. The daylight seeping into the room from the windows could hardly crack that wall.
Someone talked about making burial arrangements. Another suggested bringing Liam in so we could spend sometime with him.
The idea seemed incomprehensible.
A voice protested in my head: “Hold a dead body! Who on earth does that?”
I wrestled with my thoughts. Should I hold him? How could I bury a child I had only dreamed of? How could I bury a child I hardly knew? I loved him, but I didn’t know him.
The nurse walked towards me carrying Liam. I stretched out my arms before I could realize it. Everything stopped.
He seemed impossibly at peace and unnaturally pale. His lips were blood-red. I held him.
In that quiet moment, nothing on earth could have pried him from my arms. Everything around me disappeared. There was only a father and his son.
“Hello son,” my mind spoke to him.
I felt something I still struggle to explain. A connection. A conversation without words.
At some point, I fell asleep holding him. He was still in my arms moments later when I woke up.
In those few moments, I felt I got to know him. However brief the moment, it made it easier for me to lay him to rest at the cemetery four days later.
Forty loved ones walked and sang with us to Liam’s resting place. It felt like a fitting sendoff for a prince too vast for this world.
In the following months, I struggled to make sense of what had happened. Why would God do this to us? We tried to do good in the world. Why us? Why me? Why would something that I wanted so much be taken away after months of waiting? Why?
My partner was dealing with her own grief and I never fully knew how deep it went.
With my centre not holding, I focused on the little things I could control. I tried to shield her from well-meaning but unhelpful comments by people around us. Someone suggested God would provide another. Another person suggested that my partner should not have been working. I fiercely shut it down.
Throughout all this, I never spoke openly about my own grief. I never shared how helpless I felt. A wall grew between us. I didn’t ask. I didn’t speak.
Many people do not know how to talk about stillbirth. Some avoid the subject entirely. Others search for comforting words with little success. The silence can deepen the loss.
Silence was a path one friend did not choose. She shared how she lost her own son 25 years earlier. There was some pain, I thought, in her voice. What overflowed though was the love she continued to hold for him. She spoke of him, not as a distant memory, but a living presence. I am grateful to her for sharing her experiences and meeting with me regularly. It helped guide my thoughts and emotions as I, slowly, came to the realization that silence was not the answer.
Today, my eldest Louis knows about his brother. He knows he can ask questions and speak about him openly.
Recently, I learnt my late mother lost twins through miscarriage. I cannot begin to imagine how she felt. I can’t even fathom how she survived it. Why was I never told?
I don’t know if she ever got to say their names. I say Liam’s name because I can.
Sometimes, remembering goes beyond words. This past February, my sister got a birthday tattoo: a tree memorializing every family member we’ve lost over 40 years. Liam occupies one of these branches.
I looked at the tattoo for a long time. His name escaped from my tongue.
Silence Genti lives in London, Ont.
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