Most people don’t talk or think about death. I only realized this close to adulthood, having grown up in an Irish Catholic family where we talked about death all the time. My grandfather’s typical birthday greeting was, “You’re one year closer to the grave.” Death was a comfortable topic for me.
Birth, on the other hand, was not. I knew that if I got married, children would be forthcoming (again, I’m Irish Catholic), but I tried not to think about it. Don’t get me wrong: I love children. I’m the second of seven kids. I was an elementary school teacher for five years. I used to babysit for fun. I wasn’t afraid of pregnancy, and I wasn’t afraid of childrearing. But I was terrified of childbirth.
So I put it out of my mind. I married my husband, and within a month of our wedding day our first child was on the way. For the next nine months, I tried to ignore the obvious, inescapable fact that I would have to eventually give birth. I soon realized that I was treating my child’s birth the same way many people treat death, and for the same reasons.
Birth and death have much in common; they are mirror images. Both are inevitable. Once a child has been conceived, he or she must be born into the world. Many women who haven’t given birth by their due date lament, “I'll be pregnant forever!” This, of course, is impossible. Similarly, many act as if they’ll live forever. My aunt always says, “We all know everyone dies, but no one really believes it is going to happen to him.” But whether we believe it or not, death comes for us all.
Our disbelief is partly due to the uncertain timing. We do not know the hour of our death. And while we can, to some degree, estimate the time of birth, it is never entirely within our control. When my neighbor went into labor with her third child, she told her doctor, “I’m busy throwing a birthday party for my daughter; I'm sure it's nothing.” It wasn’t nothing; she eventually had to rush to the hospital, and her son was born that night.
While uncertain timing makes for some amusing birth stories, it’s more sobering when death comes unexpectedly. A few years ago, my husband had a conversation with a dear elderly friend who lay on his deathbed. The friend, a lifelong agnostic, was asking questions about faith and the Church. He told my husband, “Well, I'll have to think about that. I think I still have some time left.” That night, he slipped into a coma and passed away.
Another similarity is that each birth and death is unique. As soon as I announced my pregnancy, mothers began to share their stories with me. I soon realized that no two stories were exactly alike; each woman experienced her own drama. Labor can take days, or it can take forty-five minutes. Likewise, some will be prepared when death comes; some will be taken by surprise. Some will die peacefully in their sleep; others will endure much suffering. I sometimes wonder if the saints swap stories of their deaths. “They beheaded you? Wow, lucky! I was roasted over hot coals and let me tell you, it took a while.”
Finally, birth and death are a solitary kind of suffering. A woman hopes that those she loves can assist her, but it is her body that must bring the baby into the world. Death, too, is one’s own task. How we endure birth and how we endure death depend somewhat on preparation, but we do not know what is going to happen in those moments. Ultimately, the uncertainty is a heavy burden, because we know that no amount of preparation can make us entirely ready for the event.
With the rise of medical technology, however, has come a desire to control birth and death. From the “Twilight Sleep” births of the early twentieth century to the scheduling of elective C-sections today, the medical community has been trying to control birth for decades—the timing, the measure of pain. Death, too, is being managed; a painless death is now the measure of a good death. And unsurprisingly, euthanasia is becoming increasingly normalized in the West.
While the desire to minimize suffering is very human, we cannot overlook that our suffering isn’t meaningless. It unites us with Christ, who was tortured to death on the cross. Thus, in a special way, sufferings can be an expiation for our sins: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church” (Col. 1:24). And so, all of the elements of suffering that leave us most fearful are preparing us for the immense joys of heaven.
I didn’t realize any of this until the birth of my son. After hours of laboring through the night, I told my midwives, “I can't do this,” but in their calm voices they guided me through each push until my son came into the world just before dawn. As they laid his warm body on my worn-out one, I was filled with a love for a soul that I somehow knew, even though this was our first meeting. Nine months of fear and twenty-four hours of struggle were as nothing when I met the love I had been waiting for. All suffering paled in comparison to the immense joy of holding my beloved son.
Birth mirrors death. The suffering of birth brings our beloved child into our arms. The suffering of death brings us, beloved children, into the hands of our Father. After the struggle, we will be taken up into the arms of the one who has been waiting and longing for us and who loves us more than anything we could imagine: “I found him whom my soul loves. I held him and would not let him go” (Song of Sol. 3:4).
Molly DeVito, a mother of four, writes from Eastern Pennsylvania
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