"For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn."

Thus begins and ends what Ernest Hemingway called the best short story he had ever written, the legend of which is mentioned in Daniel Raeburn's "Vessels" which appears in the Personal History section of this week's New Yorker. Robert pointed the piece out to me yesterday. The subtitle, "Irene Raeburn: Born December 28, 2004; Died December 24, 2004" leapt from the page, as did the hauntingly beautiful photograph of Raeburn and his wife, one year into their grief over their stillborn daughter.

I hesitated before reading the piece, although I was immediately impressed and encouraged by the magazine's decision to include it at all. Parents of babies who died share a silent grief (most often silenced by cultural and societal forces), which often goes unnoticed in popular culture and the media, so I'm always heartened by the acknowledgement of this experience as something that can and does happen, and not just to your neighbor's sister's best friend's co-worker. At the same time, I'm often cautious about reading such accounts, because I wonder, "Is this something that I would want to share with someone who hasn't experienced the loss of a child? What if it leaves something out? Will it give them the 'right' impression of what our lives are like? Does it too easily let them (the medical staff who responded inappropriately, the friends who stopped calling, the family members who grew distant, the colleagues who averted their eyes when we passed in the hall) off the hook?"

In the end, Robert helped to remind me that as the piece is a personal narrative, there is no 'right' or 'wrong,' and that every experience is unique and should be honored how ever the parents choose to perceive or process their individual tragedy. That being said, Robert and I discussed the article after we'd both read it, and came to a few of the same conclusions: it was nice to have a father's perspective, but a shame that the mother's perspective was not particularly addressed, as we imagine hers would have been quite different; the story focused on the time period immediately following the birth and death of Raeburn's daughter Irene, but didn't touch on the complicated grief that most likely emerged in the months and years following the loss of their baby, which might give the unknowing reader the sense that parental bereavement has a beginning and an end, which we know couldn't be further from the truth.

In fairness, this is Raeburn's story, not ours, and no one essay can be expected to cover everything we wish it would. All we can do is continue to tell all of our stories.