What Remains of Our Remains

“What will happen to the body?” I asked. 

“Oh, it will go out with the medical waste, it won’t be recognizable as a body,” said the doctor. “Do you have any other questions?”

“Oh. Uh.” I looked down at my note pad and studied a short list of questions. I felt silly for asking this one, maybe I had a more serious question on there, one he wouldn’t dismiss so easily. 

I muddled my way through the rest of the appointment and then stopped at the desk to schedule my D&C for two days later. 

It was only Wednesday, but that week already had felt like eternity since the appointment on Monday when we learned our baby’s heartbeat had stopped. No matter what I did that week to process the grief, I felt like a walking tomb. It wasn’t until the D&C was over that I rested—the morning sickness stopped, the waiting stopped, the finality brought peace. 

But the weight of death lingered. 

Now, twelve years, two more miscarriages, and two live births later it is not the D&C I regret; it is my own shame at that single question that haunts me. This was the most important question I asked all week, or maybe ever: what will happen to my baby’s body?

What will happen to my baby’s body?

We never had the opportunity to dignify our miscarried babies through a Christian burial. We did what we could through private memorials, intentional prayers, and symbolic remembrances to mark their lives with solemn honor. We celebrated their entry into eternity with the Father, and we rested in their union with the Son. But we never got to lay them to rest. This will remain a grief for as long as I live—not a guilt, not a shame—but a grief. 

I hope strongly and securely for eternity and the promises of the world to come. There will be no death in heaven and therefore no need for burial. Additionally, one’s entry into heaven is not dependent on proper burial. All who mourn must remember that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor power, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord, Romans 8:38-39. 

Yet my inability to bury my babies and to honor their bodies properly is a loss and one that I still grieve, even with my hope of heaven. 

As the Feast of All Souls (November 2) approaches I am grateful for the time to think of my dead and this year my ponderings have led to a new question: 

What remains of the remains?

We must not look away from the dead. Nor should we simply look back to their lives, forgetting their death. It is good and right to remember with joy the moments of happiness or love. But our dead are not simply “missing” or away—they have died and how we treat their bodies in death reflects much on how we value bodies as image bearers in this life. 

So what remains of our remains? 

Even as death rituals shift culturally we are all familiar with a common progression. Following death bodily remains are mourned communally and then placed in the ground peacefully and intentionally. My family and I did not have the opportunity to process our grief through the communal funeral ritual. The carefully articulated rite guides loved ones through grief, points our gaze toward heaven, and reminds us that there is quite literally life after death - both in the eternity - but also at the potluck following the committal of the body. There has been death, yet life continues. Funerals serve the living in many ways. 

This rite is intended to surround the actual remains of the deceased. We accompany our dead to the grave in love, care, intention, and seriousness. We do not simply throw them out with the medical waste. This process cannot be replicated without the body of the dead present. While it might be necessary in certain circumstances, the lack of body at a memorial service or the lack of a memorial service at a burial is something to be grieved. 

The funeral rituals and the presence of the dead must go together. Divorced from each other, it serves neither the dead or the living. 

Without this ritual I found my body stuck, my thoughts a little confused, and ultimately I was quite lonely. Instead of receiving hugs amidst tears and funeral potatoes, people tiptoed around me—not sure if they should offer condolences—no place to put the sadness. A great cloud of grief simply hung above me, and I wasn’t sure if anyone cared. 

Twelve years later, I still mourn that my babies have no earthly resting place. I know their souls no longer live in their bodies. I know that one day their bodies will be resurrected, and my ensouled children will sing into eternity. I know they are cherished beings that carry the image of God. But it is precisely because I know this, I grieve. 

Most simply there is no ground for me to return to or for others to find. It would be too easy for my life to move on in the business of motherhood and midlife matters. To find myself distracted. There is no physical ground that holds their bodies that might stop me or pull me back. While they are deeply written into my body and my heart, I too am fickle. Their names are not etched in stone—risking that I might start to see something ephemeral about their being. Too often for us to ignore, scripture includes the rolls of the dead called among the people. These recitations are not long and boring - they are evidence that God’s people are not ephemeral, and that we must not forget. And not only must we remember, there is something crucial about laying the body to rest as we see Abraham buy a field from the Hittites so that he might bury Sarah. 

So how is it we remember one another? One of my rather macabre hobbies, I’ll admit, is walking historic cemeteries. Shortly after the miscarriage of our second baby, my husband and I spent a long weekend in Salem, Massachusetts. Amidst the visits to wonderful restaurants, churches, museums, and historic buildings we also stopped to walk the cemeteries. There, over 300 years later, I stopped at the graveside of many children and babies and had the opportunity to honor them and their grieving mothers, even if briefly.

And now years later I am blessed with a happy thought that I can’t help but imagine. Perhaps one day, in heaven, those prayers I said then will bear an effect I had not even imagined until now: there will be a moment when we all meet. Not just the whole host of heaven, but me and the women over whose bones I prayed. I will join the young puritan mother with all of her children in her lap and me, carrying my many children in my arms and we will weep no more. Instead we will sing together to the Glory of our risen Lord, knit together by the prayers of my heart on that cool October day standing at their graveside. 

So what remains of our remains? 

As I think of the young puritan mothers burying many of their children in the new world, I am struck by how different our lives might be; even if we might embrace each other with knowing hearts one day in heaven. For most of human history parents have not had the opportunity to bury their miscarried babies. It is only recent science that lets us see inside the womb, to watch the flicker of life on the screen, to see the baby grow carefully, and to identify the body at its earliest stages of development. 

This science gives us evidence that our miscarried babies existed, and therefore they must be counted among the dead. They are ensouled creatures and counted by God. Their life is a gift and through scientific advancements we have the opportunity to look at the earliest moments of that divine spark. 

Our remains might only be a vessel that once held that spark—now empty as we all wait for the return of Christ. But that vessel, knit carefully by the creator, was the vessel through which he chose to place his image for all. And for the redeemed, it is where Christ comes to dwell - the vessel serves as a temple of flesh.

It is obvious that this story isn’t over yet. Despite the holy presence of our Lord, we must still suffer death. But that does not undo our place in the redemption story. While our bodies turn to dust, they are not trash to be forgotten. Our bodies serve as artifacts that tell the story of a living God, an animate spirit, and a present Christ. And as artifacts they point to the new body promised in the new heavens and new earth. 

What remains of our remains might be the whole story of the universe from Genesis to Revelation. We do not bury our remains out of humanist pride, no, our death itself is evidence of our curse, our limitations, and our very distinction from God. Our remains tell of failure - like the ruins of an ancient city. What remains of our remains is not human centric, but God honoring. It is in this vessel he put his image and it is for that purpose we should bury our dead. 

God will redeem my grief when I hold my babies in my arms. But today I honor their bodies with the grief I carry inside of me that they have no resting place on this side of heaven. This is not done in shame nor is it an attempt to heap on myself unnecessary guilt. Instead it is held as an honest testament and act of love for myself as a young mother grieving my first pregnancy that day in the doctor’s office. I must see my tender heart and honor those needs when I simply asked: “what will happen to my baby’s body?” This grief I carry today gives myself and my baby the dignity that the doctor did not. 

Perhaps I have asked the wrong question. It is not what remains of our remains that demands we treat our dead with dignity, but precisely what has departed and what is to come.