Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, November 9, 1995 TAG: 9511090010
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
And a single red rose.
Then they had a low-key party of sorts with the just the immediate family - Julie, Tim and their son, Ben, who's almost 3.
They visit Laura Taylor Kolb's grave at Sherwood Memorial Park in Salem each year on Nov. 2, the day they both celebrate her birth and mourn her death.
They remember. And they imagine.
``My biggest fear was that I'd forget her as the years went by,'' says Julie, 34. ``So it's important for me to sit back and reflect on how she'd be as a 4-year-old.''
A bit of a tomboy. Her favorite color: purple.
Sometimes the Kolbs stare at their one framed photograph of Laura - with her beautiful dark hair and her eyes closed as if she's sleeping. They let their imaginations dance, envisioning the passages already missed: her first step, the first snowflake melting on her cheek, the way her eyes would sparkle upon seeing her new training-wheeled bike.
And sometimes they remember. The gaunt look on the doctor's face when, just four weeks shy of Julie's due date, the heartbeat was suddenly still. The 24 hours of labor, all the time knowing the baby was dead, strangled by a twice-wrapped umbilical cord.
The decision not to look at Laura, followed by the decision to look at her and hold her - to fully let the grieving begin. ``Tim told the nurses to clean her up,'' Julie recalls. ``She was beautiful. And he brought her in and said, `You've gotta see her.' I'm glad I did.''
Then came the deluge of inappropriate behavior and comments. Almost everyone knows someone who's had a miscarriage or stillbirth - 30 percent of all pregnancies end in some form of miscarriage. But few people know what to say to the suffering parents.
``You're treated like a leper,'' says Julie, an engineer at General Electric. ``People are afraid to talk to you. ... A few days ago a guy in the factory had seen me pregnant twice and assumed I had two children.''
When she told him that, yes, she did have two children - but one died at birth - he was so taken aback, he said nothing.
Still others offered explanations rather than sympathy. One woman tried to reason, ``God probably thought she was going to die as a teen in a car wreck and decided to spare you the additional pain.''
Several others said, ``There was probably something wrong with her.'' Or, ``Well, you can have another one.'' Many people said nothing at all.
``We tend to think it doesn't matter, that it's not a significant loss - just because she hasn't held the baby in her arms,'' says Becky Dooley, a Community Hospital nurse who counsels parents dealing with the loss of a baby. ``But these people should be allowed to grieve.
``It's not just the loss of the baby, it's the loss of all the hopes and the dreams that build up during the pregnancy.''
What would Julie and Tim Kolb most like to have heard?
How about, ``I'm sorry.''
Or, ``If you need to talk, I'm here.''
Or even, years later, ``Do you think about little Laura?''
``The hardest part was the months after and the flowers were all gone, and the cards stopped coming, and the expectations were back at work,`` Julie says. ``And everything should have been back to normal, but it never is.''
Then she became pregnant again - a period she describes as ``nine months of purgatory.'' Every time the baby paused from kicking, Julie drove to her doctor's office for an unscheduled check-up.
Her son, Ben, was delivered without complications. And Julie says she'd like to get pregnant again before too long.
She no longer visits Laura's grave every week. She no longer regularly attends the hospital-sponsored support group called SHARE (Source of Help in Airing and Resolving Experiences related to the death of a baby).
But she does go to Sherwood Memorial Park monthly during her lunch hour to clean off Laura's grave. And this time every year, she grieves for the little girl she lost.
She's chosen the butterfly as her own personal symbol for her daughter. ``Someone had sent me a card that said the butterfly dances in the light for just a moment - and you're thankful just to have seen it.
``Whenever I see a butterfly, I think of Laura.''
And, most importantly, she remembers.
The SHARE support group meets at 7 p.m. the first Thursday of every month at the Fralin Center, Mountain Avenue at Jefferson Street. For more information, call Becky Dooley at 985-8213.
by CNB