What happens to words when a child dies? Can writing help give shape to grief and share it, or can it become a way to distance oneself from it? Starting with *Not Even Greek on Stone*, Lidia Mafrica and Grzegorz Franczak describe two different ways of coping with perinatal grief and explore the role that writing can play in this process.
Lidia
How did *Nemmeno il Greco* come about? This book came about in various ways and at different times. First and foremost, it was born out of a death. In an effort to begin to make sense of our daughter Lena’s death, I felt the need, right from the start, to put what was happening into words and give some stability to those elusive emotions—to reread them and thus draw closer to them, trying to understand them and make them real. The only verbal form in which that incomprehensible and unreal experience took shape (and continues to take shape today) in a full and credible way is crying; but apart from that, there was no word, no phrase, speech that I uttered that did not soon lose its meaning along with its own fleeting sonic substance. Putting words down on paper is different.
This book also came about because of my need to share my experiences—both as a couple with Grzegorz, with our children, and with everyone else out there. I started right away—when my milk supply hadn’t yet dried up and I hadn’t even begun to process what had happened and what was still happening to us—to post my poems on Facebook. I was fully aware of the medium I was using, because sharing was part of what I needed; in fact, sharing was one of the key elements that allowed my grieving process to proceed naturally within me. I wanted to speak not only to myself but also to others. I wanted them to know. I had no intention of hiding anything under an uncomfortable veneer of propriety, and besides, I was furious, at my wits’ end. Everyone needed to be made aware of the injustice life had dealt us. I also wanted to shield myself from the obligation to protect others from uncomfortable situations by taking the offensive myself: I showed them how I wanted to be treated, so that with me they would feel not only free to talk about it, but almost obligated to do so, sparing me the hollow comfort of “delicacy,” which hurts even more those who, like me, can barely bear the weight of the unsaid. I also wanted people to know that Lena had existed. I didn’t want her to be a child to be swept under the rug, but for her to simply be. I was undoubtedly seeking closeness as well, without imagining that I would offer it in return. And how much I received in return! This book came to be in part thanks to those who responded to my sharing. It was clear that there was a great need to talk about it. To talk about it without filters—that is, to lay bare before others the stark reality of perinatal bereavement. The response from friends and acquaintances helped me rebuild my identity as a mother, even through the eyes of others: just as a mother takes joy in motherhood and her own little one when she discovers a stranger looking at her and her child with tenderness, so too did I feel my shattered motherhood acknowledged through the gaze of others. Then there were those who reacted to my sharing of this pain not only by expressing their support but also by appreciating the form of my verses. Over time, I came to the decision to share my poems with you. I was familiar with CiaoLapo’s work long before Lena’s death, but it was a reality that had been as foreign to me until then as any painful aspect of life that, unless we experience it firsthand, quickly makes us look the other way, thankfully, there’s someone who takes care of these things so you don’t have to. CiaoLapo was there for me just a few hours after I learned of Lena’s death. I was in the hospital, disoriented, not understanding anything. From my hospital bed, I called my loved ones to break the news (when I think back on how little I knew back then, I feel a deep tenderness). A friend, Małgorzata, wrote something like, “There’s an organization, CiaoLapo, that was a huge help to someone dear to me who, unfortunately, went through the same experience as you years ago.” A few minutes later, I was browsing your website on my phone. It was the day before I gave birth. Thanks to that frantic search for support, from that point on I was guided by my first, crucial realization: you’re not alone. In the months that followed, by which time I was already reading and following CiaoLapo regularly and lending or giving away *The Little Prince*, I shared with Grzegorz the idea of donating my poems to you so that they might be helpful—just as writing them had been for me, and reading them had been for other parents. Grzegorz’s fingers were already itching to write, because—partly as a result of our conversations, partly due to his overwhelming need to craft narratives that come naturally to him—he, too, in his own time, had gathered words to write to Lena and about his own experience of grief. And so, on tiptoe, a proposal was born—one that you welcomed with an enthusiasm that meant a great deal to us, both as Lena’s parents and, in Lena’s absence, as the parents of our words.
What is it about? *Not Even the Greek on the Stone* is undoubtedly a collection of snapshots from the personal lives of two parents following the death of their daughter a couple of weeks before her expected due date, and thus it explores one of the many possible ways of experiencing perinatal grief. The theme with which the poetry collection opens is that of the future plans of a growing family—plans swept away by death—which the mind struggles to accept as no longer possible. This compulsion to rewrite the future—imposed by death—was one of the aspects that caused me the most pain in the first nine to twelve months following Lena’s death. Lena was already there; we were just waiting for her to move from inside my belly out into the world… Then suddenly death arrives to wipe the slate clean. If you resist at first, over time your resistance—aside from a few flashes of defiance—fades. Your mind is split; it deceives you: one morning you wake up as if nothing had happened, and it takes you a while to realize that it wasn’t just a nightmare. Another morning, however, you’re awakened by anguish, and to protect you, your mind whispers that nothing so serious has happened. The psyche’s self-defense mechanism is an almost involuntary and undoubtedly necessary tool, but fighting it is just as painful as accepting it. Little by little, you begin to realize that everything has the hallmarks of the worst kind of mockery; you’re incredulous and powerless—even angry—but there are moments when you suddenly downplay what happened and the emotions you’re feeling. For me, at least, that’s how it was. Sometimes I caught my brain whispering to me, “Cut it out, Lidia. What’s the big deal?”, and for a few moments I felt a sense of relief that kept me from going crazy. Other times, my brain would manipulate me, and instead of saying, “Let’s go to the cemetery,” the words “Let’s go to the hospital” would come out of my mouth with disarming simplicity, because it seemed natural that Lena was alive, that she just needed treatment before coming home. For a moment, I could still hope that the course of events might turn in our favor. That’s it—I believe that when reading my verses, alongside the desperate rationality, one mainly glimpses the violence of a future cut short. In my poems, I write a lot about hope and disillusionment—two other aspects of grief that turn the experience into a roller coaster ride for the strong of heart: the ebb and flow of moments in which, for example, the irrational confidence that I’ll see her again prevails, or the patient anticipation of receiving signs from her, and others in which, instead, her absence seems reduced to a dead-end track, a cul-de-sac, a body decaying inside a coffin covered with earth. In the book there is a poem that begins like a familiar prayer but immediately transforms into a long series of requests and culminates in a resentful protest. In that prayer, there is no room for the otherworldly dimension, but only for the small things of this world that have been denied to us and that were denied to Lena—displaced, in the verses, to a hypothetical paradise, while we are truly living through hell on earth. In short, a failed attempt to put my trust in faith. My poems also address the most physiological or physical aspects of being the mother of a dead child, without the slightest concern for maintaining the decorum that, according to today’s standards, is expected in narratives about perinatal grief. Where a restrained pathos and a vagueness that leaves room for the imagination are expected, I have chosen instead to offer a glimpse of Lena’s death for what it is: an indecent matter, just as every death is. It wasn’t a choice I deliberated over. I simply believe that within the indecency of death lies its dignity as well. To do this, I didn’t need to resort to any particularly graphic elements; the reality around me—the reality I was living—was enough: the milk meant for Lena that instead stained the mattress, the rosy hands of the other newborns contrasted with—not explicitly shown but still implied— the image of Lena’s cold, swollen little hands, or even the more prosaic aspect of Lena’s funeral—namely, paying for it in installments. Mourning isn’t pompous; it isn’t photogenic. Let’s face it: banality isn’t just a trait of evil; it also pertains to pain and mourning. Furthermore, since I couldn’t speak about Lena, in my verses I tried to speak to Lena, to reestablish a channel of communication with her, to find a way to converse, to sing to her once more. Nadia Terranova, who wrote a foreword to the book that is full of tact and rich with insights that led me to read my own words in a new light, writes in the opening text that in this book, Lena answers our call. I believe she heard her answer, and I believe it because I feel the same twinge of envy I feel when Grzegorz tells me he dreamed of Lena. I’m still waiting for her to appear to me in a dream.
If you had to convey the essence of your book from your perspective by choosing a poem, a phrase, or a word, which one would you choose? Why? I believe that the essence of the section I wrote—and therefore, based on my own experience—is encapsulated in the first line of the first poem, and that the phrase “The future (note! oxymoron) was” lies not only the crux of *Not Even the Greek*, but of perinatal grief itself. An oxymoron, as we read in Treccani, means: “the oxymoron (from the Greek oksýmōron, composed of oksýs ‘sharp’ and mōrós ‘foolish, mad”) is a rhetorical device that consists of combining two words or expressions that are irreconcilable in meaning, in that they properly indicate an antithesis or contradiction.” There you have it.
“Mourning” and “perinatal” are oxymorons, just like the noun “future” and the verb “was” from today’s perspective.
The experience of perinatal grief begins with an oxymoron—because an unborn child dies —and remains so in every aspect. You’ve chosen a name you’ll never say aloud; your breasts are swollen with milk but there’s no newborn to feed; you’ll sign a birth certificate that is also a death certificate… Grieving the death of a child who has not yet been born means trying to struggle against this painful antithesis, rejecting it on principle as rational beings who today place too much trust in the unquestioned laws of biology. Everything that follows the opening lines of the poem that begins the collection delves deeper into the reasons why “future” and “era” cannot coexist, and each poem either begins with this oxymoron or ends with it. “Warning! Oxymoron” is, in hindsight, a sort of warning to the reader. Those who grasp it have grasped the heart of my pain and that of parents who have gone through a similar experience.
Are there any words that came up repeatedly as you were writing? And others that you chose to leave out, to not mention? Why? To answer the first part of this question, I need to briefly describe how the texts came about. I wrote them all in one go, without modifying them over time or revising them days or months later. Apart from a few minor changes to punctuation or the reversal of a few words, which occurred during the drafting process, they therefore retain their original form. Each one originated from the same circumstance: a set of words lingered in my mind and resurfaced over the course of a day or two with such frequency and insistence that it bordered on a frenzy, until I began to write and shape them. The words just poured out of me, like a physiological need that had to be satisfied. The urgent, almost obsessive nature of this process meant that certain words or images found their fulfillment within the space of a poem, without me feeling the need to explore them further elsewhere. Perhaps this is why the only word that recurred repeatedly during the writing process was simply the name “Lena.” As for the second part of your question, the answer is “yes.” There are many themes I have left unspoken, even though they have an equal right to be heard and deserve the same dignity of expression as the various forms of grief I have written about. Topics such as the crisis that Grzegorz and I went through after Lena’s death find no place in the collection. In the poems, I do not even mention the consequences of insomnia—which is normal during pregnancy and hormonal in nature—that continued after Lena’s death, hindering my recovery and exacerbating my distress. There is also no trace of the double grief experienced by Jacopo and Leonardo, Lena’s older brothers: in their own way, according to their ages, they coped not only with the loss of their sister but, for a certain period, with that of their mother—whom they had known all their lives—who was often elsewhere, distracted by her own grief. All these themes are undoubtedly no less—and no more—personal than the ones I did write about. I can answer this question only today, because only today have I asked it of myself for the first time, having to answer it for you. If three years ago I had looked at these themes from the same distance as I do today—that is, with greater awareness—I probably would have included them in the collection. But given my current awareness, it’s just as likely that what’s actually in the collection wouldn’t have come into being. Today, for example, I can no longer enter into my grief as I did back then, or stay there for long. I’m afraid of reliving the emotions I felt during that first year, so I just glance at them and move on. I’m terrified of seeing the same abyss that I had before my eyes for so long.
Can poetic expression and artistic creation transform the process of coming to terms with grief? If so, how? In all my work—whether written or spoken—I tend to be rather verbose and disorganized. Poetry, with its inherent conciseness, is a form I turn to spontaneously in moments of sensory and cognitive overload—that is, when what I’m experiencing is new and too intense, and I feel the urgent need to name it or at least contain it with words. The process consists of two steps: I “play” with words, and in return, they sometimes give me small epiphanies. In this way, the needs of both parties are met. As I mentioned earlier when discussing the book’s origins, many of the stages of its creation coincided with those of the grieving process: recognition, verbalization, and self-validation—or validation by others—of one’s own experience. If it’s true that “not even the Greek on stone” has words for this, writing has at least given me the chance to try to express myself, and to condense the pain so I can look at it more closely, recognize it, define its boundaries, and, in some way, manage it, control it, and tame it. Just as one does when facing a danger or an enemy. Or in a dream with monsters. Without all of this, my journey would undoubtedly have been different. I can’t say exactly in what way. As an indirect consequence, sharing less of what I was going through would certainly have limited my exchanges with those who found themselves in the same situation as me. Knowing and understanding the pain of the mothers who wrote to me to share their experiences, for example, helped me stay in touch with my own pain and begin to believe with confidence that it was possible to keep living despite the guilt of being parents who outlived their children.
What would you like to say to someone who is coping with a perinatal loss and may not yet be able to find the right words or actions for themselves? To anyone dealing with perinatal grief, I’d like to start by sharing the one thing that helped me in the early stages: you are not alone. I’d gladly stop here, because everyone’s experience is different, and I know all too well how unsolicited advice can be annoying or make the recipient feel even more inadequate. So I’ll try to share some advice I received myself—which helped me a great deal, even if I didn’t fully understand it until much later—and other advice I wish someone had given me: it’s a dark, deep abyss, but as soon as you manage to pull yourself out of that suffocating darkness—even for just a moment—and feel the need to breathe, reach out your hand. You’ll find other hands ready to grasp it. Be afraid of everything, but don’t be afraid to ask for help. Every emotion you feel is legitimate. Talk about it, if you can, and do so with people who make you feel understood. Distance yourself from others for a while—it’s one of those times in life when you can be selfish. Now that life has come to a standstill—even if it goes on for others—give yourself the time you need to linger in the void. If you feel you’re staying there too long, once again, ask for help. Pain is a devastating avalanche. It separates us from others, but it also creates unexpected passages and bridges of humanity. Try to look up, and when you feel ready, cross them. Rejection and denial are natural and legitimate reactions. If they last too long or become pervasive, once again, ask for help. And if you need help but aren’t yet ready to receive it, perhaps start by carving out a space and time to listen to yourself: speak aloud about what’s inside you, or write it down. There are no right or wrong words. If anything, there are words that are too short or too narrow to contain what you’re experiencing. Try anyway, until they tear. Reread them. Don’t try to stitch up the tears—let them scar over. If necessary, this is truly a good time to ask for help.
To whom is this work dedicated? Not even the Greek is there because Lena isn’t there. Either Lena or him. No choice—just a violent imposition. In its pages, both Grzegorz and I speak to Lena, about Lena, and with Lena. So this book is, first and foremost, dedicated to our daughter Lena. In memory of what it was—and what it wasn’t—to be her parents. Of who Lena was—and who she couldn’t be—beyond us as her parents. Above all, of the “nots.”
Not even the Greek one is dedicated to Lapo, a young man who’s come a long way… and put his parents, Claudia and Alfredo, through a lot. I often think that in Italy there’s a “before” and an “after Lapo”—a bit like with Christ, Copernicus, or, I don’t know, Basaglia. And that we parents of the “post-Lapo” era have far more support resources than those who experienced the death of their children in the “pre-Lapo” era.
This book is also self-referential. It stems from a personal need of ours—mine and Grzegorz’s—and speaks to our pain. So, without pretense, it’s also for us.
Nor is the Greek section dedicated to Leonardo and Jacopo, Lena’s brothers. So that one day they may return to our words as parents, if they feel like it or if they feel the need to. So that they may read about what they, too, have experienced, and so that it may help them piece together their own story.
Furthermore, I simply must dedicate this book to my psychologist. Among the circumstances that allowed my grieving process to follow a natural course, the most significant was the advice my therapist shared with me upon hearing the news of Lena’s death, as I was preparing to bring her into a world she would never see: “Ask to be with Lena for as long as you can, hold her in your arms, look at her, take pictures if you wish—don’t be afraid.” Lying on my hospital bed, in that large room all to myself, all to us, this advice had seemed to me at the time like a task assigned to me by someone I trusted. My instinct—if such a thing even exists—had been wiped out; my mind refused to accept that I would give birth to my lifeless daughter. My “operating system” still needed to be updated. I had no desires, nor any intentions; I didn’t really feel much of anything I was experiencing. There weren’t even the necessary conditions for me to realize that the baby they would place in my arms was actually Lena. It wasn’t at all clear to me that I would see her for only a few hours, and then, the next day, stiff and cold on the hard table in the morgue, and finally, for the last time, in her little coffin, lifeless and sweating. I accepted that unsolicited and far-sighted advice—the result of training and sensitivity—without realizing how precious it was, and so Grzegorz and I, like two obedient children, spent the only time we had with our daughter exactly as she had instructed. We would only come to understand the significance of that advice later. How things would have turned out if we hadn’t received it—I have no way of knowing. I only know that the fact that my body was able to have a physical and real experience in contact with Lena’s played a fundamental role in the unfolding of my grief and in my experience of motherhood. That advice guided two parents who were at a loss in the face of their daughter’s death and in the presence of their dead daughter. It encouraged them not to be afraid, to touch her, cradle her, observe her, take pictures of her, and remember her. In those hours, none of this came naturally to me. I was in a daze; I was in denial, and so I also refused any contact with my daughter.
That’s why *Nemmeno il greco* is also dedicated to Laura. And to Giulia and Ilenia, the two midwives who took turns caring for me during my stay in the hospital, looking after me from the moment I arrived through the birth and until I was discharged. The sensitivity, empathy, and expertise with which they stood by us and welcomed Lena, along with the affection they showed us, are my most vivid memories of those dark days. For a long time after returning home, I clung to what these two radiant figures left me, as if they were otherworldly. Yet they were midwives of flesh and blood. And in our case, they made all the difference. Without them, one trauma would have been compounded by another. Now I know that. If my poems have become a collection rather than remaining scattered across social media and in my notes, it’s because soon many women affected by perinatal bereavement began to speak out, commenting publicly on what I shared on Facebook or sending me private messages. I vividly remember the sense of amazement I felt when faced with these “unexpected” (as they seemed to me at the time) mothers: “You too?”—“At that time, they hadn’t even let you see your daughter…” “Her too?”—with the agony of having forgotten her face…! “And her—twice?” “And her—forty years ago?” Both they and I benefited from those exchanges. But many of these mothers lacked that sense of shared experience when they needed it most. Hence the thought that perhaps those words could have resonated with other parents even outside my circle of friends and acquaintances—words that might have told them what CiaoLapo told me on August 18, 2022: You’re not alone.
GRZEGORZ
How did this book come about? A preliminary remark is in order. Not even Greek carved in stone? No, not even Italian on paper. Italian is my second language, one I only began to learn in high school. My mother tongue is Polish—the only language that’s truly all-encompassing; it’s through Polish that emotions manifest themselves, especially the most problematic ones. Italian inevitably acts as a rationalizing or rhetorical filter. In Italian, I’m even more compelled—than in Polish—to flee (and “flight,” after all, will be one of the key words in this attempt to answer your questions). Flee to where? Either toward quasi-scientific, detached, impersonal discourse (how happy I was to be able to discuss Szymborska’s poetry, complete with citations from the literature on the subject, and to include explanatory notes on religious and non-religious expressions at the end of my text!), or toward mythopoetic, literary narration. The latter is self-referential, centered on striking wordplay, dazzling fireworks, and dense, erudite intertexts. What’s wrong with that, one might ask? That one sinks into self-narration. One drifts away from mourning and its true object. Indeed, one freezes it in place. And the price is high.
So how did this book come about? From Lidia—just as Lena came from her. This book did, indeed, come about because of Lena’s death, but it was her mother who sought help and words. In reality, all I did was follow in her footsteps. It was her idea to contact CiaoLapo, hers were the poems shared on social media, and hers, ultimately, was the initiative to write, together, a book about and for Lena. And the idea to take the title from Wisława Szymborska’s “Bagaglio del ritorno” —a poem I discovered thanks to Lidia and which we discussed for hours—was hers as well. My most concrete contribution was to bring in the Kraków-based graphic designer and publisher PIO Kaliński: thanks in part to his volunteer work, *Nemmeno il greco* took the form of a book of high artistic quality, edited and printed in Kraków. Later, PIO began collaborating on CiaoLapo’s publications. This, too, would not have happened if it weren’t for Lena.
Shortly after Lena’s death, I began jotting down fragments of prose, not quite sure what to do with them. Because I knew, on the other hand, what to do with the pain, the remorse, and the anger—other than running away from them as fast as I could? The first draft gave voice, in fact, to the helpless rage in the face of Lena’s “so-called” death—which was, in fact, denied and dismissed out of hand—that “You should be ashamed ” and Don’t turn away while I’m talking to you. It’s your father talking to you! – the anger of a parent furious over some behavior of their child. Die? You don’t do that to Mom and Dad. Naughty. Rude. Spiteful. From that expression of anger—selfish and self-serving, masking pain mixed with guilt (self-referential like any other centripetal escape)—the writing began, completed only a year after Lena’s passing. But even though all that time had passed, the grief had remained virtually frozen, immature. Childish and “filial.” Suspended in nothingness. I think fathers’ grief is problematic in and of itself, in that it is devoid of that raw, terrifying immediacy of the material, bodily, psychophysiological dimension characteristic of mothers’ grief. Fathers’ grief is partly mediated or borrowed from that of mothers—in a way, secondhand—and is instead based more on images, projections, and expectations; it’s phantom-like. Or at least that’s how it seems to me. It’s all the worse, then, when compounded by the real responsibilities of those who did everything they could to make the pregnancy more burdensome (here we go again with the puns). What could my personal essay—written in prose to the rhythm of a lament—have become? What, in my eyes today, it has become: a record and mapping of a multifaceted escape from Lena. Let’s talk about it.
What is it about? I’m speechless. Lena . What did that mean? On the one hand, a sort of reproach (directed at whom—Lena, fate, death?), and on the other, an expression of the helpless despair of someone who feels they lack the right words, that the only word rich in meaning is “Lena.” *I Have No Words* should have—and would have liked to—be about Lena, but it speaks almost exclusively of the person who wrote it. Was that inevitable? To a certain extent, yes. In fact, as Lidia said, *Non ho parole* doesn’t even speak of one of the many possible ways to experience perinatal grief. Rather, it speaks of two ways of experiencing that grief—dissimilar, parallel, yet at the same time intertwined and complementary. *I Have No Words* revolves around Nothingness, with that capital “N” (which I’d gladly do away with today) that cloaks it in a somewhat pretentious philosophical or poetic-symbolist pathos, starting with the quote that serves as its motto, from that sincere and mischievous Nothing, all the way to the interpretive commentary on Szymborska’s poem: “It amounts to the same thing—that is, nothing.” It begins with poetry, it ends with poetry; poetry creeps intermittently into the text—through quotations, allusions, and paraphrases—becoming omnipresent. Here is one of my favorite escape routes: literary mediation. Passing the word to others, letting words collide like bumper cars, manipulating phonetics, giving rhythm and melody to the sentence: given my nature, I find it extremely difficult to say (and even worse, to write), in a context like this, anything direct and spontaneous. It happens whenever the overwhelming need to escape reality—which is too hard to face, endure, or process—comes to the fore, along with the need to hide behind a wall of language steeped in pathos, verging on the literary. To take refuge in yet another mythologized autobiographical narrative—I’ve always done this, and I’m afraid it’s not out of the question that, because of this personal limitation, I’m doing it right now as well. Words used in this way end up “wrapping in cotton” something that is too painful, uncomfortable, embarrassing, or shameful. I’m borrowing a Polish expression here with its figurative meaning of avoiding speaking about something frankly and bluntly. After all, in English, “to wrap in cotton” has the literal and concrete meaning of preserving, protecting, and hiding a precious and fragile object—a collector’s item, a piece of jewelry, for example. It may be fitting, I think, when we speak of an object of mourning, or of a pain, which can indeed serve as a comforting cage that in turn shields you from the unknown—a pain that can even lead to a perverse pleasure. Or if we’re talking about an ego that values self-preservation above all else, resistant to change and evolution even in the face of the most traumatic of events.
Well, I believe now that my brain did all of this just to prevent grief from arising, growing, and maturing. In the weeks, months, and even years following Lena’s death, I persisted in going along with it, even taking another of my favorite escape routes—one I’d been using since I was a boy: the growing and unstoppable abuse of psychoactive substances. Even years before Lena, I had become dependent on psychiatric medications; after Lena, things went from bad to worse. I may be stating the obvious, but addictive psychoactive substances—benzodiazepines foremost among them—when abused in increasing doses over prolonged periods, act as a universal analgesic, numbing and blocking all sensations and emotions. In short, they act in the same way as an antibiotic that eradicates all forms of bacterial life, whether pathogenic or healthy.
“I Have No Words” could therefore be nothing other than this: a contrived and elaborate tangle of escape routes with a black hole at its center—made not of antimatter, but of anti-words. Lena, for me, was there, unreachable and indescribable, even though throughout the story I addressed her directly, yet stubbornly spoke to her only of myself. That’s exactly it: she remained indescribable, beyond any symbolic language, especially verbal language. I think, moreover—though without generalizing; let this apply only to me—that physical or psychological pain that exceeds every threshold of endurance can be conveyed only through the onomatopoeia of a scream or a cry. You experience it, but you cannot put it into words without mediation—that is, without fleeing.
Where is Lena? In the oxymoron— the future was, according to Lidia’s formula (mirrored, in my text, by the temporal oxymoron of the reversal of her birth and death dates)—Lena appears, in my narrative, at the beginning of the story. At first as an unruly child, a victim—despite repeated warnings—of a game of hers that ended badly. Immediately afterward, she becomes an independent and absent daughter who, without so much as a “good morning” or “goodbye,” sends her parents a “cemetery bill” to pay. She reveals herself, however, in a self-centered projection of the “disappointed” father: from this simplistic perspective, those who die, of course, scandalously disappoint the living. Toward the end, Lena makes a fleeting return in the brief summary of her eight months and four days of life in the Medimaterno Sea—a life made up of twilight, shadows, chiaroscuro, sounds, half-sounds, noises, music, and voices, all filtered through her mother’s skin and flesh… and here the curtain falls; Lena exits the stage for good. Unlike Lidia did in her poems, I have not given space to the future cut short, to the thwarted projections, to the small and great things of our world that have been denied to Lena and to us. I have indulged two of my pressing needs. The first was, so to speak, to narrate myself rather than tell my story—that is, to give as indirect and rhetorical a form as possible, one that is attractive and grandiose, to the tangle of emotions I did not want to name. They were there, but unnameable. Hence, for example, the litany of “I Am a Small Man,” Lena, and “My Father’s Heart Is Too Small,” Lena; hence the “I cannot contain you,” Lena, and “Becoming an Adult in Mourning” (this last statement, surprisingly true, just slipped out)—hence the rhetorical mea culpa and the equally rhetorical admissions of the pettiness of my selfish fears. The second necessity: that of mythologizing and dramatizing everything, every event. Lena’s life and death have thus become mythical productions with me, the omnipotent demiurge, at the center: “Fafaffa Day,” with its detailed account of Lena’s death, accompanied by obsessive space-time mappings; the day of her birth; the day of the funeral; the symbolic objects that referred to my identity, family, and cultural heritage, projected onto Lena… The result: *I Have No Words* might , perhaps, aspire to the status of a literary text, but as an expression of perinatal grief, it is—as is clear from what has been said—problematic.
If you had to convey the essence of your book from your perspective by choosing a poem, a phrase, or a word, which one would you choose? Why? Not like that. Nothing like that. In other words: not like that, nothing like that. Or, if we were to read the Polish “tak” as an affirmative particle: not yes, nothing yes. In light of all of the above, this polysemic phrase reveals a form of awareness—or rather, a premonition, a doubt—dating back to the period when I wrote *I Have No Words*, that is, characterizing the first year after Lena’s death. The awareness—stubbornly rejected, exorcised—that the path I was following was the wrong one. I was fleeing in every possible way, but I didn’t want to admit it for anything in the world. I knew—and I had put it into words—that every single word with which I thought about and wrote about Lena was redundant and temporary. Because I was the one who chose that redundancy and that transience—the hallmark of a photogenic despair.
Are there any words that came up repeatedly as you were writing? And others that you chose to leave out, not to mention? Why? Lena, Lena, dozens and dozens of times. It’s the name-chant, the name-refrain, the name-spell, and—within the structure of *I Have No Words*—a sort of magic formula (empty in and of itself, because it doesn’t bring Lena back to life), as well as the only word laden with meaning. And then, yes, I left a great deal unsaid. In part, Lidia named that which was left unsaid: our relationship crisis, the complicated grieving process of Lena’s siblings. In part, however, it concerns the unspoken elements that I made explicit by answering your previous questions. Why did I choose not to say what I didn’t say? Simply put, because I was effectively repressing that awareness, and because it didn’t fit within the framework of a mythologizing narrative.
Can poetic expression and artistic creation transform the process of coming to terms with grief? If so, how? It depends. Yes, they can, but the necessary condition is being ready to make room for grief, to let it arise. To let it run its course so that we can work through it. Otherwise, if one stops at merely acknowledging and verbalizing one’s own pain—if, in short, one chooses to run away or withdraw into oneself—writing risks becoming downright counterproductive to the grieving process. It can serve a self-therapeutic function—that’s true—but at best it acts as a painkiller or anesthetic. After Lena’s death, I made, I believe, a serious and irreparable mistake: I didn’t talk about what was happening to me with either my family or my friends. It’s true that they, too, were reluctant to broach the subject; in Polish culture, there is a sort of respectful modesty that tends to discourage people from prying into others’ grief. Furthermore, perinatal grief is treated as a taboo or even downplayed. I didn’t even seek out other grieving fathers; I didn’t talk about it with anyone except Lidia. The result: I have no words.
What would you like to say to someone who is coping with a perinatal loss and may not yet be able to find the right words or gestures for themselves? I don’t feel up to addressing grieving mothers; my capacity for empathy is too limited (I say this without self-satisfaction or self-pity—I’m simply stating a fact) to understand and contain something that so completely overwhelms me. And I’m not sure I’d like to say what I’m about to say. So, from one grieving father to every grieving father: Before searching for words or gestures, start at square one—don’t run away. Don’t run away from the pain, the anger, the regret, or the tears. Give yourself the right to cry, to mourn —this is the etymology and the heart of grief. Don’t hide it from the people you trust, or, if you need to, feel free to shout it out to everyone. But above all else, don’t run away. The escape routes—which, incidentally, are often socially viewed not as copings mechanisms or self-preservation strategies but as tests of masculinity—are endless: from workaholism to the pursuit of pleasures and impulses, to psychoactive substances (whether alcohol, drugs, or psychiatric medications). I speak from experience—the experience of a die-hard fugitive. Pain? By running away, you’ll be able to suppress it. Responsibilities? What responsibilities? You’re the only victim of what happened and the center of the universe, mortally offended by death itself! The uncomfortable emotions that are part of the psychophysiology of grief? You’ll manage to get rid of them—but, be warned, along with all the positive emotions included in the package—to the point where you’re no longer capable of feeling either sadness or joy. You’ll remain trapped in the angry and self-righteous initial stage of grief—denial—thinking, “Nothing happened, nothing has changed, so why on earth should I change?”—without allowing yourself the chance to reach the stages of bargaining and acceptance. In this way, you’ll be able to bypass and evade—unscathed and unchanged (that is, without learning a thing)—the life and death of your son or daughter. You can keep running away for as long as you live (avoiding life itself, of course) and remain alone, because you’ve chosen to be. But if you choose differently than I did, ignore this unsolicited advice.
To whom is this work dedicated? To Lena, to ourselves, to her parents, to our two children, to all the people Lidia mentioned—to whom I, too, cannot help but be grateful—and to all the mothers and fathers who have experienced or are experiencing perinatal bereavement. And, I would add, to Sela, Lena’s Jewish great-grandmother. At nineteen, Sela fled one of the Nazi ghettos in Poland, leaving behind her parents, her seventeen-year-old sister, and her fifteen-year-old brother. They, along with almost the rest of the family, became part of the six million who perished. She survived. Had it not been for that escape—an escape from death toward life—there would be no Lena.
