Today was Trus' funeral at Blessed Sacrament Church and burial at Saint Mary's Cemetery. Father Eric and Alfie did an amazing job offering us comfort as Trus was celebrated, mourned, and laid to rest.
We're so grateful for everyone who was with us today.
Kevin and I both spoke and here is what we shared.
My tribute to Trus:
I’m Maiga. Twyla, Wes, and Trus’ Mama.
Thank you all for being here.
This makes me think that Trus was social.
When Twyla was born, I learned that every time a new life enters, everything is reorganized. My entire body and life were completely rearranged with each of my kids.
I heard something that is kind of the inverse– it was this story that in a community, if there was a death, everyone put their furniture out on the front yard. It was a show of solidarity with those surviving in grief to say, “your world is completely different so we’ll make the world look different in recognition of this, with you.”
I feel like that’s what my face did. I came down with this Bell’s palsy the day after Wes and Trus’ due date. It makes sense that half my face has fallen, given that Trus isn’t with us.
Trus was the kid I didn’t expect but I think that I was somehow being prepared for in so many ways. He felt like my wild card. They say that third children often have unpredictable births. He did. He was my only breech baby. He was my only birth with an epidural. He was my only birth in a hospital.
When Trus was in the womb, I kept thinking of my Pop, my Mom’s Dad. It’s part of the reason that we chose a name from Pop’s side of the family. Pop’s brother, Trus, was a third child. Trus’ daughter, Linda, said if someone wanted the moon, Trus would build a ladder.
I imagined our Trus that way– loyal, but not necessarily practical. I think his broad nose looks like Pop too and I predicted that he would look like Pop. I always thought Pop was really handsome. I thought our Trus would be mischievous like Pop and give me a run for my money– maybe as much as or more than Twyla.
Twyla and Wes, in so many ways, felt much more expected. I knew things about both their births. I knew Twyla would arrive late and that we would sing the Mamas and the Papas song, “Dedicated to the one I love” at her birth.
Both of those things happened.
With Wes, I had a premonition that he would be born in our bathroom and into my hands. He was.
But I could never tell how Trus wanted to be born. I would try to get quiet and listen. I couldn’t track him as easily.
I learned different things about him though. I listened to Buddy Holly a lot early in their pregnancy and that felt like Trus. Because he was under my ribs, I kept thinking of the lyric, “Dearest, you are the nearest to my heart.” I wrote that on the quilt square that I made for him. His quilt is an array of greens. He felt like that to me– forest and woodsy.
When he was stillborn, I saw the immediate choice in front of us:
Pretend that we have one son, Wes
Or
Tell the truth and claim all of our children
I knew then that I would claim him always. That all of my children needed to know that they were always mine, no matter what.
I know that we try to deny or pretend to shield ourselves from the pain. But I could see the shadows and secrets we would be inviting in. I knew we had to find a way to keep Trus in the light and that by not shying away from the heartbreak, we would get to know him better and hold him and all our kids closer.
When we made our first birth announcement, I shared that we have two sons: Wes, who is with us, and Trus, our guardian angel. And that I’m going to need to learn publicly, with all of you, on how to have 3 kids when one of them isn’t with us.
I’m a control freak so I prefer to learn in private and then be public when I feel competent. But I have no control. I never have felt more vulnerable and exposed and also cared less. Trus is teaching me to be messier and more transparent. I don’t know how to do this. I worry about all of it– the weight on Twyla and Wes– all of it.
But Trus is a blessing.
The other side is that Trus will guard them and give them solace in ways I can’t predict. And I get to keep learning who he is over time. And he’s pushing me deeper into community when I used to pretend to be more independent and self-sufficient. Already, in pregnancy, he knitted me closer to you all. I was terrified to have twins. You all came to baby showers, helped us collect items, threw us extra baby showers (like our preschool community and Saint Patrick’s). You gave us support. I think that was Trus, bringing us closer to you all.
Kevin and I said 3 kids would mean we lost any illusion of control and that a little benign neglect might be healthier for our kids. I think Trus is pushing us to be better parents too.
So thank you all for taking care of us, for being with us, and allowing us to learn with you. And mostly, for loving all of our kids.
Kevin's Tribute to Trus:
In the past 20 days I’ve written a lot about losing Trus; about who he is to Maiga and me, and about the meaning of his loss. Writing about the meaning of the life of a person that no one had the opportunity to meet is complicated. Despite the fact that we lost Trus just before he was to be born, Maiga and I know him, Maiga more intimately than me. Long before the third trimester Maiga could feel both of our boys wrestling in her belly and she could discern between the two. They were Wes and Trus within a few days of finding out we had twins. We knew Baby A, the first out, would be Wes, and Baby B was Trus. When Maiga was pregnant with Twyla we constantly talked about who she was and who she would be. So far our feelings have largely proven true. It was the same with Wes and Trus. We spent hours talking about the adventures the five of us would have, and who our boys may become. Despite the tragedy that has occurred, I will always know Trus.
Parenthood is supposed to change you. When we had Twyla the foundation of our world shifted. So many things that had seemed important crumbled and so many new desires and concerns grew in their place. Parenthood can be engaged in as a kind of celebratory monastic act. Each child born has the power to disrupt life’s plans in so many beautiful and chaotic ways, forcing the parent to submit their own desires, at least to some degree, for the sake of a previously unimaginable love.
Suffering and loss have the same potential for transformation and share the ability to quickly open the heart and sweep anything without strong roots out to sea. Losing Trus has been the most intense pain I have ever experienced but it has also afforded me the strongest ability I’ve ever had to truly empathize with the pain of others. This deep void of loss has opened more space in my heart to unite myself with others in love.
I came back to taking the foundational principles of Christianity seriously after a long and circuitous route that I never would have imagined would lead me here. Travelling in that circle has allowed me to see some things that I previously took for granted. In the past three weeks I’ve rested everything I have on what I consider to be one of the most profound truths of Christianity; that the willing acceptance of suffering and loss contains more than enough power to transform that loss into an expansion of love.
I’ve had a dark thought flash through my head a few times while I was up feeding Wes and getting little sleep. I’ve had the thought that where we are now; having two kids to care for, Twyla and Wes, is the same place we’d be in if Maiga had not been pregnant with twins. We didn’t even find out we were having twins until Maiga was five months. This thought tries to tempt me to escape from the pain of loss by pretending this is how things would have been anyway. But this is absolutely not how things would have been. Trus came into the world. We formed a relationship with him. We love him. And though we are not with him in the way that we are with Twyla and Wes, our hearts had already expanded to love him. The hearts of our families and communities had already expanded to love him. Lately I’ve been thinking that some of the pain of loss is that when we lose someone we love, we don’t know where to direct the love that’s meant for that person. The heart has already opened to let more love into the world and now that opening feels like a void.
However, that opening, the same one that allows us to suffer and to feel this intense pain, is the same one that allows us to integrate it and transmute it into a higher love. Death is a pulling apart; a separation of a being into its constituent parts that will never equal the whole. Love is the opposite of death. Love is a uniting of individuals into relationship that preserves the individual while utterly transcending individuality in union with the other. I will never hold Trus the way that I hold Wes or Twyla. I will always feel his absense. But I will maintain my connection with him. I will always be his father. The way I’m conceiving of it now, the feeling that brings me peace, is that anytime I can open my heart enough to allow love to fill the void of sorrow, I am in communion with Trus. Maiga and I will always hold Trus as our son, and in his all too short life he has already given me the gift of shaking the very foundations my world, of leveling the buildings and leaving nothing but fertile ground. I pray for the wisdom to tend it wisely. It will be my life’s work to do so in connection with my son.
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| These photos are Trus. The photos of two babies are Wes and Trus. Wes is naked and Trus has on a hat. |
