Grieving mom mulls life after infant loss

Despite today’s well-trained medical staff, cutting-edge modern equipment and medical procedures, babies can sadly still die at birth or soon after. In Cleo Dang Would Rather be Dead, Toronto writer Mai Nguyen examines with honesty the deep grief parents endure when this tragedy strikes.

Cleo Dang is Nguyen’s second novel. Her debut, Sunshine Nails, was long-listed for CBC’s Canada Reads.

During her birth, Cleo and Ethan’s daughter Daisy experiences asphyxia, and her reduced oxygen supply causes severe brain damage. She’s kept on a ventilator for a short time so Cleo and Ethan can hold and bathe her, speak and read to her. Surrounded by a ward filled with crying babies, the couple never hear their child cry.

The fact that Paloma, her best friend from childhood and now a neighbour, gives birth to a healthy baby soon after Daisy’s death intensifies Cleo’s grief. Intellectually she knows she should be happy for Paloma, but her simmering rage and wayward emotions take over. She’s unable to be thankful for Paloma’s help in arranging Daisy’s funeral, where the room and small casket are thoughtfully decorated with white daisies.

After Daisy’s funeral Cleo is overwhelmed with loneliness, unable to get out of bed. Ethan returns to work after his bereavement leave ends and starts filling his spare time with running. Paloma comes over to pull Cleo out of bed, clean the dirty bedroom and bathroom and make her eat something. She encourages her friend to cry, but Cleo can’t release her tears. She asks herself, “What is a mother without her child? What is the sun without the moon, the sky without stars, the ocean without water?”

Rather than stay at home for the rest of her maternity leave, Cleo returns to her job as an actuary. On her first day back, she overhears a co-worker speculate that Cleo’s pregnancy might just have been a ploy to receive expensive baby shower gifts. Cleo takes revenge by pouring coffee on the woman’s computer. The next day her boss tells her that her action was caught on camera and orders her to stay home, focus on her family and heal.

A parcel left in the rain on Paloma’s doorstep catches her eye. Remembering where a spare key is hidden, Cleo unlocks her friend’s house to bring in the parcel but is compelled to visit the baby’s room. She cleans up the messy nursery then sits in the rocking chair while cuddling a stuffed toy dumpling — pretending it’s her baby. Seeing Paloma’s new daily mother’s journal, Cleo begins her own diary, writing entries imagining what might be happening if Daisy was alive.

When she and Ethan return to Monarch Funeral Home to pick up Daisy’s ashes, Cleo sees an assistant’s job advertised. Desperate for something to keep her busy and occupy her mind, she applies for the job and is hired.

At the funeral home she watches how others deal with their grief and sees the compassion shown by her fellow employees. Her parents aren’t pleased about her job, and she can’t explain to them or Ethan why it brings her comfort. “What is the correct way to break it to your family that you’d rather be surrounded by the dead than the living, that to get through an evening with them you have to wear a mask so you can present as a remotely normal person?,” Nguyen writes.

Cleo finally starts sharing her darkest feelings with Ethan and Paloma. She’s surprised and touched by funeral director Kenneth’s personal story about the sudden death of his infant son many years earlier. The realization that others are living with an enduring grief like her own helps her to see a future ahead — even though she’ll never forget Daisy.

Nguyen has delivered a well-written, heartfelt story about a tragic experience shared by many parents who lose a child.

Andrea Geary is a freelance writer in Selkirk.