This is how a pregnancy ends; not with a heartbeat in a darkened exam room, not with a newborn’s whimper.

It ends with calm words spoken by a doctor. “I would expect to see more growth at this time, to match your hormone levels.”

It ends with needles pricked in your arm every few days, and the test showing the results you prayed not to see.

It ends with the quiet blip of the sonogram machine, the screen showing a dark blob at once familiar and strange, but on each successive visit the shape’s growth slows and the waves of its heartbeat grow fainter, until they fade.

It ends as my husband hears the news and comforts me, and I try to comfort him, despite the first-trimester nausea that proves more durable than the pregnancy itself.

The next few days pass in a blur. I arrive at the hospital, passing the sign that says Same-Day Surgery, joking around lightheartedly with the intake clerk and sending my husband funny texts about the hospital room d?cor and the fuzzy gray slipper-socks the nurse gives me. It doesn’t seem real until the moment the orderly arrives to wheel me away on a stretcher.

I wake up, empty and in terrible pain, left to come to terms with the aftermath.

A friend drives me home. After not seeing each other for many months, we’d scheduled lunch together, and it ended up being the same day I got the phone call informing me that my pregnancy hormones were dropping. She arrived for our lunch just a few hours after the doctor asked me to schedule the procedure to end my pregnancy.

I hadn’t quite planned to talk about what was going on, but in the car on the way home I ended up telling her about it. She told me she had miscarried her first pregnancy. As we spoke, her baby son babbled in the backseat. She offered to drive me home from the hospital, and thanks to her I have a ride home while still in a post-anesthesia fog, a favor provided by someone who understands what I’m going through.

My pregnancy has ended on my Hebrew birthday, the day after Tishah B’Av. I hadn’t even realized, when I scheduled the appointment for the following Monday, what the date was. My husband promised me we could have ice cream when I got home. All I could do was lie on the couch in a stupor and drink the tea he made for me.

A few days later, my best friend gives birth to a boy. I find out she gave birth in the same hospital I’d been in. We might have been there at the same time if her son had been ready to come out a little earlier.

One of the first things I’d thought of, when I found out I was expecting, was that my baby could have been friends with hers when they grow up. Now, it’s no longer possible for us to have eldest children in the same grade. Maybe they can still be friends even if they’re not the same age.

I think back to that final Sunday, Tishah B’Av morning. I’m sitting on the floor of the shul and feeling frozen, knowing that the rabbi instructed me not to fast even though my pregnancy would be over by the next day. My mother surprised me by driving in to visit, bringing me homemade food so I didn’t have to prepare anything myself. I appreciated her support. How ironic that I’d have to fast the day after Tishah B’Av instead, for the eight hours prior to the procedure. My own personal day of loss separates me from the communal one.

As the clock ticks down to midday, when we will rise from the floor, the rabbi of my shul shares his final thoughts of the day with his mispallelim. He compares the state of the Jewish people on Tishah B’Av — having gone through the Crusades, the pogroms, the Holocaust, and still the Redemption and Mashiach have not come — to a woman who goes through all the pains of labor but has no child to hold in her arms.

His words echo in my ears. I sit, stunned, unmoving, as everyone else in shul prepares for Minchah. I can barely believe what I am hearing, the hint of Divine inspiration that put these words in his mouth at this very moment. After a long morning of numb silence, I finally begin to cry.

For myself, for my unborn child’s lost future, for my nation.

Longing

The baby is always extra whiny on Tishah B’Av, isn’t he? And oh, the weather. It’s a scorcher, year after year. I sit at the park and push my baby on the swing and feel guilty. It’s Tishah B’Av, I tell myself, hellooo.

I don’t like to think I’m a shallow person. Does my whole world really have to crumble because I’m hungry? And this can’t even be called hunger! It’s just a poor relative, the merest, faintest pangs. Ask the survivors for the real definition of starvation. And besides, isn’t Tishah B’Av more than just the fasting? Isn’t it, really, about the severance of a connection so intense and beautiful we cannot even fathom it?

My baby cries, again. Sighing, I lift him out of the swing, sit him in his carriage, and stick a corn pop into his palm. It is so insufferably hot.

I know the truth. I know galus is real and devastating and it throttles every one of us in its all-encompassing, many-pronged grip. I know, but… can I deny that little yawn of relief that whispers through me as I sit down to my coffee and slice of babke when the fast finally ends? How I savor the chocolate oozing through the crumbly dough, think longingly of hot, cleansing, fresh water… tomorrow’s shower. And laundry, finally. Fresh laundry, sweet smelling and warm from the dryer. And — thank You, Hashem — music. Music!

I hate feeling this gentle release of tension; I know it’s wrong. The Three Weeks are over, but the Beis Hamikdash still burns. Yet it’s there, surely; the quiet peace, redolent with sweet opportunities of light and happy summer days, unencumbered by the shadow of mourning.

It’s not that I think galus is not miserable. When people talk of us Jews becoming too comfortable in our various places around the globe, I don’t really agree. Sure, some of us are blessed enough to live in pretty houses in free countries. But who doesn’t have something twisting inside, be it with worry or fear or loneliness or grief? Who doesn’t know of an orphaned child, a bereaved mother, a lonely old man?

Of course, our exile is tragic. But it’s still rather… uncomfortable, to have to put away my iPod and refrain from buying new things and watch the laundry mountain grow, and — oh goodness — to fast. What drags me down the most is having to create a spirit of sadness, to tone down summer’s natural delight and cloak the glory in mourning shrouds.

From across the park, I see a double carriage at the entrance, with a slender, olive-skinned woman behind. Mrs. Schwartz. A frisson of guilt slithers down to my toes. No doubt, Mrs. Schwartz doesn’t have to coax the sadness out of her heart. Having lost her son this year Rachmanah litzlan, I’m pretty sure she can touch the grief, feel every last bleeding fiber of Tisha B’Av in her soul.

Is that what you’re waiting for? For Hashem to send you a reminder of our bitter galus, G-d forbid? Can’t you summon up some feeling before it comes to that?

The trusty nag inside me sniffs righteously. I sigh.

On the way home, I force my mind off cheesecake and iced coffee and let it wander amid the debris of a smoldering dream. I hand my baby a bottle and I think of what it is we’re mourning, why I am here, on this hot and sticky summer day thousands of years after that terrible day, and I need to cry. And I know that it’s not just a home and a Mikdash that we yearn for, not just the freedom from anguish and hardship, but something so much more eternal and infinite and real. We mourn the shattered connection, the brokenness of a relationship that means everything.

Later that night, as I’m inhaling my coffee’s blessed magic, it comes to me that perhaps I don’t have to worry about Hashem sending me a reminder of galus. Mrs. Schwartz losing a child is heartbreaking, and so are all the painful situations around us; from sick babies to struggling fathers to friendless children. Surely, these are part of the package deal of our exile. But the essence of galus is who I am — lost in the mundane, struggling for a glimmer of G-dliness, barred from touching the Divinity within myself.

At noon the next day, I tuck my baby in for his nap and, with fingers giddy with anticipation, I scramble for my iPod. I sit on the couch, lean back, and prepare to breathe deeply. Oh, my music, the key to my soul! My fingers flick over the glowing screen as I search for the right song to start with. Something strong, vibrant, and joyous. Finally, I choose the perfect song and I’m about to hit “play” when something niggles unexpectedly in my chest.

The Three Weeks may be over but the Beis Hamikdash is not rebuilt yet. You know?

My fingers tap again on the iPod screen and soon the longing notes of Im Eshkachaich Yerushalayim fill my ears. In a moment, I will go back to the song I had originally chosen. But for now, I will close my eyes and savor the longing for just another minute.

Finding Grief, Finding Comfort

I have vague memories of how Tishah B’Av was observed in the small Southern town where I grew up. At night we read from a very depressing book called Eichah. I tried to follow along in English because I didn’t understand the Hebrew words. But reading the English translation was just too scary and depressing.

I didn’t have enough of a Jewish education to appreciate the Temple we were supposed to be mourning. I hadn’t even heard of the Three Weeks. All I knew was that there was one specific day of the year when we had an “obligation” to be sad, but fasting was “optional.” The rabbi, his wife, and a few members in our congregation fasted not only just at night, but the entire 25 hours. I learned about these “really observant” ultra-Orthodox in the Sunday school I attended. That fascinated me… imagine fasting for a whole day, like Yom Kippur!

I got the feeling that many people in our congregation, like me, did not truly understand what was going on. The one person who seemed a bit upset (besides our rabbi and rebbetzin) was a middle-aged man who had lost his entire family in the Holocaust. We knew that he’d had a good Jewish education in Europe, so I assumed he realized why we were all gathering together and trying to be unhappy. Most of the congregants just sat on the regular shul chairs, but he was one of the few who sat on a small shivah chair from our local funeral home.

My next most vivid memory of Tishah B’Av was over a decade later. Over the years, I’d gradually become more observant through NCSY youth activities and having attended Touro College and Neve Yerushalayim seminary. I got my first job in Washington, D.C. and became a part of the thriving Jewish community in Silver Spring, Maryland.

I’d “done the whole fast” for a few years but for some reason, this Tishah B’ Av stands out in my mind. Sitting on small, plastic chairs in a shul I had recently joined, I was so proud that I could translate on my own some of the words the rabbi was leining in his very mournful sing-song tone. Ironically, the few pesukim I understood spoke of an uplifting bitachon: Hashem’s kindness surely has not ended, nor are His mercies exhausted. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness! Hashem is my portion, says my soul, therefore I have hope in Him. Actually, I was kind of gleeful I was finally able to follow most of the service.

The following morning I went to work at a Jewish organization where none of my colleagues were observant. At around two my boss called me into his office and asked me to please leave — everyone else had broken their fast and they felt guilty having me around! That was okay with me; by then I had a splitting headache and could not wait to get home and lie down until the fast was over.

In subsequent years, for some unknown reason, I still let the words of Eichah and the solemnity of the day barely affect me. In all honesty, my emotions were more stirred by the Holocaust books I devoured. I read them with a burning passion. The more religious observances I took upon myself, the more I felt an insatiable desire to learn about the history of my people. In fact, that was how I usually spent the morning observing Tishah B’Av — by reading a newly purchased book on the Holocaust.

The years passed quickly, and suddenly another Tishah B’Av was upon me. Yet this time, the meaning of Tishah B’Av was so deep in the core of my soul that it took my breath away. For years, the prayers had barely touched my heart. But now I felt them surge through me.

Eight months earlier, my husband, the father of my four young children, all under the age of nine, had passed away. He was 40, I was 37. Every single day of those eight months I had mourned bitterly. I tried to keep up a good fa?ade for casual acquaintances who greeted me on the street and for my four precious neshamos. But I knew my single-parent journey was just beginning — and it terrified me.

That Tishah B’Av, I put the children to bed, sat on a small step stool in my living room, and began to read Eichah. Almost instantly, the words were blurred by my tears. For how was I expected to get through the entire sefer when Eichah starts out with this pasuk: Alas — she sits in solitude! The city that was great with people has become like a widow! I was overcome with a new level of anguish. How had I not remembered that Eichah starts out comparing Jerusalem to a widow? That year, I had known utter loneliness and sorrow, even as I made enormous effort to keep up my spirits.

How those pesukim tore at me. The tears poured down my cheeks. I forced myself to read all of Eichah but it was excruciating to do so. All my pent-up anguish seemed to tumble anew into my soul from the words I was reading.

Living in the 20th century, it had always been difficult for me imagine the anguish felt by my ancestors when they saw the Bais Hamikdash burn. But now that I had truly experienced heartbreaking, gut-wrenching emotional pain, on some miniscule level, I was finally able to truly grieve what they — and all of us — had lost. It is such a simplistic thought, but it holds so true — sometimes all it takes is the loss of one to feel the sorrow of many.

I hate to admit it, but despite that tumultuous night, for many years after that I had a very cavalier attitude whenever Tishah B’Av came around. Something deep inside me wanted to scream out: “Been there, done that!” I was petrified to truly take a step back, and again feel such deep emotional pain. Anyone who has suffered a profound loss can relate to the dormant emotions that come bursting out of your body following the death of someone you love. And once those days of shivah, of mourning, are behind you, it’s so difficult to know what to do with those new feelings that seem to dominate your life.

Do I seriously consider the destruction of the two Batei Mikdash and all the calamities that befell the Jews in the Three Weeks comparable with my loss of a beloved father and husband? Absolutely not! But it was a cataclysmic event in my world… and that is my personal Tishah B’Av.

Now, once again, Tishah B’Av is upon us. How things have changed in my life. I have been blessed with grandchildren and am happily remarried. I tell my daughters to go hear Eichah while I babysit. I prefer to read the poignant words by myself in the quiet of my own home.

I don’t read Holocaust books anymore but, with much gratitude to Hashem, the smile on my face is now genuine.  And no longer am I afraid to truly mourn what Tishah B’Av represents. Because now I know that everyone, at some time or other in life, experiences incredible highs and lows… and Hashem also gives us the wonderful capacity to be able to move on.

Rebecca Bram Feldbaum is the author of two books: If There’s Anything I Can Do…(Feldheim, 2003) and What Should I Say, What Can I Do? (Simon & Schuster, 2009). She’s a popular speaker who draws upon her personal experiences to teach others how to help those dealing with medical crisis or loss.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 504)