Trying to understand the rise in maternal mortality leads quickly into technical abstraction. Papers on this problem are stacked with words borrowed from mathematics and epidemiology: population health, statistical risk ratios, morbidity, physician practice patterns, indications, and outcomes.
Absent from this vocabulary are proper names: Nancy, Susan, Liz.
Complications from a cesarean led to Nancy Lim's death some nine months after she gave birth to a healthy boy. Seventeen years later, her husband, Michael Barnes, still visits the place where her ashes are buried.
It’s a beautiful spot, on a rise looking down over the San Francisco Bay, the peaked TransAmerica building, Coit Tower, the curves of the Golden Gate, and the green rise of Marin to the north.
Lim was born in Texas to a Chinese family, and any good Chinese cemetery should have a view of mountains and water, Barnes said. Her marker is inscribed with words Barnes found in a letter Lim had written to a friend: “She said, ‘Just think, I get to be Max’s mom forever.’” Barnes remembers. “So that’s what we put on the grave marker.”
At first, Barnes thought he would become an advocate, fighting for women’s health and campaigning against medical error. But it was simply too hard to relive the process again and again. For this reason, Barnes said, a lot of the people affected by these tragedies simply move on to other things.
