Carried: Death in Childbirth (Of the mother)

It holds a mother's giving-over at the threshold of birth, a life laid down so that the child's own can begin, framed by the pattern as the honouring of an agreement made at the level of the soul for the mother to leave at the child's arrival. That framing is held as the pattern's own reading, not asserted as fact. What the shape carries is a completed act of giving, and, for those left, a loss to be grieved and helped with.

I brought you this far, and now the rest is yours; my part was to get you here.

Rachel, whose soul was departing, for she died, as she gave the last of her strength to bring her son into the world, naming him with her final breath. The form implies a task: for those left, to grieve the one who gave, and be helped.