Bereavement is the most common and complex human situation that I counsel as a rabbi. The emotional despondency of infertility is a close second, and its sadness emulates bereavement. A couple who has attempted unsuccessfully for years to conceive frequently suffers, as the mourner, feelings of frustration, blame, anger, and guilt. Both bereavement and infertility are about immortality. In bereavement after death one mourns what has been lost.
Infertile parents mourn what never been gained.
The inability to conceive offspring is to many like death without a body. The Bible itself contains one episode after another of infertile couples. Sarah remains barren through old age when through miraculous intervention she bears Isaac. Jacob bears a son with Leah, eliciting the envy of his preferred wife, Rachel, who is barren. The Bible's solutions for infertility may not be our twentieth century solutions.