Homecoming

Today is really the anniversary of the worst day of my life.
The day they wheeled me, because I was too sad to walk, to the front entrance of the hospital.
The nurse who was pushing me didn't know what to say to me.

Greg met me there, in our little silver car. I looked in the back seat.
The car seat was gone.
Later, I asked him where it was. He told me that when he had come out, early in the day on the 13th of May to get our bag from the car, he had taken out the car seat himself, unbuckled the seat, removed the little locking clip, and then taken the baby things out of the bag, and he had put them into the trunk.

My heart ached for him, imagining the pain radiating up his arm as he lifted the tiny seat, carrying it in defeat around the side of the car and putting it into the trunk. Closing the lid with a slam, and a click. Door closed. Chapter over. Book done.

We drove home. It was a beautiful, brilliant day. The lilacs filled the air with their sweet nectar, mocking our grief. We arrived home, and my family was there. Our family, all of them. They watched, barely able to, holding back, not knowing what to do, as Greg helped me from the car.

I leaned into him, almost staggering, as I came up the path. My belly pooched out under my shirt, that baggy, strangely empty, postpartum belly. My breasts were bare under my red shirt: I only had nursing bras, and I could not bring myself to wear one.

I crossed the threshold. I was back in my home, technically the same home I had left the morning before. My sister had made up the pull-out couch in the living room, because I couldn't go up the stairs. I didn't want to go upstairs. I didn't want to see the little baby room, the bed where she had died in my belly. I couldn't face the towels on my bedroom floor, cast there when my waters were pouring down my legs, me not knowing my baby was suffocating as it flowed.

We stayed downstairs for one week.