Lost

I opened my e-mail and this is what I read, from someone who had received a mailing from my group, in opposition to the words lost and loss, which he counted were used 5 times in the piece:

Loss or lost are such terribly misleading words to use at such a time of grief and pain. Dreams are not lost when a baby dies - parents can dream for other children and have other hopes and dreams for future children.

I feel and believe (and know many others also who feel and believe the same) that continued use of the word loss implies an error the parents have made, or an implication that the child who has died, no matter what the gestational age, is not a real person, with feelings and thoughts, but merely a growth or a group of cells. Loss takes away the dignity and humanity of the child who has died and reduces the pregnancy to something medical and technical instead of human.

In this era of unfettered abortion and a throwaway society, why relegate children to an uncaring abyss?

An uncaring abyss?
An uncaring abyss?

All this hard work, all these hours, all these tears shed, only to have someone feel that I am relegating children to an uncaring abyss.

Furthermore, I disagree heartily that dreams cannot be lost. I believe I lost a dream or two along the way.

I do think there are better words than lost, but how to encompass all of the deaths, from conception through infancy, and all the ways it can happen, in one word? I, myself, am lost.

Tell me how you feel about this word. I agree that it is misleading, because our babies can't be found. But while I don't love the word, I feel as if it's become a pretty commonly used, and acceptable word in this community. I did check Websters, and there is a definition that applies.

But this is more about what we feel. Please respond. Are you offended?

Coffee

My dear friend said to me yesterday, maybe I should have asked you out for coffee so we could have talked about her.
And I was grateful, but I realized that even though I want somebody to ask me about the sad parts, I don't really think I can talk about the sad parts to anyone.

I feel like a petulant child. I want you to ask, but I don't want to answer.
I want you to know, but I don't want to tell you.

I know some people who regularly appear so ungrateful for their children, they are constantly annoyed with them for acting... imagine this... like children.

And I want them to know the saddest, most awfullest parts, the deepest pain, I want to tell them in the most vivid details.

Not that I think they'd get less annoyed with their kids if they knew.

And not that I'd tell them.

Oh, it's so hard to want to tell, but to not want to say.

The Evening

The spring arrived early this year.

I feel programmed like a Canada goose or something; my spring calendar is dictated by the bloom of the lilacs and the weeping cherry outside my kitchen door.
But this year, the cherry is all finished, its blossoms scattering about my driveway and lawn already, like a fresh coating of pale pink snow that covers the new, bright green spring.

And outside my living room window, where my screen porch used to be, the lilacs are already heavy with nectar, their scent wafting up into my bedroom.

I went running tonight just at sunset, down my long country road. I passed by the dairy farm and the hayfield, and through the trees to the next horse farm. Along the road, lilac bushes leaned into my path, hunting me with their sweet smell.

May is here, May is here.

As I ran, my feet pounding against unforgiving pavement, I noticed that the sky, which was becoming less blue and more gray with the descending light, looked almost as it had in the early beginnings of dawn the day we drove to the hospital with Charlotte for the last time.

Eight days, eight days.

Cinco de Mayo. Today is her due date. Seven years ago today I went to a restaurant with my friend Beth and we ate cinnamon buns together over our huge, 40-week exactly bellies.

I think of my other children, who, at 40 weeks gestation, all lay in my arms, a week old, give or take. And I weep for Charlotte, having lost that chance.

But as I ran, and the lilacs chased me, and the dawn-like light drew me back, I thought about the eight days to come. I must be careful, I thought, about who I surround myself with. Already I can feel myself pulling out, pulling away. I am fragile, barely mended. I must be with only the opportunity to be just me, present with what I need.

And what do I need?

It stopped me, almost, from running when I realized that I really do not, and I really could not, really speak about Charlotte to anyone. I do, in some ways, of course. I do in that I say, "It's Charlotte's birthday on Thursday". Or in that I say, "My first baby died a year before Liam was born". Or in that I say, "This is a difficult time of year for us."

But I never really talk about her. I never really tell anyone what it was really like. I never really describe for them the horror of finding out, or waiting for her to be born. I never really try to explain to anyone the miracle of her birth, the absolutely suspended in time experience of having her in our arms, and then the awful, dreadful, tearing-my-heart-to-shreds awfulness of having to let her go. I never, ever really talk to anyone about that. Nobody ever asks, not that I blame them. And I don't think I really can talk about it. I might start to cry, and I don't usually feel like doing that with anyone except just myself.

I remember that when my article came out in Mothering years and years ago, a very, good, true friend called me in tears. "I never really knew the story," she told me, and it was true. For the most part, nobody really knows the story. They let me tell what I want to tell, but I am careful only to tell them the parts that won't make them cry.

Sometimes, I wish that someone would ask me about the sad parts.

Especially in May.

Charlotte's Walk

In Memory of Charlotte Amelia, I run an organization.
And in the amazing effort to BREAK THE SILENCE and introduce the world to these fallen babies, we walk together on Saturday, May 8, at Look Park in Northampton, Massachusetts. Registration is at 10:30 AM, walk begins at 11.
Walk? Why do we do a walk?
I don't know, because we all come together, and then we make a statement by all being there, carrying balloons, wearing shirts. We walk in the audience of all the other families, and we say, I have an invisible child, and you can't ignore me anymore.
But the great part is that we all get to hang out, and afterwards we'll have a picnic together.

It's a fundraiser, but do you want to know a secret? I could care less about the funds. Really. I'd even say, don't donate, if you asked. But I would say, come. It shows you care.

So pack a picnic, and come, if you live nearby. I'd love to see you.

Falling in love

Did I forget what had happened, that moment she appeared?
I might have, for a beat of my heart.
I remember it so clearly, looking down, seeing her, and folding myself almost in half on top of her, reaching for her like I was grasping for my very life
(and I was).
I was leaning over her, and into her, and burying my face in her neck and gathering up arms and legs and slippery belly and trying to get her closer, closer to me.
Could this be real?
There was very suddenly a person on my belly,
a real, true person
Someone with a head, and two eyes and ears, a nose and a mouth.
She had shoulders, and arms and perfect, miniature hands and feet.
Her legs were long, skinny as a baby should be.
She was a person, a new one, someone with a code inside of her to make her a new and lovely and most wonderful addition to this earth
(except that she had already left).
Is everyone this stunned at the human-ness of their firstborn infant?
I was stunned, amazed that I'd done this: grown a person.
And I felt the earth shake below me with the sudden surge of unspeakable love that boiled up inside of me, boiled up and spilled out all over the place.
How could this be real!
Certainly if other people loved their babies this much they would cease to function. They would turn inward and lose all other aspects of their lives. They would forget to eat, and bathe. They would never pay a bill or mow a lawn.
I couldn't believe how big it was.

This all happened, in this tiny second, this beat of my heart, where I forgot. Where all I felt was the sheer exhileration of it all, the joy, the amazement of this new love.

And then I remembered.

The Inevitable

I had to do it.
It was a quarter past five in the morning, so I picked up the phone and I dialed the number. I knew it would ring, and that one of my parents would leap out of bed to pick it up, knowing it was me, knowing the news was coming.
It rang two times, and my father answered, breathless.
Dad, I said, it's not good news. I had to say that, first, to let him down easy. To prepare him, if there could be a way to do this, for what would come.

Our baby died, I said. We don't know why. I haven't had it yet.

My memory holds nothing of what followed, nothing at all, except that he told me my mother wasn't at home, that she had gone to the club to work out.

But I do remember what he told me about that morning, after the fact.

He told me that he was at the top of the stairs, when he heard the phone ring. He told me that he danced his way down the hall, with an enormous grin upon his face, and then picked it up. And he told me that when my mother came home, he met her in the little hallway at the top of the basement stairs, and he held her firmly by the elbows and told her the news.

I don't remember whether this is what happened, or what I imagine, but she nearly sank to the floor in grief, screaming, crying, they must be wrong, they must be wrong.

I had told them not to come, but they came right away, of course.

That was the only call I ever made. Ever. That day, after the family arrived at our home to wait for Charlotte to be born, my mother and my sister got out every single phone book I had ever kept and called everyone they could think of, and asked them to call everyone they could think of. They wanted to spare me from ever having to make that call again.

I was grateful for this.

The Ride Out

Greg went down ahead of me, to get the car.

I felt too weak to walk, weak, I believed, from giving birth. I now know differently.

The nurse helped me into a wheelchair. It hurt, hurt, hurt to sit, and she offered me a donut to sit on. I remember sitting, in pain, while she rummaged in a closet looking for one. I felt as if I had been cheated of this simple comfort, a donut for my sore and ravaged bottom, because the lack of a baby on my lap caused them to forget I had just given birth.

She wheeled me down the hall, and into the elevator, and then we had to go down the long hall, lined with chairs, past all the people. I stared at my lap. I probably looked as if I was still pregnant, but only a little.

We went outside into the brilliant sunshine. We stood, waiting for Greg.

I felt sorry for the nurse. What could she say to me? How do you make small talk, in the brilliant sunshine, when there is no baby?

Greg pulled the car up, and I looked for the car seat in the back, but it was gone.

I wondered what he had done with it, but I did not ask.

I got in the car and drove home, leaving my life behind.