2 months and 8 days

The root.
There are worse things. But still this is the crux of all worst things. The civil war, the pillage, the fire, the flood. And. And you have lost your child. Your charge and love. The missing piece that makes restoration, conciliation, renewal incomplete. This is the calamity nestled within catastrophe. This is the exponent to tragedy. I can’t really compare myself to the mothers we catalog now: stories from headlines and hearsay. It’s not Kigali, it’s not Birkenau. At least it’s not… But at the core, in my privileged compendium of healthy child, spouse, home…etc. that fearsome root anchors.
The future.
Our life is wild now. The veil of safety has been removed from our liminal box that hangs between the formulas of the microcosm and macrocosm. A flock of shoes roosts above our heads, waiting to rain down. An armory of stringed swords hovers at every turn. Those vultures, once phantoms, have materialized in the corners of our eyes, permanent fixtures of the view. We don’t expect. We add tentative clauses to our plans, “if it happens that way”. We touch wood, cross fingers, incorporate futile gestures to deflect harm. We balk at forecasting. “How can you be so sure?”
I know there are things that can be made of this. Those other mothers go on, plodding through days and weeks. Now graceful, now angry, now bold, now disconsolate and so on we all walk a wire without the net below. What they and I know: there never was a net. Our next charge, another step.

5.

You and your brother were born in the same room, your father told me yesterday. He sat in the same chair, received both sons. Jonas was born into noise, the teams of doctors rushing, and finally the cry. Healthy. You were born into stillness. There was no hurry, no swarm. You were handed to him. He held you, proud as before.
He was an easy baby, and now at three, he surpasses every expectation. Our love for him is leaden, a stone around the heart, that ordinary fierce burden: let nothing harm him. But also light with joy, his ease of life. I wanted you to disperse the love, spread the fear thinner. More eggs, more baskets. Now I know the loss that I had felt lurking behind the infinite love.

We think you were darker, brown eyes and hair, from what we could see. A foil to the golden child. A complement, we imagined you together. How you would love him. We promised him you loved him already, heard his voice, and wanted to meet him. I know you knew him. You must have felt my happiness around him. How could you not have loved him? The night before I knew you had died, I went back to his room at night, held his hand as he slept. I had hoped it was a message of love to you both, a secret semaphore of hormone signals and hands. Did it reach you? I’ll tell you now: I love you.

Last night he asked me where you were. Gone, I said. You died and we won’t see you anymore. You will never meet corporeal, maybe another form. (Let that be so far away, knock on wood). We talked about death and aging, a version palatable to a confused child. I made a promise I can’t keep: you and I and Baba will all get old. But Baby Brother was not old, he says. I am at a loss, for words and for you, who was, indeed, not old. He is not sad, he says. But he was waiting. He drew a picture of you (before) at school, the one thing I can’t look at. And now he wonders and tries to make sense of things I want to shelter him from. Take me, I bargain, induct me into the sadness and confusion, but leave him unscathed. He is the reason we can still live after you, not just exist, every day he brings joy. But he (the love of him) is the worst part of the pain, brother to a ghost.

if you read this today

can you comment "I was here"?

4.

I dreamed there is a baby. A nebulous, composite baby-an implication of a baby really because I don’t see his face. He’s vulnerable and sweet. I love him like your brother. There is some contention as to whether he is really mine, but I covet him. He is alive outside of my body. We are under siege. I hide us in an attic, down in a burrow, the deepest jungles, but we are found. Not caught, just on the run again for the next hiding place. I am trying to stop the inevitable, what already happened. I’m going back in time, fighting to keep you safe. My dreaming mind is in denial. I had read about this. There are phantom cries, shadows that move which you assign logically to the person who should be making them. And then you remember, there is no baby.

Back to you: soon there will be no trace. I never made your milk. My skin is ambiguous as to how many babies it has carried, certainly one, could be two or more. No new stretch marks this time. There is nothing to pack up. We had hand-me-downs, second boy. There was a crib I ordered, after you had died, before I knew. I tried to cancel but it was too late. I chased the delivery man down, wailing: take it back! Why, he said confused? The baby DIED! The hurried shuffling, mumbled apologies while they carted the box away. But I want to tell it again, rephrase it. MY BABY DIED. The refrain in my head “oh my baby, oh my baby”. So now it’s just our life, as it was before. Not empty furniture, just empty days ahead that you were supposed to fill. Life with something extra, something gone.

Dreams again: the tidal wave, of course. But this time something new. It has left a 60 foot dune between the beach and the world behind it. I’m on the beach, looking up at the barrier where someone has a rope for me to climb. But I have a choice, to scavenge the sand for pieces of wreckage, quickly fading in the tide, or climb to safety before the next wave arrives. The decision is suspended; I wake up. Then I remember, there is no baby.

interlude

Winter Hunter: Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter

Tell the winter hunter
I knew, i knew
Nothing of you then
And when the snow had melted
I was, i was beneath you

Still, there is no place
Still, there is no place

Where was i
Where was i . . . Was i?

Tell the winter hunter
I knew. I knew
Of a heart gone still
We crossed the tracks that carry
And i was, i was beneath you

But still, there is no place
Still, there is no place

3. The story of us

You seemed so tenacious. Your zygote formed effortlessly, attached and grew. We congratulated ourselves on the convenience, the plan adhered to. The timing, the spacing-those most important worries then, appeased. I felt you attach to the uterine lining, sitting with friends, I felt the wave of nausea come and go. I’m pregnant, I told them. Perplexed by two negative tests (too early) finally I checked again to confirm what I had known from conception. You were there.

I felt your quickening early. The hectic flutter, you traced your brother’s routes with the same energy. I glibly went to each appointment, so assured of your viability. A reassuring heartbeat, yes I know. I already knew the results to each ultrasound (except the last), first: your heart beats! then: a boy! later: large and active! Last: gone.

Unlike with your brother, I had no problems. I passed my tests with flying colors, normal blood pressure, urine free of protein and sugar. My feet did not swell. I ignored you. I went about my routine, thinking it was best for both of us. I worked hard. I disregarded lift restrictions, I skipped vitamins. I was goal oriented, assuming the expected outcomes, neglecting the process. The sudden kicks to the ribs, the undulation of my stomach in the bathwater was our communication. Stillbirth was not on my radar. It was not on the calendar.

And then something odd. Your kicks stopped, replaced by random tightening over my belly. We had a week left, I thought you had run out of room. I thought you were the contractions, using a different language now. You didn’t tell me you had died. Maybe I wasn’t listening. Maybe I did know? I wonder what I was doing when you left me. Was I sleeping? Working? Tending to minutiae, most likely. How did I feel your life spark into existence but miss it slip away? If I had known I would have railed and begged. Or wished you peace and held you. I wish I was there, present. I was there, vessel.

I went to the regular appointment, up to the table behind the curtain in the prenatal group. The Doppler did not detect your heartbeat. The panic set in. I shook. The stoic midwife led me downstairs to the ultrasound. Will it be okay? Let’s get some more information she said. She knew. Another table with the midwife, a doctor, and the manager of the practice. This jelly will be cold, the standard script. The still screen, the picture of your stillness, their solemn faces and my frantic pleading “tell me something!” I saw, but I needed to hear. Is there a heartbeat? There is not.

We had prepped your brother, a novice counter, noticer of empty chairs. The fourth chair at the dinner table will no longer be empty. Who will sit there? Baby Brother! How many people will we have in our family when Baby Brother comes? Four! We were to be nuclear, you completed us. Now we are quantum, circling chaos, the missing mass, knowing randomness.

2. The things of it: artifacts

In medical electrophysiological monitoring, artifacts are anomalous (interfering signals) that originate from some source other than the electrophysiological structure being studied. These artifact signals may stem from, but are not limited to: light sources; monitoring equipment issues; utility frequency (50 Hz and 60 Hz); or undesired electrophysiological signals such as MG presenting on an EEG-, EP-, ECG-, or EOG- signal. Offending artifacts may obscure, distort, or completely misrepresent the true underlying electrophysiological signal sought. (wikipedia, emphasis mine.)

You lived in me while I worked in the Cardiac Critical Care Unit. We saw heart signals on monitors confused by muscles moving, by the acts of living-artifact. At our doctor, I saw your heart beating, I heard your heart beating. In blue and red we saw the chambers, the blood flow, just a week before you died. I saw the still chamber of ribs after your heart stopped. My heart stopped too.

Artifacts:

1. Your body. Your robust 8lb 20 inch body is now ashes in a safety deposit box. I held you, vaguely. I was in the wordly ether, you were in the otherworldy ether. You were cold. You had blood pooling in your cheeks and extremities. But. You were perfect. Nothing amiss but the absence of life. Your chin: the same chin as your brother, modified from your father and my father. This is the essence of continuity. This is deepest pain, the sharpest pang. Your lips turned purple and we returned you/not you to the nurse. I didn’t kiss you goodbye. I’m sorry.

2. The photos. I hold you. Your Baba holds you. Your Mimama holds you. Your Cucu holds you. You are wearing a blue hat. Today I made myself look at them. I want inoculation to your face and fingers. I want to one day see them and just love you with peace.

3. The late ultrasound pictures. The last time I saw you alive. You were big, you moved, you did all the right things to show you were vital. And yet, the pictures show already a stillness. A premonition.

4. A box, a bag. An eagle scout project from an older brother, a grieving stillborn mother’s gift. Containers, placeholders. I opened the box today, held the blanket that last held you/not you.

5. Your footprints and the hair. The last record and real piece of you. In a bag, I can’t touch it yet. Still wet with amniotic fluid. It will never grow back.

What to make of the things. The dates, death and due, non-anniversaries, non-milestones. I don’t want to hold on to them. I am plagued by nostalgia anyway, for small things. My tiny tea set I would have given you if you had been a girl, or a careful boy. The small socks. The blue hat, the blanket. This rule follower is torn: the grief process, making memories, keeping vigil. But I can’t make totems. My world would be unnavigable from sorrow or avoidance. I imagine shipwreck in that world. I want our relationship unmediated by artifacts. I want a clear channel to you, to the light where you might be.