Diary of a Loss Part 2

20 Aug 07 Monday

Been a long time since I've written anything, but I suppose I had nothing to write. My life sort of became baby-obsessed after my daughter died. Also, rather death-obsessed. I would catch myself (and still do!) saying that we "lost" our daughter ... like she fell out on the side of the road and we forgot about her. Or I would say "the baby passed" ... perhaps some test or a class on infant death? I imagine its because people fear death ... and the less we speak of it the better.

But I had to talk about it.

I found myself talking to random strangers. "Hi, I'm Laurie and this is my husband, Will, and our baby died last month." I'm not exaggerating. I terrified some poor grandmother in a park while waiting for my husband to get off work one day. She made the unfortunate mistake of sitting next to me on a bench to chit-chat ... We said hello and then I told her my daughter died in-utero. After that verbal mouth-fart, her grandson suddenly was in dire need of her presence.
It felt good to say that to her. Reminded me of when I was about 8 years old, in some card store, and my mom had wandered off to buy cards (she always does this, buys about $300 worth of cards in case of an unexpected holiday or birthday ... I politely inform her that hundreds of trees sacrificed their lives for her obsession and she tells me that I'm a rude little girl who thinks e-mail is appropriate communication for everything) ... we were in this card store and an old lady comes up and pinches my cheeks and tells me that I look just like my mother. Quickly I replied, "My mother is dead." And she blushed and flustered and apologized profusely. Its that kind of pleasant feeling, knocking the wind out of people, as the wind was knocked out of me. Spreading around the pain, as it were, to thin it out, I guess.

So I become baby-obsessed, too. But not in the usual way. I become obsessed with my body's inability to reproduce. How foolish! You might say as you read this. One death after three successful births and this silly woman thinks she can't bear children! This baby stops kicking me one day and I suffocate under the deafening silence of the absence of her heartbeat and then think my body kills children ... it is not foolish, it is logical. You would not think I was silly, had you felt that hopelessness and loss as greatly as I have.

So I obsess about not being able to bear children. And I start to read these books, books like The Handmaid's Tale ... things about how humanity is dying and women are becoming unable to reproduce. And of course these insidious little thoughts seep into my mind ... mildew on my sorrowful little brain. When you have no answer for a tragedy, any will do. And so that was mine. I was becoming infertile.

Or, here was my other thought. I sometimes hate my mother. Not in the blah, blah typical way that most girls do. I hate my mother because she tried to kill me three times when I was a girl. I hate my mother because she made me sick to get attention. I hate my mother because she is crazy and I'm not supposed to blame her for what she's done to me in the past because it isn't her fault. And I hate her because she needs me endlessly ... like flowers and sunlight ... or blood and vampires. She needs me and I must be there for her, because I am her daughter. And that's why I hate her. So I have no mother, because I have always been her mother. And the relationship I dearly wish for will never be mine. I have been taught to be satisfied with what I have, for at least I know my mother. But every time she tries to kill herself again, every time I get the call that she's in the emergency room because of an overdose or she slit her throat (she did do that once, she borrowed the pen of a social worker in the ER and then hid it, so when the social worker left the examining room, my mother stabbed herself in the neck with it) ... every time I get that call, I hope that she's actually done it. I wish with all my might that she's actually succeeded after fifty tries. So my spirit is crushed and suffocates under the weight of my mother's spirit, the one that I must support because she has no one else. And I think that killed my daughter. I think that her little fluttering light was not strong enough to bear the weight of three generations of sorrow (my mother's mother committed suicide). I carry the burdens of my mother and my grandmother, their sadness and black-clouded self-hatred. I carry that weight on my own shoulders but my little girl could not.

So there's that reason, as well.

Suddenly, though, I find myself pregnant again. I find my hopes for infertility dashed and I've failed again. I fail at being pregnant, I fail at being not-pregnant. Oh, you silly woman, you call me again. You laugh, but also shudder, at these foolish thoughts.

But what if this baby dies too?

I think that if it is a boy it will live, because he won't have to share the great suffering of three generations of women.

I think that if this is a girl, she will inherit my spirit and my herculean strength and will shoulder this weight with me.

I think that it is not her job and that I have no idea how to take this burden from her.

In the hope for a little girl I seek to be the mother that I don't have. I must allow myself only to be the mother that I am. And, so, it doesn't matter if its a boy, or a girl, or a twelve-pack of pepsi. But, it does matter. It needs to be a girl and I want it to be a boy. It needs to heal me though I don't want it to.

How terrible for little babies, the high hopes we throw on their fragile shoulders. The gender, the hair color, the eyes ... the personality, the astrological sign. If only they could just be. If only babies could just exist for their own happiness and not for the pleasures of the adults. It pleases you to give your child candy so you spoil her. It saddens you to make the baby cry so you don't yell at him. I think now that I will never lose sight of what is best for my child. I hope that I don't.

And for you, baby, the little neural tube unfolding in my womb like a pink and bloody flower, for you I will fill my heart with lightness and soft winds. I will not falter and stoop under the weight of my sorrow. Nourish and grow and blossom and be born.

Please. I beg of you.

Be born.

And yes, our beautiful son Liam was born after 9 months of perfect health and no complications, other than 20 hours of labor and an emergency cesarean section. He apparently didn't want to come out and kept bobbing back and forth like a cork. We still miss Eowyn and she is still a part of our family, albeit a spiritual part. Without her, however, we would have never had Liam. Its quite a bittersweet conundrum.