The most beautiful thing I have ever done was to name the girl for Light and Peace. Lucia is the light. Paz is the peace. She is the light and the dark. The peace and the war. I named her long before she became who she ended up becoming. What I mean is that I named her long before she died. I named this child metaphorically. Metaphorically only if she were dead.
All I ever gave her was a name.
But what she gave me was infinite. The understanding of unconditional love, of absence, of suffering, of impermanence, of fear. (Fuck, I was afraid after she died. I was afraid of being alone and being with others.) She gave me an understanding of without. She gave me the whole of the abyss. I didn't smile when I saw her. I didn't laugh because she was here. I found her birth beautiful, but it didn't erase the horror of her death. I wish I could have at least given her the sound of joy once.
I gave her some kisses, tears. I gave her an urn. A place on the shelf in the secretary. It sits in front of all my books about God. Those things seem the least I could do, the very least.
I gave her part of my wrist. I wrote her name across it--the name I gave to her. When I tattooed it on me, I took her name back. All I gave her, I now have--the blood, the tears, the urn, the name. It was her second birthday, and I didn't know what to do anymore. I wanted her on me, in me again, blood pulsing through her little beautiful body, so I wrote her name on the inside of my wrist. The blood rushed to the spot when she removed the needles and ink. Her name written in black in a cloud of inflamed skin. With her name tattooed on me, I can always possess the only part of her I gave her. I can always send my blood to her again. When I squint my eyes, her name looks like Sanskrit, or clothes hanging on a line. Like hieroglyphics that show little symbols of grief and heartbreak and undying love.
After her name, and before it, I made two dots. She is in the middle. Two breaths. Two pauses. Not the end of my story, not the beginning, somewhere in the middle that seems like a beginning and an ending. Three years ago today, she died. Three years ago tomorrow, she was born. Even though I have integrated her death into our family, into my being, into my body, the fact catches me up. She died. Forever.
I take comfort in the physics of it. Everyone dies. This is not about me, or my family. Then I get all caught up in the metaphysics of her death. I want her back, and science won't give her to me. My four year old daughter explains to me that TracyOC's four year old daughter C. believes that when sisters die, they go into the sky. Beezus believes that when sisters die, they go into trees. I imagine in another place that weekend Tracy and I were talking about the same thing.
I don't know what I believe anymore. She is gone. Last year the moon was full, and eclipsed on her death day. The night felt magical and important, like Nature herself was reminding me of the mysteries I will never understand. Like the mystery of her death, and her life, and her holiness. In those mysteries can be a beauty, a light, and something resembling peace. There was a sense of connection in it, the death and the eclipse and the full moon and the winter. This year, I feel numb, quiet, and confused. The wind whistles through the eaves of our house, makes it sound like footsteps on the back stairs. It is solstice. It is cold and dark. It is a new moon. Total blackness. The Earth has not yet given birth to the Sun. And if she does, will the child be a dying star? A supernova in our bellies?
A shooting star across our lives, and then she is gone. Poof. Make a wish.
In the first year, I tried desperately to transform my grief into a kind of joy about her. That never worked. I could only transform it into a kind of reverence for her, a kind of worship of her holiness. I would whisper her name. Lucia Paz. She is a holiest being I know because she never spoke, or breathed, or prayed, or harmed another living soul. She just died. And in death there is a peace, maybe even a light. She was pure love given. Pure love received.
All I gave her was a name and it was someone else's name. A saint whose eyes were plucked out for being too beautiful for a celibate. When they plucked her eyes out, God made more beautiful eyes grow back in their place. I bake Sankta Lucia buns with saffron and think about her eyes. The skin on her eyelids were torn and bruised, and I had to lift them gently to see the color. Her eyes looked dead.
We are only making them for her.
The saffron buns, I mean. She doesn't eat them. She is dead. So they stale and mold over. I mourn the buns. Sankta Lucia is celebrated on one of the darkest days of the year. Candles are lit and a little girl wears a white dress and a crown of candles. She sings a haunting song about light and peace. We remember our Lucia on the darkest day of our year. It is so dark, it never seems like day at all, just an twenty-four hour cloak of darkness over our family. The saint's eyes were plucked from her skull, like my daughter was plucked from my womb. She didn't grow back. She floated away into the night sky and became something else, maybe a tree, or perhaps nothing.
I sit outside tonight. With ice lanterns and cocoa, I wait for the Earth to give birth to the Sun. I wait to give birth to her. My tears freeze into long icicles, hanging in front of dawn. Eternally winter solstice in my heart, eternally the darkest day. I will whisper her name to the trees, the sky, to the nothing I feel inside me. She will not come, but perhaps the waiting is the important part.
Tell me about your child's name. How did you choose it? What does it mean? Did the name change after your child died? Did the meaning change after your child(ren)'s death? Was it symbolic? Do you have any rituals or yearly practices that revolve around your child's name?
It's cold and rainy 60 degrees here. So far today I've had a big mug of homemade latte (long live my foam-making gadget) and two medium mugs of hot tea. I am planning to have at least one more of those.
I don't know whether it's because it's a rainy day, or because a fellow medusa and her family are staying with us for a couple of days, or because I'd nursed a general unease for half the day today before locating its source in it being a date of significance, the first of the "five years since..." ones, but whatever it is, I am suddenly feeling that it's been way too long since last we asked how you are doing.
So grab a mug of steaming with whatever you are in the mood for. Or, if you prefer, pretend it's actually nice and sunny outside and we are sitting in a sidewalk cafe, and umbrellas above us are reflecting in our drinks.
(Though if your drink is really reflecting an umbrella above you, I am jealous and I am not sure I want to know.)
Whichever way you go on the drink, though, do stay a bit and tell us how you are. What's been going on? What is on your mind? Let's talk.
My cell phone rings, and I see it is my friend calling. I don’t answer. I heed the voice in my head saying, she won’t say what you want her to say. I leave the phone alone.
It is February 28th, my baby’s birthday and death-day, and a stillness has descended on our house. Outside a cold rain falls from the sky and freezes as it hits the ground. Brian and I sit on the futon in his office with blankets, mugs of tea, and laptops. All day he stokes the fire in the woodstove. We listen to the crackle of burning bark without speaking. We keep the lights low. Now and then I look out at the branches of our maple tree, steadily being encased in ice.
All day I sit, working a little, reading a little. Meanwhile, my laptop stays open to Fa.cebo.ok and email, and the cyber condolence flows in. A hug sent here, a love note there. All day, my baby is being remembered someplace on the globe.
I get only a few condolence calls. This is okay, because my heart is so full that I can barely speak. I let them go to voicemail. When the call comes from my friend, for a moment I consider answering. Did she remember?
No, she did not. On my voicemail she leaves a sixty second rant about delayed flights and the price of gasoline. That’s all. Everything she didn’t say adds to the silence in my house.
* * * * *
The nature of my friendships has changed. Wasn’t there some celebrity in the 1980s who survived a plane crash, and then left her husband for a man who was in the same plane crash? I feel like her sometimes - like you can only really get me if you were on the plane too.
But I haven’t cut anyone out of my life. I have become an enigma to those “before” friends. They have unknowingly inflicted wounds, yet I still need them badly. Sometimes I need a time-out from grief, and a friend who’s never been to the dark side of the moon – plus a martini – can be just the ticket. My “before” friends link me to the “before” me— a self that I once knew and liked but can no longer access. I might need her someday, and they carry memories of her.
But this one friend – I can’t compartmentalize her. I’ve tried limiting our interaction to occasional social outings. But she is accustomed to our friendship running deeper than that. She probes and wants to know how I’m really doing. So I tell her, and she can’t change the subject, or clear the room, fast enough. I fall for it every time, because I believe that she is better than this. For two years I have been throwing my heart into her path, only to watch her casually step around it.
photo by youngthousands
If only she would say my baby’s name just once.
If only she would not complain to me about how hard it is to raise her daughter, born alive five weeks before mine.
If only she did not wonder how the holidays could be hard for me, since they are so fun for her.
If only she would tear up a little about my loss, the way she does at those TLC shows about moms who give their babies up for adoption.
If only she did not think of my loss as a health problem.
If only she believed my baby were real.
* * * * *
If only she were on Fa.cebo.ok.
Thinking of you.
(((hugs)))
remembering your baby
xoxo
So simple. So easy. That very tiny bit of love, sent regularly by keyboard, lets me know that my friends care, even if they don’t completely understand. It soothes my beastly bitterness at how the world slights this type of loss. Fa.cebo.ok, of all things, has saved some real friendships, by helping me let people off the hook for not being better at this. (Not you, Dad. If you are my parent, Fa.cebo.oking me on the baby’s birthday does not count.)
Maybe if this friend were on Fa.cebo.ok, she would say those needed little things on cue. Maybe she would see what other humans post to me, and a lightbulb would go on. Oh, that’s what I’m supposed to say!
But that’s a fantasy. Cyber love can’t save this friendship. I’ve gotten myself into a tug of war with someone who doesn’t even know she’s holding the other end of the rope. She can’t imagine the sacred stillness of a house on a dead baby’s birthday – she can’t feel what I’m feeling, even a little bit. The only thing left is for me to drop my end of the rope and walk away.
* * * * * *
How’s it going with your friends from before your loss? Is there anything you wish they would say that they haven’t? How do you handle friends who have hurt or abandoned you during this time? What role does the internet play in your friendships these days?
Next month, on the 21st, it will be two years. To a toddler, that may be a lifetime, but to an adult, it is an election cycle. And yet, thinking about the amount that has been packed into that brief stretch is like thinking about how, in one second, light will travel 186,000 miles, or how one teaspoon of a neutron star would weigh six billion tons. They are things that can be known, but not comprehended. Not really.
Lately, I have been having more of my “Gus and Zoey Moments” than I used to. These are moments when I think of them and feel the floor drop out from underneath me. When I think of them and feel sad. As the second anniversary of their births and deaths approaches, I may miss them more than I did after the first one. I may. It’s hard to remember.
Maybe it is because we are now within a month of their anniversary. Maybe because Ben and Ellie’s growth provides reference points for what Gus and Zoey might have looked like, or acted like, or been like, if they had only, simply lived. Either way, they are more present to me these days. That might have been a nice thing, but it means that there are moments when suddenly, Ellie and Ben seem like my other children. And I don’t know how to explain that to them or to my own heart: Don’t worry. It’s only because the anniversary is coming up. It will be like this for only one month out of the year. The other eleven, you guys come first.
Maybe that sounds crazy. If it does, then here comes the crazy on top of the crazy:
In those moments of connection to Zoey and Gus, and wondering about them, and imagining them, I miss Ellie and Ben. I have to: in that universe, my other children never were and can never be. So when those moments with Gus and Zoey end, and I feel myself being pulled back to what is in front of me, I cross a space where I have lost them all. I am leaving a place where I have Gus and Zoey, and not fully back in the place where I have Ben and Ellie.
I am in this in-between place for the briefest measure of time—what is shorter than a nanosecond?—but the experience is so distinct and definite, the tinge lingers for seconds or even minutes afterward:
For just a sliver of a moment, I miss all four of my kids. And why shouldn’t I? There is no universe that can accommodate them all.
And if that sounds crazy, then here is the crazy on top of the crazy on topof the crazy:
Sometimes, when I feel I can only hold one set of our children in my mind, and not the other--or worse, when it seems like because I cannot keep all of my children, I cannot keep any of them--it feels as if our only constant child is our dog.
What are some of the "crazier" thoughts, ideas, or feelings your loss can bring up? What does the anniversary of your loss trigger for you? What are some of the ways you cope with it?
The naked brutal truth is that what brings us together here is death. Our particular kind of death is disorienting by its very nature, by the timing of its essential untimeliness. But the other truth, one that can be no less brutal, one that seems particularly cruel in those first disorienting days and weeks, is that we are still alive. And so we have to keep going, we have to keep living. The pain with which every breath cuts? That's being alive, that's living after. But so is the eventual realization that it is no longer so, that breathing, and other things, are getting easier.
If you are not there yet, I am so sorry, and I know it's no comfort, this long view.
But this long view is where I am, four years and one day after the birth of my son, four years and two days after his death. I remember clearly that from the very beginning I bristled at anyone suggesting that this--A's death, our grief, the time then-- that this was something we just needed to get through or "live through," as an Old Country idiom goes. You don't get through this, was my retort, you learn to live with it. And so far, at least for myself, it seems that I was right.
Our one year anniversary fell on the first day of class at my then-new job. I wasn't running the course then, and I didn't even need to teach that day. But I found myself so distracted and wiped out in the days leading up to it and on the day itself, that I eventually felt the need to explain what all of that was about to my then-new boss. (Thankfully, that went well, and whatever I may think of my now-former boss, I will always remember his kindness about A.)
Yesterday, three years later, on my drive to the now-new job, I felt the familiar heaviness, familiar tightness-- the sadness, the longing. But then I parked, and I went to work. I talked about atoms, electrons, orbitals, bonds. My computer froze, and while I waited for it to reboot, I picked up the chalk and went on. I emphasized key points, and held the pauses I needed to hold to get the class to engage, to get someone to risk volunteering an answer. I read confusion on their faces and picked up my chalk again, and I drew and talked them to clarity. I explained the changes in schedule due to the past and future snow days and I joked with the class. It was, as far as they knew, just another day in the classroom. That was probably mostly time, mostly the learning to live with that time affords us as days pack into weeks and weeks pack into months. But it felt like a victory, this ability to do my job well even on this day, and it felt hard-won.
And when the class was over, I had something else to look forward to. A task, it occurred to me as I was walking back to my car, something concrete to do, not unlike that day four years before. Then the task was birthing, now-- shoveling.
You see, our cemetery only has the flat to the ground markers (and the vases that you could flip up, but obviously those are down for the season), so when a snowfall covers a section, all you see above the layer of snow are the wooden poles-- markers that the groundskeepers put in to delineate the rows through the winter months. So two years ago, at the two year mark, the winter had been snowy. It's not like we didn't notice, but for some reason, we didn't connect. It occurred to neither of us that if we went to the cemetery on the anniversary, what we'd likely see would be a blanket of snow. Which is, of course, exactly what we saw when we arrived-- snow about knee high and a few poles sticking out to mark the rows.
At first, we thought we'd just let Monkey go and put the flowers over where we estimated the grave should be. We thought she stood the best chance of not sinking into the snow. But she lost her bearings among the white, stopping a good distance from where I thought the grave actually was. And suddenly JD was following her, and then so was I. I wanted to steer them to what I thought would be the right spot. JD wanted Monkey to not feel like she'd gotten it "wrong," and so there was tension, and it felt right to no-one, and we left the flowers where I was sure he was not. Except for the one flower I walked over to the spot I thought was right, and stuck into the snow, all by its lonesome.
I felt like shit. The primal in me said I should know where my child is, I should be able to get to him. Not, you know, to him, but to his grave at least. To make matters worse, that year the anniversary of his death fell on a Friday, and of his birth-- on Saturday. Jewish cemeteries are closed on Saturdays, of course, so we went on Friday afternoon, after Monkey's school let out. So what I was left with, going into the day that marked his birth, was that awful feeling of loss and separation. Compounded-- sure, why not, right?-- by a nice round of stomach bug that swept through the house starting that very evening.
What to do with that feeling? Where to put it? I had only one answer. The next morning, as I was leaving to run some necessary errands, I also packed a small snow shovel, and I drove to the cemetery. I parked by the side gate, and I walked. When I got to the section, I stepped carefully into the footprints we made the day before. I headed for the lone flower, and I dug, carefully, right next to it. You kinda have to know that if I am telling the story, I found the marker right where I dug. If I didn't, the story probably wouldn't mean the same thing to me, and it probably wouldn't be needing telling today. But I did, and I felt that all was now right with the world. Not you know, regular people's world, but the world where one visits their child's grave in the cemetery, that world was now put right. So I sat there for a bit, and moved the flowers to the right spot, picked myself up, walked out, and drove to run those errands.
Fast forward two years, to this January. In the last three weeks we've had three snow days. It wouldn't take a genius to figure out there would be thick layer in the cemetery. This is where I decided that what I wanted to do was shovel ahead of our planned visit. But with minor snowfalls threatened every other day or so, I didn't want to shovel too early. And this brings us back to me getting in the car after my class yesterday. I had a job to do. I and my trusted shovel were going to make it so we could put the flowers right on the marker this year. An hour, I figured, 90 minutes at the outside.
I know I am not alone in feeling that the day he was born was the best of the worst days. I was thinking about just that after my class on the way to my car. From there I went on to contemplate why, if he wasn't born until well into the evening, the whole of that day doesn't seem so bad. The answer, it seemed, was that I had a job to do that day. I had to birth him, and there was work in that, and single-minded concentration, and anticipation. Not entirely unlike what lay in front of me, I realized. A task, physical and defined, requiring concentration and likely not a small amount of determination. A is buried almost at the far edge of the section, so getting to him is not a matter of swinging the shovel a few times. But an hour, I figured, 90 minutes at the outside.
I began to reconsider that estimate as I drove through the cemetery, snowbanks higher than my car in places. Three snowdays in three weeks. Pulling up to the baby section, it looked grim. But as I got out of the car, I noticed a dip in the snowbank a bit in front of me, where the new addition to the baby section was recently cleared. As far as I know, that whole section, about the same size as the original, only has one occupant for now, at least that was the case when last I looked, in late November or so. The dip in the snowbank wasn't just a dip-- from there led a trail of footsteps, human or animal I couldn't really tell, although if I had to bet my life, I would probably go with a deer. The footsteps, as my incredible luck would have it, went right where I needed to go-- toward the back part of the sections, right to where the old and the new meet. From there, I knew, I could dig my way to A's grave.
To understand why I felt so lucky you should probably know that my worst fear as I planned my digging expedition in my head was that I would accidentally dig a path that would have me walking on other graves. The dead, I know, don't care. But I do. The serendipitous footsteps literally showed me another way. I could dig through the new section without worrying where I dug-- I knew about where the new boy is, and the steps steered way clear of that spot, and in the back of the old section I know the locations of the few graves that are there pretty well-- it should be easy for me to avoid them, I reasoned.
Part way through the project I stopped to take a picture. The wider part is me digging to follow the narrow-- what I found there.
It took two hours and fifteen minutes to get all the way to the grave, and to dig around it wide enough for JD, Monkey and me to stand there together. There is a certain dead baby pride in finding that your aim is still true, that even when the snow lies higher than the tops of the marker sticks, you still know exactly where to dig for your son's grave. When it was over I took off my gloves to find that my hands have been stained black-- apparently the lining transfers. And I quickly realized that my feet were soaked through. Neither of these things registered until I was done. Singleminded much? Just a bit, I guess. Though I did stumble upon a few not entirely useless thoughts.
First, by the time I was damn near done, it occurred to me that it was a shame I did all the digging by myself. I've long maintained that the first few days were harder on JD than they were on me. He'd waited through that whole pregnancy to meet his son, and then his son died, and there still was nothing for him to do except bring me water. I, on the other hand, had things to do--give birth, tend to engorged boobs, tend to other parts. Purpose. All he had to do was sit around and breathe the sharp air. And here I was, four years on, occupied with another purposeful endeavor, again by myself. There is clarity in the snow field in front and a shoveled path behind. There is satisfaction in doing what little can be done on a day such as this. And so I felt bad for having that all to myself, and should we encounter another winter generous in snow, I've already suggested to JD that we go shoveling together.
The second not entirely useless thought is really a rather obvious metaphor. But I am going to say it anyway. Driving up to the cemetery I expected to have to lay my own path. It turned out that I didn't have to, at least not all the way. I found a trail to follow, though I still had to put in considerable work to get to where I needed to go. And that reminded me that though it may feel like it, we are never the first to walk the path of baby loss, and, sadly, we will not be the last. We each have a unique trajectory, but others have passed nearby. Sometimes their presence or their footsteps are obvious, and we find comfort in that obviousness. Other times, the presence of others is but a shadow, a divergent trail going off into the woods, an echo of voices carried on the wind.
And at the risk of clubbing this metaphor into complete unusability, we may not know when or how, but we each make it slightly easier, slightly more bearable for someone else at some point. Whether it is because our words, typed in anger or sadness, or joy, or longing and released to the wilds of the internets hit the spot with someone somewhere, or because we once said something to someone that caused them to be more considerate of others. Or even because if we are so lucky as to become pregnant again one day, we tend to walk tenderly with it, mindful of both the fragility of what we carry in us and of the potential hurt that seeing another's happiness may bring. And so, as we've said many a time to each other, I am so sorry you have a reason to be here, but I am so glad you found us.
How long has it been for you? What traditions have you developed so far? Have there been others who've helped you along the way?
As my very busy December freight-trained on, once in a while I would pause, briefly (very briefly), to note that this fourth time around it didn't seem bad. In fact, it seemed downright ordinary. The first snow didn't put me in the hole, the cold didn't chill beyond the bone. It was just winter, a season that I used to love, and that, it seemed, I could love again. As I did my little jig for being all kinds of functional, I did wonder, in that whispered way you sometimes wonder to yourself, whether it wasn't just because I was so busy. End of term is never a time for tea and scones (except if said scones are eaten out of a paper bag in the car as you drive from one place you had to be to the next... um, but if you find yourself in such a position in my city, I can tell you where to get the scones), but the end of your first semester of solo teaching? Definitely not. And yet, it seemed more than suppression. It really seamed my grief season hadn't started, as it had been doing, at the very cusp of the first winter month.
It's not that I wasn't missing A. I was. I am. All the time. It's just that I wasn't knocked back on my ass, the way I usually am this time of year. That is, until I was. New Year's Eve, the day that has been especially hard in past years, tapped me on the shoulder but otherwise kept its distance. And then January 2nd gut punched me, dropped me to the ground, and sat on top of me for a while, apparently thinking deep thoughts. "Four weeks and counting, beyotch," it said, strolling away.
It's grey out. That's more a statement of mood than of actual observation. These days when I venture outside and encounter sunshine, I am surprised. I shouldn't be-- it's winter, not polar twilight. In the meantime, things are happening, most of them even good. I have classes to teach for this semester, and even in the area that doesn't require a lot of prep, so there's hope for family time. Monkey is making progress in some important ways. The Cub is speaking, and turning out to have as wicked a sense of humor as we sort of expected based on his pantomime gags back from the mostly-nonverbal near past. And maybe that's what it's all about-- as always, as in the early days, time stands still for no-one. No matter how much I may want it to pause, to stay, to let me catch my breath, it marches on.
And then there are the new twists. Despite my own firm beliefs and repeated statements to the effect of grief being something that changes with us, something that doesn't really get that much better, but something that we can learn to live with better, despite all that once in a while I surprise myself when I realize that this, whatever this happens to be at the moment, this I did not expect. That is, I keep stepping on the same rake-- the one where it turns out that I do have expectations, even as I tell myself and the world that I do not.
This year, this seems to be the reading of tea-leaves that is momentary and fleeting imagining of what he would've been like now. That's not exactly it-- I can't imagine it, I know I can't. Because, and this thought is not in any way new either, that's what is particularly sucky about our kind of loss-- we know jack squat about these children of ours. But usually, and by that I mean vast majority of the time over the last almost 4 years, I haven't been able to or even tempted to go down that road. He's dead, you see, and so he can't be alive, and he can't be one, or two, or three.
But suddenly now, suddenly I am straining for a glimpse of what he could've been at four. I catch myself straining when the Cub is interacting with older boys, especially the youngest son of our friends, the kid who was supposed to be A's best friend. I catch myself straining when Monkey and the Cub are raising a ruckus inside or laughing like maniacs sledding down the little hill in front of our house. It's only for a second, less than that-- a fraction of a second. But it's there, and as I swat it away, I also wonder why now? Is it because the Cub is speaking? Is it because Monkey was four the year I was pregnant with A? I don't know. All I know is that this is new and newly painful. But also reassuring in that way where the hurt is too real for him to have been a dream.
I am also changing. On January 2nd, as I sat in front of my laptop with tears welling up for no particular reason, I chatted a friend to ask for help. This is not something I usually do, especially not something I do when the reason for needing help is grief. But I took a deep breath and jumped. Not today, I said, but sometime this month, can we have coffee? I am going to need some TLC. She's a good friend, and there's a coffee in my future. One I am looking forward to very much.
How far into this are you? How have your significant dates been for you so far? How have the periods coming up on these dates been? How has all of this changed for you with time? Are there new facets of grief that you are discovering? What are they?
glow in the woods
Bereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
