a suitcase full of hope

Chapter One

The suitcase is almost entirely filled with baby clothes. They were given to us for Tikva, before she was born.

After she died, I sat in the middle of the garage with Auntie Marty, and we went through the boxes and sorted them out. Marty was so patient with me – loving, calm and focused. She helped me decide what I wanted to keep and what I could let go of. She held the space while I touched each piece of small clothing and imagined what Tikva would have looked like sleeping in it as a baby in my arms, dancing in it as a toddler. I put everything in two big boxes and put them away in the garage.

Now, I go through the clothes again, almost a year later, and I put each piece into the suitcase.

My suitcase full of hope.

Hope that I will have another child, and that if she is a girl, she will wear these sweet things that were meant for her sister. I pick up a pale pink ruffled dress that Dave found in a thrift store a few months before Tikva was born and the tears come rushing. I just sit on the bed and cry, letting go a little more, letting go still all these months later. Then I put it in the suitcase, wondering what it will feel like when I do put that dress on my next child, my third child.

The next day I get on a plane with my suitcase and take it to Cincinnati, where the next chapter of our lives await us. In two short days, I find us a home to move into next month. I sign a lease. I make a video to show Dave and Dahlia what it looks like. I can start to see what is ahead now. I can imagine where we will put a crib when the time comes.

:::

Chapter Two

We are packing up the rest of the house. Gathering up our things to take with us.

Preparing other things to return to the generous souls who loaned us the makings of a home when we first returned from abroad – befuddled and overwhelmed – in order to give Tikva the best chance in the world at survival.

As I pack, I feel like I am undoing all that I put together before her birth. Moving backwards, as if the film projector is playing on rewind on the screen.

Tikva’s special things sit in their boxes and jars, soon to be put in a suitcase, destined for the wooden chest that awaits them in Ohio. The altar that has formed on our borrowed dresser awaits its turn to be put away in a box – found treasures from my walks in Golden Gate Park this past year. The toys people gave to Dahlia, and which she accumulated for the sole reason that she is five years old and that is what five year olds do, are sorted through and await their own suitcase. Maternity clothes are passed on, a few favorites packed to take with me (more hope). I have the vitamins and herbs I need to prepare for a healthy pregnancy in the near future (more hope).

The thing is that I really do believe there are good things ahead. Sometimes, when I am being especially Chicken Little about everything (aka catastrophic and completely overwhelmed), Dave reminds me that so much good awaits us. I know that, I really do. I feel it. I can close my eyes and feel myself pregnant again, holding a baby, nursing, holding a toddler’s hand.

I guess I just need to get there to really settle into the feeling. Get past this week of packing. Get past (and enjoy) the drive cross-country. Roll into the driveway of our new home. Get reacquainted with most of our belongings, which have been in storage for two years. Unpack. Settle into all that is new.

But first, this week of goodbye.

:::

Chapter Three

I go to my twentieth high school reunion. Anybody who asks me how old my children are gets to hear about Tikva. It feels good to talk about her. Right. Easy. People are at their best when I tell them, sweet. One old classmate says, Wow. I'm sober now. Another says, Can I buy you a drink?

A third tells me that I’m not the only one – a classmate I had barely known in high school also lost a child – her first, six years ago. I go over to her and tell her I'd like to talk to her about something we share. She knows right away what. We talk for a long time.

Uncharacteristic of me this past year, I feel social, friendly, chatty, and a bit tipsy. I am doozied up and look great. I talk to all kinds of people there, even those I had barely talked to during high school. I feel very much myself, no walls. Maybe that’s why it is so easy to talk about Tikva – my second child.

It feels like another layer of wrap-up. I want to say closure, but the closure isn’t about Tikva. It is more about wrapping up a chapter of my life that brings me here…

To this more true, more complete version of myself. The me I take into all that is ahead.

:::

Chapter Four

It feels like the last few pages of Goodnight Moon right now…

Goodnight clouds.

Goodnight air.

Goodnight noises everywhere…

Goodbye park.

Goodbye beach and ocean.

Goodbye hospital monolith on my way to everywhere.

Goodbye headstone marking the place where Tikva’s body lies.

Goodbye father and sister and family.

Goodbye friends who have held us (together).

Goodbye San Francisco.

Goodbye to this time, this chapter, this huge piece of the story…

:::

Chapter Five

Now it is all pretty much undone – at least on the surface, in the house. You can’t really undo two years of living… deeply.

I sit on the floor in an empty, echo-y living room. Dave sits on a bean bag chair next to me. It was empty when we arrived in the middle of March 2008 – my belly full of her – so early on this journey. Now this chapter wraps up.

Several times this week, I have wondered when the grown ups were going to show up to take care of all the dealing that needed to be dealt with. Packing, cleaning, organizing, administrating. Then one of those moments:

Oh! I am the grown up. Sigh... Shit! Nothing else to do right now but pack. It has felt endless, but it’s almost done, we’re almost on the road. Tomorrow we’ll take the mezuzah – the one from Jerusalem – off the doorpost to bring with us to Cincinnati.

:::

Chapter Six

We go to the cemetery one last time – for now – and I make two rubbings of Tikva’s headstone to take with me. One in color, one in black. On the way there, two baby hawks sit on two lampposts on Sunset Blvd. On the way back, one remains. On the way out a bit later, the same two are on the same posts, and a few blocks away, two adult hawks sit together on another post. A family of hawks – four.

Two and two. Two adults. Two children.

I sit before Tikva’s headstone by myself and cry.

I wish I could take you with me, Tikva. Literally… in a carseat next to your sister. Your big beautiful eyes looking around as you chew on your hands and babble.

I just sit and stare at her headstone – accepting.

And just a little bit amazed, still, that this is what we get.

This is how it is.

::: 

What transitions have you been through since losing your child(ren)? Have you felt able to take them with you? Left a piece of yourself, of them, behind? What has enabled you to stay connected, and grounded, during your transitions? What have you let go of?

everything but Silas, part 2

Our house and our hearts were filled on Saturday. It has been so long since I have felt as calm and peaceful as I did after we returned from the ceremony at the park.

Inside our apartment was madness, though. I was whipping up press pots of coffee as my aunt shoved food into the oven and people wove in and out of the rooms and between bodies pressed close together. A bag caught on fire. I dropped a pie while rearranging the refrigerator. The cats scampered in fear as our cousins and nephew chased them around. Conversations and chatter filled the rooms and the yard, and it was right.

Music played through the stereo as the Mets fans in the family piled up on the couches, watching the game. Pizzas were ordered, food was brought out and furniture and tables were rearranged on the fly, everyone chipping into do whatever was needed at that moment. We had a plan, but it was loose and success depended on everyone adding their little piece.

It was the same out at the park, when we planted Silas' tree. The three shovels were passed many times and at the end, everyone laid a rock on the fresh mulch under the tiny branches filled with small, vibrant leaves.

We intended to have a marker or plaque, but we just never got around to having it made, and by the time we were mentally prepared to do that it was too late. Instead we figured we would maybe wait a year, until the tree got a little bigger, and have it created and placed then.

Our friends were one step ahead of us. They had Silas Orion engraved on a large, amazing stone, and brought it with them on Saturday. It was exactly what we wanted.

Even the weather was right. A bright sunny day would have been too gorgeous and stark for such a sad event. The low, menacing clouds matched the tenor of my emotions. All day I was calm but unsettled. I felt sad, apprehensive, and that low-grade burble of terror softly churned in my belly. It's like feeling butterflies, but with razor-winged dragonflys instead.

As 2pm approached only a few people had arrived. And then suddenly everyone was there. The house went from empty to overflowing in a matter of about 15 minutes. It was great to see so many friends and family, but it was terrible as well. That twisting, complex emotion made me feel disconnected and a little disoriented. There was a feeling of celebration, having everyone together, but it was also desolate and sharp. "Yay it's everyone we love!" mixed brutally with "No no no no no not everyone. That is why they are here."

But we did it together, and that made all the difference. We walked to the park in small groups. I locked up the house and waited for stragglers and then brought up the rear with some of my oldest friends and one of my brothers. Across the expanse of the park I could see the colorful gathering of our friends and family. The center of their loose arc was immensely small compared to the thick, old trees standing tall all around.

At the park, next to the sapling, I shoved my spade into the earth forcefully, and then asked everyone to come closer and circle around. My father welcomed everyone and then recited Hard Times Come Again No More. I said the Hopi Prayer, and then Lu stepped forward to tell everyone why we picked an Acer Rubrum “Red Sunset” Maple tree to memorialize Silas. "The colors will be brilliant in the fall, when Silas was born. And he was born here, in this town so we wanted the tree to be here, too," she told them, and then she asked for everyone's participation to help us finish planting it.

Before they took up the shovels, though, I stepped forward one more time, because there was something else Lu and I wanted to say to everyone. I was barely able to speak at this point, but it was something we felt needed to be said.

"We do not believe that everything happens for a reason. We do not believe that we are being punished or tested by God. But we do believe that the only way we can can get through this is with all of your love and support. And we are so thankful that you are here with us today to help us, and that you will continue to be there for us, because we need it. We need it so much."

Family stepped forward first to shovel on some dirt and fertilizer, and then suddenly it was done, I was no longer the focus. As each person took hold of the shovel their total attention was on the tree and the task. This was their moment to physically connect with the ceremony, and in turn, our missing son. The action of their arms and hands on the handle, the scoop of dirt, the arc of pebbles and soil in the air as they each helped fill the hole around that tiny tree made the ceremony visceral, complete.

I loved seeing that look on their faces. I needed their sadness and attention to this everyday fact of my impossible life.

It's almost a little sadistic, I'm afraid. I wanted everyone to hurt yesterday. I needed them to feel the bottomless ache I live with every day. It gave me a sense of peace I have not felt for a long time. I didn't have to bear this alone because everywhere I looked on Saturday, I could see pain and sadness and understanding in everyone I loved. My load was lightened because of their hugs holding me up and their tears joining mine.

It turned out that I did not need to demolish the park as part of the ceremony on Saturday. I want that tiny tree to have good role models all around it. I want it to grow up tall and wide and strong. I want it to grow so tall and so wide, that I cannot get my arms around it when I'm out there some day down the line, holding onto it for dear life, because I still can't get my arms around my beautiful, missing son.

Did you perform a ceremony to remember and honor your child?  What was your favorite part of that terrible day?  What prayer or poem or song lyrics did you use in the ceremony?  What changed for you before & after that day, if anything?

everything but Silas, part 1

Looks like we're going to need a babysitter now and then. All they will have to do is take a trip to the Peace Park up the street from our house and water the tree we are about to plant in memory of our son. But you need to be able to transport several gallons of water there every week to sustain its life, so it's not a job for just anyone.

Most weeks we will water his tree ourselves. We considered a service that would take care of it, but I figured we should be able to handle a once-a-week task no matter how much of disruption it might be on those odd, busy weeks. After all, taking care of a fucking tree should be a hell of a lot simpler than raising my son. So we'll handle that weekly chore, one way or another.

That's how we get through a Day, anyway. One way or another. Somehow, someway, as we often say to one another.

I have no idea how the fuck we are going to get through Saturday, when we plant this tree and scatter some of his ashes and are crushed into blubbering by the mass of friends and family that are gathered around us. The awfulness of what we are about to do is hard for me to comprehend. Which is why the planning of this has gone the way it has.

They've called to see about bringing food and what we need, but I never have much of an answer. "Bring whatever you want," I told people. "If we don't have something, we'll call around the corner or up the street and order it. Anything we might need, we can get, easily."

Ha. If only that were true.

The pasta and chicken and bread and beer are all very much appreciated, but we simply don't have the energy to coordinate and organize. This event is suddenly large and largely unplanned because there is just no good way to organize the memorial of your infant son.

We focused specifically on what was the most important. Lu researched the options and then we went and picked out a tree. That day was oddly trivial and unbearably profound all wrapped up into a ball of confusion that was impossible to understand.

Wait, we're doing what? Instead of picking out toddler shirts and a new carseat it's... a tree? A tree that is supposed to mark the fact that our son was on this Earth? What kind of Math is this? What branch of Logic does this fall under?

My dad -- Silas' Grandfather -- is going to say a few words. He officiated our wedding and my brother's, and years ago said the eulogy for his mom, my grandmother. I don't know of anyone else that could perform this task on Saturday. We are so thankful that he is doing this for us, and I hate that it must be done.

I am planning on reciting the Hopi Prayer of the Soul's Graduation, as I did when we planted the peach tree up in New Hampshire. I think I can do it. I think the impossible pain of our son's death is something I can withstand for a few public moments before our gathered loved ones. I bear that pain silently every moment of every day.

Really all I have to do is show up, read the poem, and then withdraw. Even if I crumple halfway through, there's enough people to carry me home. But that's not going to happen.

Instead, I will recite the poem into the faces of the people I love, and then I will smash all the other trees in the park. I'll tear the river from its bed and swallow the clouds in a single gulp. When I am finished devouring this reality I hate, I will use the swingsets as toothpicks and saunter home unsatisfied.

On Saturday I am allowed to let the sad, torrential rage flow through me unfettered. On Saturday, I don't have to be okay, just like I'm not every day.