The alternate universe

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The alternate universe

Hi! Last time I saw you, you were pregnant, and you must have had the baby! Congratulations! I signaled back with a grimace and gesture at the phone to indicate that I was on an important call and couldn’t talk right now. After our run-in, Jill was still walking around in her version of reality in which my daughter was alive. Our wordless interlude had given me a glimpse into an alternate universe — the one I wished I lived in, in which I had a phone full of photos of my soon-to-be toddler. The one in which people’s faces light up when they run into me on the street.

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Before and after

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Before and after

Even then, in the midst of the before, I had light in my eyes. I buried myself in my career, and spent my days planning adventures with my husband. In retrospect, maybe they were distractions. But the laughter outweighed almost everything, and I was relatively content with the person staring back at me in the mirror during that period of my life. I slept through the night. Something I wish I hadn’t taken for granted then.

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Losing my religion

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Losing my religion

It’s terrifying to live this way, to have your faith and naiveté crushed in one violent instant. To be truly certain, deep in your bones, that nothing can protect you. That tragedy can strike any one of us at any second. But maybe it’s liberating, too. Because if you believe that you can ensure you own good luck by praying, or eating salads, or surrounding yourself with the right crystals, then it holds that people make their own bad luck, too. It’s scary here on the other side. Most people don’t want to join me, and I don’t blame them. I miss that feeling of comfort and certainty about the future that I used to have. But I can’t go back.

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On recordkeeping

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On recordkeeping

This here is a record. A record in time. December 2, 2019. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty-one days after I stepped away from that blinking cursor and a soon-to-be past life, one hand on my belly, willing her to move. I cue up the interview recording again. A moment where we are both laughing raucously at something only a bereaved mother a certain distance out can laugh at. And then we are serious again. We say his name. We say her name. We’re creating a record, carrying it forward, together.

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