Ladies in Hades (Dell Books) back cover map for crime thriller, USA 1950, courtesy Steven Guarnaccia

We have tea parties on Beelzebub’s Roof and get skincare tips from Helen of Troy and whenever we’re feeling sorry for ourselves we get drunk with Cleopatra and play chicken, taking turns peering over the edge of the Bottomless Pit.

Then at 3 AM we stumble together through streets of fire to Anne Boelyn’s Waffle House for belgians with cinnamon sugar. It’s not what you would call fun but we are arm-in-arm anyway, shuffling in step.

I’m sorry you’re here too, but I’m glad for the company.

++++

The pamphlet was a piece of paper folded twice, a photocopy of a photocopy, crooked and smudged. On the front was a line drawing of a forlorn-looking woman with her head in her hands. She was wearing bellbottoms and a turtleneck sweater. The title read

BOOKLET OF NORMAL FEELINGS.

It was a fruit-punch-and-cheese NICU gathering for parents and I must have looked a mess, eyes glassy and red, bird's nest hair, on the brink. A social worker appraised me and as she reached for the melonballs with one hand she pushed the pamphlet across the table with the other, saying maybe you should read this, looking prim and satisfied, duty done.

Instead of taking the pamphlet I reached under her waistline for her pantyhose, pulled them up over her head and walked out.

Scratch that.

I obediently took the thing and looked it over with a frozen face as the parents around me yammered cheerfully about jaundice and reflux. Then I burst into tears, the snotty, gulping-for-air kind, bawling about cerebral palsy and retardation and brain damage and lifelong diapers as everyone else buried themselves in platefuls of two-bite muffins and styrofoam cups.

As I stumbled out into the hall she followed me and I thought cynically here we go, she’s going to try and help me but instead she called my name and said here, you forgot your bag, pressing it into my shaking arms. Then she turned and walked away.

Later that day the social worker in charge found me at the isolettes and said Kate, I think we should talk about what you might need, you know, to get through this and I said okay and she said I’ll be in touch but she never was, even after Liam died, other than giving me a $10 gas coupon once every two weeks. Which reduced the cost of twizzlers for my NICU commute by about half.

I understand they’re budget-strained. I understand that babies are the priority, not me. They provide beepers and tubes, the diagnostics, the chemical goo, the doctors highly trained in the art of saying we just have no way of knowing.

But I often wonder: if I were in charge, how would I initiate new and aching parents to this alien world? How would I help them feel like they had a place in it? How would I stand beside them as they made decisions about do-not-resuscitate orders and palliative care? What would I do to consider a babylost family ‘discharged’? We wouldn’t set them loose again into the rampant ordinariness, squinting and disheveled, without some sort of floatation device… right?

In a week or so I’ve got a phone interview with a researcher from the hospital who wants to know what they could be doing differently for bereaved parents. What would you tell her?

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

—james baldwin

What is it about the loss of a baby that either a) brings all the assholes out of the woodwork, or b) inspires ordinarily sensible people say asshole-like things?

I have a vested interest and will therefore be the source of your enlightenment a voice intones without speaking.

Then, paraphrased:

Look at Family A, the ones with the daughter who lives in the bubble. Or Family B with all that divorce and the alcoholic and the foreclosure. Or Family C with the boy who is disabled.

You’re not the only one in the world who hurts. Stop dwelling, stop spilling your guts on the internet. Think of all the people around you who need you to be uplifting. Be like so-and-so. She’s always so positive.

All of the above implies that I am a falling-down mess, a naval-gazing embarrassment despite being a mother and a moneymaker and some reasonable facsimile of a wife, at least when I’m not wearing those revolting yellow sweatpants.

I sit ball-gagged with graciousness, almost too confused to be wounded. From where I sit, you see, I am doing well. I’m fiercely proud of myself and my family, a year ago and today. Made to live through it again I would choose to be, do, say and feel the very same without hesitation.

I’ve never been so expansive of a woman as I had to be last year. It was messy, but I swam in it. I wore every aspect of it like a bloody sandwich board around my neck because that’s just what I had to do.

For two months I pumped and cuddled, loving both of those boys regardless of speculative outcomes. I forced myself to stare unblinking at the horror until I could see the beauty underneath all the wires and tubes and bleeping because dammit, if one or both of them were to die, I wanted to remember their hearts, their eyes, their soft skin and wee grunts. Not just machines and misfortune.

Then I went home and rolled around on the floor with my two-year-old, tickled, grilled cheese, daisy-chained, story-read. Then to bed and up again in the morning for my NICU commute, indoctrinating myself to the live version of Bob Marley’s War because it was the only music I could tolerate—a message of hope and hopelessness on such a vast scale that mine might seem manageably provincial in comparison.

Then those double doors would swing open and I’d step across the threshold, the lone good guy at the wild west saloon, guns at my hip, death-defiant. Don’t mess with me. Don’t you fucking dare.

Despite all that, the occasional message persists, a year later: You’re making everyone uncomfortable. Who do you think you are, anyway? Do you think you’re special because of all of this?

What’s almost worse, aside from the logistical nightmare of faking one’s own alien abduction? The flip side: the silence.

What a crummy spring we’re having... too much rain, eh? he mumbles as he fidgets and stares at his shoes. I know he knows. He knows I know he knows. He stands in front of a wrinkled, grey, twenty-foot trunk that spits peanuts against his forehead with a shwuck! schwuck! schwuck! as he shrugs elephant? what elephant?

I’m being considerate, the silent majority congratulates itself. Best not mention it. Easier for everyone.

Chickenshit, I say to the latter. Chickenshit with whip cream and a cherry on top.

And in the face of the former—the forcible enlightenment barbershop chorus—I fantasize sticking up for myself without regard for friction.

I’ll do it in my dreams, if nowhere else. In my magical fairyland where the sea rises, the light fails and we hold each other, keep faith with one another, lest the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

+++++

Through the weekend as it sat on the backburner, this post overheated until it stuck to the bottom, blackened and tough, tainting the rest of my brain with a faintly ruined flavour.

We are a prickly bunch, are we not?

I fish for evidence, cling to outrage. I walk through the world with my arms folded across my chest, daring people to prove me right. And when they act human—when I trigger their own demons and nightmares and they prickle at me for it—I hold it against them. Or when they naturally recoil from deadbaby cooties, as I would have done myself, I scorn them for it.

It's exhausting.

I need Zen and the Art of Spirit-Baby Motherhood to figure out how to be patient with the universe. To redirect misspent energy. To help those who make tentative steps feel welcome standing beside me, even though their attempts may not always be graceful. To be sure of my own truths. To forgive.

A year out, if you've reached it yet, where did you stand?

Now that our launch blitz has eased off--we're up, we've found you, you've found us--my head is like a basketfull of stray wool and odds that need to be spooled and tidied.

I've got all kinds of things to say, thank-yous and welcomes and reminders. But for now I'm just going to point you towards this:

Tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 21^st) at 9 PM Eastern, Bon and I will be live on Blog Talk Radio with host Kristen Chase of Motherhood Uncensored. We’ll be talking about cobbling life together again, how friends can support us, how life changes with gain and then loss.

Click here to listen—and if you’ve got questions or comments, we’d love to hear from you. Or leave a comment if you’ve got an idea, something for us to cover. Or if you're unable to listen live, check out the archive later.

That’s uhh…. all for now. Be umm… k-k-kind, willya?

Me write better than me speak.

The cynic in me wished it had come wrapped in discreet brown paper, like old-school porn or a build-your-own-atomic-rocket kit.

It had never occurred to me that answers or comfort or enlightenment might be found inside a book. The futility of making sense of our loss of Liam made me indifferent to philosophy, immune to it, even hostile that any self-proclaimed new age guru would presume to try and answer unanswerable questions.

So I've fumbled through the last year since he died, relying entirely on the exfoliating properties of writing. An attempt at counselling went nowhere, and I figured it was time to simply let time pass.

Then I came across Julie, whose beautiful, two-year-old son Ward died in the summer of 2005.

Try Don't Kiss Them Good-bye by Allison DuBois, she wrote, and anything by Elisabeth Kubler Ross. I liked The Afterlife Connection by Dr. Jane Greer, too. But if you only read one, read Emmanuel's Book.

Errmmm, I thought to myself. A book? With, what? Airbrushed unicorns and sunbursts on the front cover and a reverently, constantly capitalized letter H as in His plan and His glory and His eternal salvation?

I may be a cynic, but I like Julie. I like how she talks of her little Ward, and of her journey as a healing mama. Her enthusiasm for the genre had me curious in a what-harm-can-it-do sort of way.

I tried counselling for the sake of due diligence. I'm sure it's all pap and saccharine, death for dummies. But maybe there's something there. Due diligence.

And so it was during a rare window of spiritual consumerism that I clicked 'Add to Shopping Cart' and a few weeks later Emmanuel arrived alongside Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian. Forgetting I'd ordered a book with the subtitle A Manual for Living Comfortably in the Cosmos I opened the box in front of Justin and shrank in embarrassment, hustled to the bedroom to stash it in my underwear drawer.

I sneak it out when no one's looking, bring a pot of tea to the bedside table and curl up under the duvet at 2 PM on a wintery Tuesday, just because I can, Evan at playschool and Ben propped with pillows on the bed where he fell, milk-drunk.

And I see this:

Dying is akin to having been in a rather stuffy room
where too many people are talking and smoking
and suddenly you see a door that allows you to exit
into fresh air and sunlight.

Truly it is much like that.

Matter becomes less dense.
Consciousness becomes less restricted.
Colours become more vibrant.
Sounds become more pleasant.

All the senses, finally released
from the cloak of the physical body
take flight with song.

The heckler in me scoffs

Oh, please.
Finally released? He never even made it outside.
'Finally' doesn't apply to someone who had so little chance to live.
I want him here with me in this rather stuffy room, dammit.

Then something quieter whispers

Oh, please.
Please let it have been like that.

+++++

Over the past year people of all persuasions have sent spiritual kibble my way. Quotes like these

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

james baldwin

I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.

I choose to risk my significance, to live so that which came to me as seed goes on to the next as blossom, and so that which came to me as blossom goes on as fruit.

dawna markova

...and suggestions of books, many books, most of which have been duly noted but unexplored. I'm not sure why. What's your kibble? What words or philosophies softened your heart a little, after the loss of your baby? 

When Liam was last on your mind, what were you thinking?

Sulking over money. Sulking over the fact that none of my effing clothes fit (twinskin, wobbly ass, wobbly thighs) and even if they did, they're all years old and I can't stand any of them. Sulking over the fact that my hair hangs like the ears of a basset hound. Sulking over my unruly eyebrows, and how aligning the planets to get them mowed is about as likely as Viggo Mortensen showing up at my house to administer Amish massage.

So I'm sulking.

And then the voice hisses Shame on you. How dare you dwell upon yourself when you couldn’t keep his brother safe.

I brush it away from my face like a spider’s web, inadvertently walked-through. I refuse to indulge it today. But it’s too late.

I feel so worn out with two kids. Imagine if it had have been three.

And then an angry mob straps me to a board and flays me to the bone, as they should.

A year ago, scared shitless, consumed with why couldn’t I have gotten pregnant with one baby like everyone else, instead of two? because I wasn’t ready to be that much of a mama, yet.

Is there such a thing as karmic twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome?

(Hence the flaying.)

TTTS just in time for me to change my mind, my heart. I was finally ready to be that mama for the two of them, my mirror-sons. But now he is gone and I am gutted, having wanted him.

+++++++

Do you ever wish you could be ordinary again, just for a day? To be given reprieve to stress about credit cards and culinary disasters and the pain and gain of personal waxing?

A reprieve from the burden of enlightenment, of solemnity. A vacation from this unbidden intimacy with death. The ability to sit in front of So You Think You Can Dance with my brain on neutral, as it never is anymore: in slovenly peace.

Some days, I mourn the loss of obliviousness as I mourn the loss of my son.

Robust, medically unremarkable babies are almost comical to me now, all linebackers and lumberjacks and riveter-rosies. Despite the safe arrival of these strapping boys and girls, labours that deviated from a triumphant ideal send some of their mothers into post-performance despair and the beast inside me tugs at its chain, lusting to snap.

But it's pointless folly to deny a hormonal, sleep-deprived postpartum mama her disappointment—like scolding "Think of all the starving children in Ethiopia!" to a teenager who sulks in front of a plateful of creamed spinach.

+++++

One year ago this morning was the dawn of disaster.

If we don’t do this right now we’re going to lose both of them. We can barely find just the one heartbeat, and it’s extremely faint.

I lay strapped down and shaking and a masked face next to my ear whispered urgently through the chaos make a fist, make a fist… and the eyes behind the green paper were glassy and full of doom.

Then the world went black.

Instantaneously I awoke wondering if there had been some mistake, wondering why it hadn’t been done yet, clattering uncontrollably. The fluorescent, sterile room looked as it does when people come to their senses again in movies, shot through a vaseline-smeared lens, all sounds muffled as if underwater.

Which was fair enough. By fault of my own body, one of my sons had drowned.

+++++

This is my goddamned territory. Stop choosing to be here. You don’t belong.

In my imagination I take birthers who mourn their lost goddesshood by the shoulders—especially those held dear—and prop them up in front of a billboard of my beloved Liam at his end, make them look as I had to make myself look. Turn them to stone with my snakes until the slats of the billboard rotate with that whirring click and these small, white words punctuate jet black:

BIRTH MATTERS.

UNTIL IT DOESN’T.

+++++

In a pre-publish fit of uncertainty about this post, of which you see only excerpts, I spoke with Bon about potentially being the first bridge-burner here at Glow in the Woods.

I know it might be pain olympics, I know. But it’s totally true and don’t you think it’s justified and it has to be said and doesn’t that infuriate you too and there’s Us and Them and dammit, I’m tired of them thinking they can use the word ‘grief’ when Liam and Finn are gone.

In the space of this tantrum the post shrank in my head against my will, the venomous bits falling off with shame and imminent dissection.

A woman who calls her body a failure because of an unwanted c-section of a healthy baby leaves me with If you're a failure, what the hell am I? One of my babies is dead because of my body. Don't you dare presume to own my words.

Backed into a corner by the school of uncynical birth, I want to punch my way out. That’s all this is. One year later I’m still angry, blindingly so, hissing through a peephole at the rest of the world's sunshine-dappled daisy meadows.

+++++

What does birth mean to you, now? How do you support birthing friends after what you’ve been through?

Most important: how is it possible to be up to your neck in self-pity and still have compassion for the relative heartbreak of anyone else?

On meeting her for the first time I later wrote She could have been unicycling around her living room juggling flaming bowling pins and I would have been instantly soothed just to be in her company.

This was Bon, the one who's been where I have been. The one who was able to look me straight in the eyes and simply be with it, not recoiling, as I can do for her. Both our skins branded, still hissing with absence and longing and the macabre.

I've never felt quite so understood.

It was Bon who christened me and all of us medusa: the namesake for how isolating it feels to be the mother of a baby that’s died, for how you see the world after this loss, and for how the world sees you.

The six of us have gathered together to make a space that’s about more than individual catastrophe. We hope that company on this road may diffuse some of the demons, mamas ahead shining some light from further along the gauntlet. Proof that some reasonable facsimile of peace is an inchworm with a way of gaining ground.

Welcome. We’re honoured that you’re here.

Over the next few weeks we’ll be adding articles to the library and featuring interviews, links, reflections and more of everything just about every day. Read about why we’re glowing in the woods. Subscribe. Share your friends: us with them, and them with us. Tell us about your babies. Tell us what else you'd like to see, what's helped and hindered you.

Or just say hello, won’t you?

love, the medusas