Inconceivable (14 page)

“You see that picture hanging on the wall behind me?” Kevin indicated the M. C. Escher print called
Sky and Water
, a black-and-white drawing of doves ascending; gradually, as the eye travels downward, the shapes morph into fish descending. The fish point downwards, as if the only direction left to swim is into darkness.

“I use that picture with clients who need to understand the depths of grief and despair. The fish in the bottom left-hand corner exists at depths of suffering that most people never experience. One cannot feel more darkness than where that fish is. That is where I think you are. You are being swallowed by grief and sadness. In the range of difficult human experiences, what you are going through is comparable to a death.”

Up to that point, I couldn’t have described the experience. Kevin really got it. Death. There would be no showing, burial, or funeral where a broad group of people would come together to grieve a life. It would be a death only to us and no one else. A very lonely loss. Life would go on for this child, but just not in our world.

“You are that fish, and the objective is to get the two of you to start to swim upwards. You need to move from that deep dark corner, toward the light. Unfortunately, the ascent from that depth of despair is going to take a long, long time. This will not be over for you in the near future. It will be hard work, but you can ascend. You can with time and by staying with the work of healing.”

Carolyn had mentioned that print after one of our previous sessions with Kevin, but I’d never taken such a long look at it. Kevin did not have any quick answers. But he did ask good questions.

“Did you know that there are two interpretations of the Passion of Christ?” Kevin asked. I immediately thought,
I should have joined that damn Bible study class when it was offered
. I looked at Kevin and sheepishly shook my head no again.

“The dominant view is that God sent Jesus down to suffer and die for the people,” Kevin said. “The other view is that Jesus lived His life and developed a huge following and, through a series of choices, eventually saw that those choices would lead to great suffering for Him and to death. He decided to not turn away from it, even though it meant the cross.”

I was captivated.

“The first view is difficult to understand, when you really think about it, because what father sends his only son to suffer and die?” Kevin continued. “The second view is a more humane view of Christ, yet it does not take away from the passion. In fact, it elevates it further, because He could have stopped or changed His course, but He did not. He accepted the suffering and made the sacrifice. I cannot pretend to know what you are going through, but you made a choice that meant suffering and sacrifice. I want you to look at the pain you are feeling in that context. You are experiencing some of life’s most profound suffering.”

As was usual after our sessions with Kevin, we did not leave with definitive answers. Would we meet the other family? Carolyn and I now had a platform from which to launch further discussions. We were not yet ready to answer that question, but we would be soon. I escorted Carolyn to her car and stood with her as she placed MK in her car seat. As she did these simple tasks, the basic work of modern motherhood, I watched her pull herself together for the drive. It was remarkable to see her fully experience her sorrow and anxiety about meeting the other family and then reclaim her equanimity before putting the key in the ignition. Maybe I wouldn’t have stopped to appreciate this simple action if it hadn’t been for Kevin’s advice to acknowledge the grace in what we were doing.

I got into my car and took a deep breath. I wanted to see and feel the grace, but all I felt was pressure and stress. There were so many appointments related to this crisis; it was practically a full-time job, on top of the one I already had. The newest area that involved more
meetings was the search for legal representation on the medical mistake.

We had recently done a significant amount of research to select an attorney to represent us. We had narrowed the search down to a very reputable attorney, Brian McKeen. When Brian sat down with Carolyn and me for a meeting in Toledo in April, three things captured me beyond his impressive credentials. Before he asked any legal questions or provided us with any opinion, he said, “I am impressed with what you are doing for this baby and the other couple. If you don’t hire me, I will still feel very fortunate that I had the opportunity to meet you.” This statement spoke to his priorities and his character. Second, Brian had a passion for his work and asked excellent questions and listened intently. Third, Brian had an immense knowledge and understanding of this area of law, the medical terminology, and everything about pregnancy.

Within forty-eight hours of the meeting, we hired Brian as our lead attorney; Marty Holmes Jr. would be involved in a supportive role. Their task was to work with the clinic to come to a reasonable settlement regarding the mistake and to try to achieve that without filing a lawsuit. Carolyn and I felt very fortunate to have such able representation.

A few days later we continued the conversation about meeting the genetic parents, this time with both Marty Holmes Sr. and Jr. and with our family law attorney, Mary Smith, at the Holmes law offices in downtown Toledo. When we arrived, the receptionist escorted us to a huge conference room with a table large enough to seat sixteen people.

Sitting there before the lawyers arrived felt odd, as if we were little kids in Dad’s big office. I guess that thought came to me because I’d known Marty since we were kids, and I’d known his dad Marty Sr. just as long, at a time in my life when I thought of him as a towering figure. Marty Jr. was part of my close-knit high school group that had been so loyal to each other through the years. I knew from experience that Marty would have my back. Marty had been
there for me consistently since I called him on February 17, providing not only legal support but, more importantly, life support. There were few people in the world I trusted as much as the Holmes family. They were the perfect people to advise us about my big fear that the media would invade our lives and badger us endlessly.

When this issue came up after they arrived for the meeting, they told us that the fact that our house was in a private subdivision would be a big help in maintaining our privacy. Marty Sr. warned us that the press could be aggressive in pursuing us at home and at work and that we needed to prepare ourselves for this possibility.

“You’d be surprised what some of them are willing to do,” Marty Sr. said.

Carolyn didn’t find this reassuring. She hated even thinking about it. I looked over at her and saw that she was playing with her bracelet. Her eyes were far away as she took the clasp that held her bracelet apart and then fitted it back together again and again.

“You have to be pristine in the comments that you make to the press,” Marty Holmes Sr. said. “Speak slowly, clearly, and concisely.”

After hearing Mr. Holmes’s advice, I had a feeling that we might need to hire someone else to help us handle the media part of this soon. Another task to add to the binder.

We shifted topics to the upcoming meeting with the genetic family.

“I think we should start from the best possible outcome and work our way toward that as a goal,” said Marty Jr. “The best-case scenario is the two families completely at peace with what has transpired. A great visual is the two families standing arm in arm after the birth in front of the hospital for a happy photo as they thank you for all that you’ve done.”

“You’ve got to be joking,” Carolyn said. I could see her eyes starting to fill with tears. “I can’t even imagine getting through the delivery, let alone standing in front of the hospital arm in arm. That idea is incomprehensible to me.”

“That might be the ideal,” I said, backing Carolyn up, “but I cannot imagine the shape we will be in at that time.”

“I think a home run for the other family is for you to find a way to let the baby go with no strings attached,” Marty Jr. added.

“What is our home run?”

“We don’t have one,” Carolyn stated.

“Carolyn, do you know how grateful this other mother is going to be to you?” Mary asked. “Maybe they’ll even make you godparents.”

“Maybe,” Carolyn said. “Maybe not.”

“Their attorney has assured me that they are really nice people,” Mary said, adding, “They are desperate. Every time I send a communication their lawyer tries to confirm that they are going to get their baby. I think they are really suffering.”

“We are not people who go back on our word,” I asserted. “When we say we will hand the child over to them at delivery, that is exactly what we are going to do.” As I made this strong statement, it occurred to me that this was one place that had no “maybe, maybe not.”

“So let’s set a date to meet them,” Marty Jr. said.

I looked at Carolyn. “I can see that this meeting would give them much-needed relief at some level. If meeting us helps them, then we will put our fears aside and do it.”

“I agree, but I think you need to know that meeting them does not change our situation,” Carolyn said.

“You don’t have to tell them everything,” Marty Jr. advised. “Tell them just as much as you feel comfortable sharing and not anything more than that.”

On the way home Carolyn and I decided that we’d work on an outline of what we wanted to communicate to the genetic parents. To me it was important to limit what we told them to what they needed to know to reassure them that their baby was well cared for and that we would be handing the baby over in the hospital with no
strings attached. (In fact, Carolyn and I wanted to attach all kinds of strings to this child so that we could ensure that we would have a long-term relationship, but we thought that would not be right.) We needed to stay away from any topic unrelated to those two issues until we became more comfortable with them.

I was sure that they expected that meeting us and finding out more about who we were would lessen their stress about the pregnancy and their child. But I knew that the meeting might just do the opposite. Learning about Carolyn’s health history would not leave anyone feeling comfortable about her pregnancy. I found that I did not want Paul and Shannon to feel more anxious than they already did about the health and well-being of their child. Carolyn might think it was mean not to be completely open with them about everything, but I wanted to protect them. We’d have to find a middle ground.

Note Sent to the Genetic Parents’ Lawyer by Our Lawyer
on April 14, 2009

Attached please find the latest ultrasound picture from today. It pictures the baby at 12 weeks, 2 days development with a heartbeat of 167 beats per minute. The next prenatal appointment and ultrasound are scheduled for Tuesday, April 21, 2009. Results will be forwarded that afternoon.

In addition, my clients are requesting a meeting with your clients the week of April 24, 2009. If they’d like to as well, please get back to me to schedule a mutually convenient time.

CAROLYN

The Sunday night before our meeting with the other family, we sat in our bedroom with the door closed, rehearsing how we would behave when we met them. Sean had taken out one of his massive
binders. He has an archaic organizational system that makes me crazy. It is archaic in the sense that it exists on paper. Lots and lots of paper, slipped into acrylic sleeves and slid into a binder. I’m not exactly sure where Sean shops for his binders, because they are the biggest binders I have ever seen. I have to buy binders when I buy school supplies for the boys, so I’ve seen the binder section of the office supply store. Sean’s binders are not from the stores I shop in. I think he special-orders them, as the size of these monsters exceeds the normal four-inch jumbos found on retail shelves.

Sean has a binder for absolutely everything in his life. He has a tax binder, a business/personal goals binder, an estate/financial-plan binder, and binders for every sport he coaches. The binders are all titled, carefully labeled, and divided into sections that make sense to him. Every Friday evening he unloads his “binder system” in our home office, stacking them on the floor and sometimes on the ottoman of the chair in the office—not my first choice of spots to store those bulky things.

The day Sean walked in with a new six-inch binder and a brand-new package of acrylic sleeves, I pretended not to notice until I saw the title of the new jumbo binder: “Sean and Carolyn’s CF File.” I knew immediately that this binder was for us—for this baby and this situation.

“What’s that?” I asked him.

“It’s a binder for this mess. We have to keep everything organized. We need to make sure every record of what we are going through is kept. You never know when we will need this stuff again.”

I knew he was right. We were incurring massive expenses: medical visits, prescription costs, legal bills, therapist expenses, lost time at work for Sean, and God only knows what using a surrogate was going to cost us. Even though I knew the binder was a good idea, I also was acutely aware that what I was going through couldn’t be charted or graphed. There were no receipts to be filed that documented my grief. Sean could special-order the biggest binder in the
whole world, but it would never be large enough to hold my broken heart.

Sean sat in a chair with his “CF” binder in hand as I lay on the bed. From one of the plastic sleeves he took copies of the outline we’d developed in the week since we met with the lawyers. We’d decided that Sean would go first and speak about his family history, and then I would describe mine plus our infertility struggles. We would talk about our children next, but when we thought about how that would go, questions came up.

“Are we going to tell them our kids’ names?” Sean asked.

“I hadn’t thought of that. I guess.”

“I don’t think we should. In fact, I don’t think we should tell them our last name.”

Thinking we’d surely introduce ourselves using our last name, I asked, “Why not? They are going to figure it out eventually. It would be rude not to tell them. They’d think we don’t trust them.”