Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (15 page)

The funeral director gave her condolences and pointed down the hall to the room Aisley was in. She walked us toward it and stopped at the door. “Take as much time as you need,” she said. We looked through the door, and down at the end of the room, we saw a tiny white bassinet. A wave of anxiety rushed over me, my body trembling in trepidation. We grabbed each other’s hands and inched slowly toward it, passing rows of chairs as we walked. It felt as if we were in slow motion; we were getting closer and closer, yet we were still unable to see her. I saw the head of her little toy giraffe. It sat next to her as motionless as she was.

Finally her little face appeared. I expected to feel the same peace and comfort as the last time I saw her. I expected that solace to return, but the first thing I thought was, “That’s not my daughter.” Her face was covered in makeup. In their attempts to disguise her pale-blue skin, they had given her a brownish-orange appearance. Her features looked different too. Her face seemed slightly stretched. I felt a pang in being reminded that her face had in fact been stretched. She was freezing cold to the touch and smelled strongly of formaldehyde. I couldn’t pretend she was merely sleeping like before. It was painfully obvious she was dead. I wanted to pick her up but felt afraid. I was afraid she’d fall apart. Her little body had been through so much.

We went to ask if it was okay if we held her. The women said that we needed to be careful but that we could. I picked up her little body and she felt so light, so empty. She felt empty because she was empty. I kept thinking, “This isn’t my daughter; this is just her shell.” I wanted to be able to look at her and hold her, but it wasn’t the same as before. It just wasn’t her. The smell of formaldehyde was
overwhelming. Every time I tried to gaze at her and connect with her a whiff of chemicals reminded me…she’s dead. She’s dead. She’s been sliced and diced and she’s dead. She’s empty like a doll.

I tried to fight these thoughts. It was like being tortured. Reality was piercing through my fantasy. Taking the beautiful moment I wanted and gutting it. Cleaning it out with strong chemicals and handing it back to me. Laughing at me for thinking I could change it.

I wanted to be with my daughter like before but I couldn’t. I kissed her and told her how much I loved her. I put her back in the bassinet. At first I felt like something was wrong with me, like I was rejecting her. I should be cuddling her body like before. But how do you cuddle a shell? I shouldn’t have let the smell bother me. I shouldn’t have thought about how gray her skin must have been under that paint. I shouldn’t have let these things be morbid reminders of what they had to do to her. But it all bothered me.

Admitting this felt like the beginning of acceptance. Accepting that she died. I love my daughter more than anything; I just couldn’t get rid of that voice in my head that said, “That isn’t her.”

A sudden sense of closure came upon me. If that isn’t her, then maybe she is somewhere else. Maybe her energy or spirit left. Maybe she crawled out of her shell to be reborn. Maybe that wasn’t her lying in a cold bassinet, stitched up and empty. Maybe she was okay. I felt a different sense of peace. I kissed her again, told her good-bye and that I loved her. This time I said it to the air around me. I left that funeral home feeling unexplainably better. Deep down I knew that I wasn’t leaving her there in that cold, eerie building…she wasn’t there after all.

Courtenay Baker

I
took the phone call ordering me to the hospital while standing in the dairy section, my cart full of produce and meat. I fumbled as I grabbed some cream cheese and somehow levitated through checkout and to the ER, where I was directed upstairs to the cancer ward. My feet fit nicely in the recurring pattern on the carpet; my right foot stepped on a mauve flower, my left on a leaf, all the way down the hallway.

“I’m sorry, there are no patient rooms available, but here is a family lounge. Wait here and I’ll be back with your injections.”

I nodded.

The room was tiny, barely larger than a laundry closet. There were two faded armchairs, at least four boxes of tissues; on a counter a soundless TV was tuned to an episode of
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
. This was the room where they told families a loved one has died. This was the room with heavy curtains and thick upholstery designed to absorb mourning. This was the room where my first pregnancy ended, not with a birth, not with a failed D and C, but with a shot of Methotrexate in each of my hips.

I stood there in the path worn between the window and the door, the path debrided by the endless pacing of many. Through the window I saw cars speeding home from work, picking up kids from soccer practice, racing for dinner. My own groceries were melting in the trunk of my car.

The nurse returned and asked me to drop my pants. I braced
myself on the counter as she swabbed me and stuck me with the first shot. On TV, Will Smith jumped over a couch.

“Was this your first pregnancy?”

I nodded as Will Smith mugged for the camera.

“I’m sorry.”

She stabbed me with the second needle in my other hip.

“I’m sure you’ll have another baby.”

I nodded again.

She made a note in her chart and gathered her things as I pulled my pants up. “You’ll need to wait here for about twenty minutes or so to make sure you don’t have a reaction to the drug. Why don’t you have a seat? Here’s a box of tissues, if you need them.”

She disappeared, closing the door quickly behind her. Will Smith was dancing, gloating about something. Whoever had put this show on didn’t know how to mute the TV, so though there was no volume, there were also no closed captions. Even in the silence, I knew what was happening.

Twenty minutes later, the nurse returned to find me sitting delicately on the edge of the chair; I was unwilling to commit to the room. She checked my vitals and decided that I was not having an allergic reaction to the noxious concoction, so I was free to go.

I stood and picked up my purse.

“Good luck next time!” she chirped.

I nodded and Will Smith laughed.

Split Wide Open
Franchesca Cox
Oil on canvas, diptych, 2007

Franchesca Cox

I am
split wide open
My heartache is on display
My mask is coming back slowly
But some days it’s difficult to fake.

How important my life used to seem
All the dreams that I hoped for one day
Art school, grad school, painting was my life
The colors have all faded
Into tones of gray and white.

I thought I knew heartache
a few years ago,
but I realized the preface
could not compare to this empty hole.

I have a scar that just won’t heal
It takes time
, they say
But do they know my pain runs deep
that reminders hit me every day?

My mind used to think in colors,
and create murals of landscapes in daydreams
I have been changed, wanting ever to escape
From the dry reality around me.

And in all my heartache
I can be thankful that my time with her was real
I am better for having her visit my world
She graced my life gently, briefly,
but still she was here.

I am split wide open
I want this wound to be healed
I know the scar will always be there
For true love can never be concealed.

Jessica Null Vealitzek

S
ix weeks ago, I had a beautiful girl we named Clara. So it might seem odd that the memory of my miscarried child has come to surface now more than at any time since it happened two years ago. I often think of it as I care for my new baby.

My first child, Henry, was eighteen months old when my husband and I were surprised to find I was pregnant again. Though we wanted a second child eventually, this felt too soon. But after initial hesitation, we embraced the pregnancy wholeheartedly. In the way of many moms, I felt strongly that I knew the gender: a girl.

My eight-week appointment went well. I saw the little bean on the screen, the heart fluttering away like a down feather. A few days later, the doctor’s office called me back in to recheck the placenta on an ultrasound. The doctor was worried I might have a condition—I can’t even remember now what it was—that would mean I’d need to be extra careful during my pregnancy.

So the possibility of bed rest was on my mind as I lay on the table and looked at the familiar bean. Only, I saw no rapid flutter this time. For a moment I was confused, and then I saw the look on the technician’s face.

Several days of visceral sadness followed, the kind of emotion you do not have to think or talk yourself into. It just was—when I awoke in the morning, during playdates with friends, while I talked on the phone with the cable service. It wrapped itself around me like a wool blanket. Hardest was the moment I’d never imagined: lying
on a hospital bed, filling out the standard paperwork for a dilation and curettage. I was happy to have something to do while I waited, something simple, but slipped into the middle of the mundane was the question, “Would you like to take the remains home for burial or would you like the hospital to dispose of them?”

I felt apologetic about my sadness. Miscarriages happen all the time, right? There must have been something wrong; it was nature’s way. And after all, it was only nine weeks. Imagine the pain of miscarrying once you’ve felt the baby inside you.

But—nine weeks. Since my husband and I found out as early as possible, at two weeks, that means I had seven long weeks of imagining my baby smiling at her older brother, imagining the peach fuzz along her cheeks and the cooing of her voice. She was not a bunch of cells to me. She was my child. Though I never met her, not literally, I carried her, and that is an experience unlike any other. The bond grows fiercer the longer the pregnancy, but it is strong from the beginning.

A friend of mine had a miscarriage, too, followed by the birth of her daughter. My friend feels that the miscarried baby was who eventually became her daughter; she just wasn’t ready to come at that time. For me, it is a bit different. She is sort of my ghost child, an absent older sister, the one who came before. She never quite became a part of the family, but she will never leave it. I feel my ghost child in Clara; she is a part of her, but not the same.

My miscarriage has given me deep gratitude as I watch my sweet baby girl sleep, delight in her cries for milk, and cradle her head in the crook of my elbow. In a very real way, Clara is an honor to her, my first girl.

A version of this story first appeared on the author’s blog,
True STORIES
.

Rebecca Patrick-Howard

S
ix weeks before I found my son cold and blue in his bed, we had a picnic in the backyard. The air was hot and thick and took your breath away as soon as you stepped out the front door, but there was relief under the maple tree. We were broke and had cabin fever and our three-year-old wanted to do something fun.

Toby, only a week old, was unimpressed with the whole thing: minutes after going outside he promptly fell asleep in his daddy’s lap, his spindly little legs dangling over my husband’s knees. It occurred to me that our babies always started out skinny enough, yet we still find ways to fatten them up until their checks puff out and their legs became rolls of sweet, plump skin.

We had no sooner spread the food out on the blanket, than I caught a glimpse of something red out of the corner of my eye. Upon closer inspection, I saw it to be a rather large, scary-looking insect, covered with fire-engine-red fur. Neither wasp nor ant, though having characteristics of both, this intrusive stranger marched over to our blanket with purpose. Barefoot, I grabbed for a cola can and gave it a good whack. The ant/wasp appeared stunned for a moment, but then it stopped and I could have sworn it stared at me. Afraid for both of my babies, I hit it again. It barely moved.

After what felt like an endless amount of time, the ant/wasp turned away and marched off into the grass, fading away as a patch of red among the scraggly brown.

Having never seen such a creature before, I quickly excused myself
and ran to the almighty Google. A few quick strokes informed me that it was a red velvet ant, also called a cow killer. They were usually found in sandy areas. Having neither sand nor cows, I was perplexed. I had lived all of my thirty years in the region and not once had this wingless wasp made my acquaintance.

Their sting was said to be a powerful one and could cause nerve pain and trouble for weeks. Thankful that it had left us alone, I went back outside, promising myself that I would be more cautious about letting the kids go barefoot in the future.