Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (4 page)

I think both of us expected him to open his eyes, screw up his little face, and start to cry—but all the wanting in the world couldn’t breathe life into our blindingly beautiful little boy.

And he was. He truly was. I wish the world could have seen how beautiful he was.

In the early days, it just about broke me to say the words…“
My baby died
.” Hearing those naked, blunt words out loud always clubbed me over the head. The pain was so raw. It pierced and seared, and we raged and wailed.

For weeks, months maybe, as I closed my eyes and tried to sleep, a clamminess crawled through my skin, and my heart began upping its tempo as I drowned in the memories, pulled under by images I didn’t
dare face and thoughts that fed the rabid anxiety that gnawed at me endlessly. Flashbacks caught me as I folded laundry or made the bed. The ghosts of times gone by bound my hands behind my back and grabbed me by the jaw, twisting my face towards that room…forcing me to feel it all again.

I thought that I might die;—that my poor little heart would break and that my life would end. In fact, each morning that I woke in those first few days without him were savagely disappointing—that I
hadn’t
passed in my sleep, that people would
not
solemnly whisper of me, “
’Twas death by a broken heart.
” That this bloody heart kept on beating when Seamus’s gave up on him.

How had we ended up here? From choosing his nappy bag to the words on his grave marker? From picking a buggy to the outfit he would be buried in?

I wanted to watch him grow up in his own beautiful boyish way—stamping his Wellie-booted feet through muddy puddles, building sand castles, snowmen, and Lego towers, poking at frogs with sticks, digging for worms, building tree huts, roly-polying down hills, flying kites and balloons, dunking soft-boiled eggs with toasty soldiers…

But our lives were irrevocably changed. We didn’t live them anymore, just glided through, afraid to touch anything in case it broke.

Life is different now.

Now I live with it. The bottom-line pain. That pure throb and tenderness that never lessens. Just as I rise in the morning, brush my teeth, and dress, I grieve. It has woven itself into my day. The pain feels routine. As familiar as the feeling of water hitting my skin every morning in the shower, so I grieve. Sadness and longing for him are as natural and mundane as pulling on my socks. It is in every moment, in every breath, in every beat of my pulse.

And yet, I consider myself one of the lucky unlucky ones. For somewhere in among those desperate early weeks, we stepped out
onto weak and spindly newborn foal legs. The lure of two pink lines gently nudging us forward. And after thirty-seven long weeks and a second labor that almost ended in a second lightening strike, Hugo gave an almighty scream and began to cry. That sound encapsulating so much: unquantifiable relief, overwhelming joy, and unspeakable pain.

He was alive. Our little bringer of happiness. Our so-so-special second son.

It’s only on rare occasions that Seamus is mentioned nowadays. Life is fantastically hectic with a toddler in tow and a belly swelling with another new sibling that we daren’t dream of taking home.

I marvel at my new plastic persona. So adept at conversational pleasantries…frothy words, silicone smiles.

But maybe that’s okay. Maybe I just want to hold Seamus a little closer. Tuck him safely under my wing and tend to him a little more privately. He’s not a story to be told, a terrific tragedy…gossip fodder.

He’s my baby.

But there are still those moments that I wish…that someone might just intuitively know…that, actually, I am not okay. Yes, still.

That someone might cup my weary heart in tender hands and soothe it a little.

That even after all this time, even after mastering the art of not crying in public, even after having had another baby, and conceiving a third, I’m still feeling the sharper edges of this life.

Just hiding it better.

We are so lucky and unlucky. We are so blessed. We are still so cheated. We are so happy. We are still so sad.

And we simply love—all three.

Heather Bell

And the baby is dead but
we need lettuce in the house, maybe some bread
for morning toast so

I am at the store touching the potatoes at the spine,
the slim wrist of carrot. And the baby is dead so

this entitles humans to talk about their dog’s death,
or gerbil’s. This means I am expected to sympathize at

their loss. Because all death becomes, somehow, equal

when a childless person hears of a baby’s slow start and
quick giving up.

So here is a poem I have written while curled up behind
the cartons of juice at the supermarket. Because the

crushed apples on the floor in the produce section were
her ears and eyes. The skin was so raw from sadness

that I knelt there to watch for too long.

And your dog might be dead too but you did not have to
watch him fall from inside your body like pieces of bird.

Teeth to knees, I spread her deadness in the bathroom
like it is the ocean and she is a gift.

Susan Blanco

I
leaned back on the uncomfortable exam table until I was flat on my back, exactly the position the doctors advise against when one is seven months pregnant. The technician squirted the warm, viscous gel on my belly and began to move the sonogram wand around.

“She’s still breech,” she announced.

I had been going to yoga class, practically living my life upside down, trying to get this baby girl to turn head down. My husband and I had been trying to get pregnant for three years, ever since Izabelle. After more losses than I care to recall, we finally had a healthy pregnancy that seemed to be sticking. But she was breech. And I
really
didn’t want a C-section. So I tried everything from inverted moves to playing music for her to shining a light at my belly.

“I know this is going to sound a little crazy,” said Sandy, my doula, “but let me suggest something. You haven’t done anything to prepare for her. Maybe this baby knows you’re not ready yet.”

She was right. We hadn’t decorated her room or washed her clothes or unpacked the new stroller we bought, even though our son begged for us to try it out. Some voice in my head told me that if I didn’t acknowledge this baby, I’d be less anguished, less disappointed if something horrible happened.

So I invested. That weekend, I bought a crib and asked my husband to put it together. We got a changing table, and I decorated the walls with butterfly and flower decals. I washed her newborn clothes
and put them in her closet. As I folded those impossibly tiny pieces of clothing, I began to talk to her.

“Baby girl, I have a story to tell you. You had a sister, Izabelle Rhea, who once lived where you are now. I was twenty-four weeks pregnant when I learned that her heart had stopped beating. That was the most tragic day of my life, and no one can explain why it happened. I miss her so much, but I’m so happy you have come to me. You are not a replacement for your sister, but you do complete our family. With my age and all of the babies we have lost, doctors told me I’d never have another baby. And yet, here you are.” My face was wet with tears as I slowly and methodically ran my hands over my bulging belly.

“So I’ve decided to name you Milagros Ziva, my brilliant miracle. I love you so much already. I’m looking forward to the moment when I can see your face and hold you close in my arms.”

Something changed that weekend. I suddenly felt lighter, like I could walk better, more comfortably. I could also feel her hiccups lower in my abdomen.

“That sounds about right,” my OB told me at our next appointment. “Let’s see where she is.”

And, there, on the sonogram, was my beautiful miracle, head down and ready to go.

Lisa Roth-Gulvin

I
howl like a wild animal—nature’s groan of lost life—as a nine-week-old fetus slips from my body. Sitting on the toilet, I rock back and forth. My arms are wrapped around a cramped, throbbing, womb, my heart is curled into a fetal position to mimic what might have been. I hear my husband calling to me from behind the door that separates our loss. I know he wants to break down this door and rescue me from my anguish, but that will be impossible. He is paralyzed by the sound of despair echoing from every wall. I know that in order for him to survive, he will lock this sound away forever—and I will not. I will never forget this emptying out of life.

When I was young, I bled with relief. Now my blood reminds me of my loss. It is death. I can stand still while death comes from inside me. And I can do this without the decay or withering of my DNA. But I am dying anyway, so I cry without weakness or shame—I weep and weep and weep. I have never been this lonely in my life. But I am not alone. We are everywhere. We ride the bus, we push a stroller, we go to work. We women of dead babies do not exist and yet there are so many. Our bodies mock us; they are destroyers of dreams, nature’s murderesses.

Look at them
, I think, as I sit curled in a ball by the window.
How do they continue to exist in this terrifying shuffle between joy and
despair? How can it be that no other person feels this gigantic hurt and anger? Why is this loss, more than any other, immune to distraction, consolation, and recovery?

In the other room, my husband puts on his tie.
How long
, he thinks,
how long before my wife is finished mourning?
And I, still curled in a ball, watch people who are unaware of my grief and think,
How can he go to work everyday, moving effortlessly away from the pain?
I do not understand that he buries his hurt in the comfort of daily habits. When he closes the front door behind him, I dress my heart up like a clown and pretend I am happy. I drink imaginary tea with my two-year-old daughter on bright, blue cups made of plastic. Between sips, my eyes wander back toward the window—the one full of people without loss.