Three Minus One: Stories of Parents' Love and Loss (5 page)

There will be no burial. No beautiful, lifeless, body for a preacher to pray over. No one will hold my shaking hands. Nothing will fill my empty, aching arms. There will be no memorial service, no hymn sung. No “closure” for my enormous loss, as I stand alone on a cracked precipice overlooking my fragile sanity.

Some people, out of ignorance, will try and still a grief that cannot be stilled. So they will offer words where words do not belong, and without thinking they will remind me of my beautiful, healthy, little girl whom I am grateful for—I really am. But this cannot silence the quiet, constant, begging of a mother’s prayer for solace. And when someone remarks, “It’s God’s will. You can always try again.” My anger swells into a rage that I cannot keep inside. At night I stand in the shower, covered in water and tears, sobbing, “I hate your God. Your God is a hypocrite,” over and over again, as my rage moves into an unfurnished heart where my baby once lived.

Time tumbles forward, awkward and without meaning—as time often does without hope. And I forgive, but I do not let go, and I do not forget. I walk like a ghost, and mourn in silence until quietly,
little pieces of light—my child’s ballet recital, a writing course where I put sorrow on paper, a trip to honor a grandmother’s memory—break through my shadow of loss, and l begin to reclaim my spirit.

Then one day, a small piece of paper tucked in a forgotten journal finds its way back to me. Reluctantly, I pull back the folds—first right, then left. Names. It is covered in names: some in pen, some in pencil, some crossed off, some written by me, some by my husband. The words drift off the page like forgotten music. I read them out loud, returning to the gorgeous memory of life that was. And know it is time to release my baby—whose heartbeat is seared in my memory. The name, like a feather, floats on the breeze of my breath, as together we soar away from my prison of sadness forever.

Bentley’s Feet
Stephanie Nalley

Abbie L. Smith

T
here are two kids who always remind me how big my boy should be. I see them so rarely—only a few times a year. So what are the odds that within one painful week, they both accosted my eyes, attention, and heart?

The first encounter was at my best friend Cristen’s house on a Sunday afternoon in April. I’m still in the foyer holding the hand of my twenty-one-month-old daughter as she greets the birthday girl, when I turn around to see a familiar woman walk up the sunlit path and through the open door behind me. Suddenly, I am nauseated, well aware that the young girl holding the woman’s hand is the one I never want to see.

She was due to enter the world just weeks before my boy. Her mother is Cristen’s other “best friend.” The three of us were so excited to have these two babies due at the same time. Cristen already had a son who would be just over a year old when the new ones arrived. We lived with this idealistic notion that two new babies would be the perfect additions to friendly visits; and that they would, in time, make the perfect playmates. How naive were we to live with so much hope and certainty?

The tall blond girl with bouncy curls distracts me, hurts me, and pulls at my curiosity in ways I would much rather ignore. I see her mother and her only at birthday parties like this one or other functions occasionally hosted by our mutual friend. The possibility of us three women enjoying one another’s company together has long been shattered.

Inside Cristen’s house, the mother feels awkward, as do I. She acts as if she doesn’t see me standing right in front of her as she walks in and chats with the little children gathering around us. In the first few years it only seemed to be
awkward
, but now it seems to be something else. Is it disdain? Disrespect? Misunderstanding? In her mind, should I be different? Do I come across as a bitch? I’m sure I will never know exactly. She doesn’t look me in the eye as I muster a pathetic “hi” in their direction with what must certainly be a blank look on my face.
Don’t look at the girl
, I tell myself in that frozen moment.
Look at the mom. Be friendly. Smile. Act NORMAL. Breathe.

I doubt she knows what her presence and the presence of her daughter do to my inner being as the day goes on. How it rattles my core. My eyes try to dodge that child when the cake is being cut, but then I seek her out with sick, painful curiosity during present opening. How tall would he be? At least her height. The mom and her husband are not as tall as my husband and me, and my subsequent children are tall for their age. He would be, at least, her height. Would he be her friend? Would he be laughing? Would he be running with her? Would he be blond?

He would be—though maybe brown-eyed to her blue. He
would
be joy and laughter. He would unite us in a common motherhood where we are now driven apart by drastically different experiences. We would have a bond. In reality I don’t often care about that bond, but I am keenly aware of its absence when I’m in the presence of that child and her mother. I can’t touch the child. Hug her. Say hi to her. Acknowledge her much. It hurts. It rips at my heart in ways that make it hard to speak. Those two friends don’t know that. They don’t know what that child does to me…and let’s not forget the effect of her mother, who has, for nearly five years, gone on to enjoy what I have lost. No, not lost. He is not lost. My little boy did not wander off. He died.

The second encounter happened the following Wednesday. It was a beautiful spring evening. My husband made it home early, so we rushed our two little girls out of the house in the double stroller to
wander over and watch the end of a baseball game at the nearby high school. An hour later, we happily make our way back down our street with a grinning infant in the stroller and our “big girl” walking on her own. It is one of those rare times when our family life seems perfect, and it is a perfect night for a walk—that is, until I see the neighbor and her child.

Nearly five years ago, my unfortunate new neighbor was out for a stroll when she spotted me outside my house. She eagerly came up our driveway to introduce herself and her brand-new baby. It was the first afternoon that I left my house alone after Isaiah died. I had just returned from approving the final drawings for his headstone. I was shattered. I was a wreck, and there was Jill with her brand-new baby.

“Do you have kids?” she asked.

“I was just pregnant, but my baby died.”

How’s that for a conversation killer? It was the first time I was ever asked that awful question. I hadn’t practiced my responses. I didn’t have the arsenal of statements I now choose from when asked. She couldn’t possibly know how to respond, so she rushed off with an awkward good-bye, mumbling something about her contented, grinning child seeming hungry.

Since then, I’ve chatted with Jill at another neighbor’s jewelry party and tried to explain my story of Isaiah to some extent, until she used the word “miscarriage” in her misunderstanding of what I was saying. Sadly, I don’t think it is possible to break into her mental construct of what my dead child meant to me when she ran into me that first sunny summer day. Like most people, she has no reference for the word “stillbirth.”

On this sunny Wednesday evening, Jill and her children are out playing. I don’t see them often and the times I have, I’ve tried not to look at that girl. Of course, I fail in my attempt to avert my gaze. I don’t want to catch Jill’s attention because I don’t want to be forced to smile in such close proximity to that little girl—the “should be Isaiah’s age” little girl. Instead, I walk down the opposite sidewalk quickly with a cursory sideways smile to dodge her mother while
staring at that girl from across the street. She’s Asian and, I assume, is smaller than my little boy would be, but she seems SO BIG! Is that what almost-five looks like? She rides a big girl bike down the road and looks after her little brother.

Isaiah should be watching after Paige and Quinn. Isaiah is invisible on our family walk as we pass the people I try to avoid. He’s with us, but invisible. On our perfect family walk, I see him on his bike laughing with his toddling sister, Paige, who is looking oh-so-sassy in her shades, bright-colored clothes, and curly pigtails; just as I saw him at the birthday party last Saturday excitedly hovering over the gifts right next to that tall blond girl with bouncy curls.

He’s not lost; he’s just invisible. Since they—Jill and Cristen’s friend—can’t see him, I don’t feel like talking to them and their children. As I duck into the garage away from an always friendly, but somewhat confused, Jill, I think that she will never see him walking with me.

Shannan Fleet

C
ould I ever determine which is harder? Cradling your slack body still wet with birth or being leached of warmth by this pink granite as I press my face against your flat grave marker. Your indelible name, written out in rhythmic gouges pounded across stone, cutting into my cheek. My shirt soaks up the water from last night’s rain as I settle in six feet above you. My fingers constrict, closing on fistfuls of grass. I’m too numb to startle as a dragonfly alights on the back of my hand, tickling me with an iridescent flutter of wings.

It was an unusually hot spring, and the heat made your big sister fussy as I struggled to situate her in her canopied raft. But soon we relaxed into the cool water, delighting in the relief. She giggled with glee as I bobbed in and out of the water playing peek-a-boo over the side of the raft. I dove under her and rolled over so that I could tickle her pudgy, pruned toes. I felt you roll too, as if you were trying to snatch at those same toes! Were you trying to play? I surfaced behind your sister, laughing and clutching my swelling belly, thrilled by the flutter of first kicks.

On the road near the cemetery, engines drone ceaselessly, a steady stream of cars pass by mere feet from our visit. The ever-changing but constant presence of strangers increases my loneliness. I should be holding your tiny hand instead of blades of grass. My eyes dart about as I catch flashes of metallic blues and greens in the periphery. I feel susurrous movements in my hair, a gentle tug here and there, tangles forming; I am somehow sure the dragonflies are beginning to ravel up in there. I look and see that the first dragonfly never left me, still brushing my hand with opalescent kisses.