How to Thrive

"I grieved deeply when you passed away...My feelings came from deep in my body. Even though I could control them, they shattered reality, if you know what I mean. Reality has remained broken ever since. And oddly enough, it feels more real that way. So I don't bother to mend it. I just don't care anymore if nothing makes sense."

--Ingmar Bergman, Fanny and Alexander


I just read a short story called "Colorless Paintings" by Sata Ineko (Sata is her surname), a Japanese writer. I've been trying to pull myself out of self-pity, and so I picked up this piece to read from the short story collection The Crazy Iris and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath.

The narrator has a Chinese friend who was in Nagasaki at the time the atomic bomb was dropped on the city on August 9th, 1945. A few years after the war, her friend writes in a letter to the narrator, "Today again my friends went to the [anti-nuclear] meeting. I envy them and am suddenly irritated. Looking back, I feel that as foreigners we are much freer now, without the kind of restrictions that were placed on us in the past. We are free now from the feelings of humiliation that were unconsciously instilled in us from the time we were children. As long as we keep up an interest in the things around us, we can maintain a balanced outlook on life."

I am not so self-absorbed as to compare my tragedy with the scale of those who not only suffered the atomic bombings, but also happened to be Korean and Chinese colonial subjects inside Japan at the time. My point in quoting this passage is the line "As long as we keep up an interest in the things around us, we can maintain a balanced outlook on life." Everyday life's little interests and even tasks can be a salvation from the darkness and cruelty of this world. They are part of what keeps me going. I can name dozens of other blessings that keep me going too.

The loving comments posted and sent by amazingly supportive friends, for example, even when they're chastising. In fact, they are right to criticize my jealousy of 2-children friends. I probably chose the wrong term when I said I could not "relate" to them. I should have said I'm "burning with envy and bitterness." I know it's not right, and not good for me. And I should tell these friends how I'm feeling. Communication is something I work at daily. I need to work harder. I tend to project my pain onto others, to make it their fault. It's nobody's fault. I'm stuck in an emotional rut, or at least I was last week when I wrote that entry.

So back to counting my blessings (despite the cliche, and despite the fact I don't want to be told to do it, I can do it myself, to quote my 3-year-old): My loving husband, my sweet son. Our community near and far, singles and marrieds, breeders and non-, our families who count Elise as their own too. The fact that the sun has come out to play today for the third day in a row in the middle of a graaaaaaaay winter.

And the fact that Sata's writing has inspired me to dig out another of her story collections from the basement for reading, to start translating more Japanese fiction, to write more of my own stuff. I can do these while sitting at a desk we set up in a newly-tidied room, and every so often I can gaze up from the keyboard to admire three lovely frames of Chinese embroidery that we inherited from Dan's lovely grandmother Louise. She is another story of how to endure and thrive.

Second (and Third) Chances

One thing I don't think I've mentioned in here is that Dan and I have been trying to have another baby. We've been trying since June, and next week I'm going to try the fertility drug Clomid. I think one of the reasons I've been avoiding writing in here is because I'm having a hard time with the constant failure to get pregnant, and Elise's role in that. I thought I was dealing with the stress of grief well, but I can't help thinking that our inability to conceive means I'm not coping well.

No less than 12 people who are either friends or acquaintances have had babies since we started trying to get pregnant again. Most of these babies are second children. If we don't manage to have another baby, I can see my relationships with two-children friends begin to deteriorate further. Not all of them: there are some who struggled with infertility before their children came along who understand, or some who are just the sensitive type. I don't begrudge them their children; I simply don't relate, and it takes effort from both sides to relate, and I'm too tired to try to help them understand me.

To get started on the Clomid, I had an exam and history with a certain OB's Physician's Assistant the other day. After the visit, I felt deflated and depressed. She treated my pregnancies, including Elise's birth, as purely clinical events. This is how part of my visit went:

"So you have one living child and one that was stillborn. How may weeks into the pregnancy?"
"Thirty-three."
"And did they find anything wrong with her?"
"Nothing. An autopsy was done, and also my placenta and the umbilical cord were fine as far as they could tell."
"No chromosomal abnormalities?"
"No. With both my son and daughter I had a nuchal translucency that showed no risk of defects."
"And was it a vaginal birth?"
"Yes."
"You were induced?"
"Yes."
"Okay...and the medications you're taking..."
"An antidepressant, Lexapro 10mg."
"Nothing else?"
"Prenatal vitamins, herbs." I've been taking the Lexapro since August, and had taken it before when my son was born and I had postpartum depression."
"Were you taking it at the time you got pregnant with your daughter?"
"No. I was off it for most of 2006, until my daughter died."

I took strange comfort in the extra notes she jotted down about these. How pathetic is that?
No "I'm sorry for your loss" or "That must have been so hard." It was as if we were talking about having my appendix out. She was a pleasant person in every other way, but perhaps hadn't much experience with traumatic events in patients' lives, and so probably didn't know how to treat Elise like a child of mine who had died.

The other day I was talking with the very nice gal who waxes my eyebrows, and after she'd talked about having her twins by C-section six years ago, she asked if I gave birth to Elise. When I said yes, she said, "God Marilyn, that must have been so hard." But I said I was glad I could give birth to her naturally because it felt like an affirmation of her life, and that I was glad to birth her in the same way I had Felix, instead of having her be just a clinical procedure.

I ask myself why I haven't written in my blog for so long, and I think it's because I haven't written about wanting another baby. Our lack of success seems tied up in my emotions over Elise, even though it's felt numerous times like I am clearer and more accepting of her death as time goes by. I know that recovery from my grief doesn't mean I'll forget her. I know and accept that the pain of her death will always be with me. I am ready to move forward, and have been for a while. I talk about her to others when I feel they will listen respectfully.

As far as I can tell, I don't feel as if our desire for another baby is a betrayal of her. But I seem to feel that our inability to conceive is connected to her. My doctor says it's probably the stress still. I've felt stuck also in not doing any creative pursuits I dream about. Some more stuff inside me needs to be expressed, emotionally and spiritually, but it's hard and it's scary.

The puttering and restless wandering around the house is just like I was feeling last year, in the first months after Elise died. I've come full circle again, revisiting those times unconsciously, which is probably what I need to do. But I really, really want to take that giant step forward and have another baby. In the meantime, I've picked up my guitar again, and last night Felix and I made our own Valentines for his schoolmates: I cut out red, purple, and pink hearts from construction paper, and had him squirt gobs of glitter glue on them and pile on the heart-shaped sparklies. It felt like an act of love.