Worlds

I hold in the palm of my hand

a fragment of your bone.

Pure white even with its tiny

gray pores,

on the other side, a dent of striations

where your marrow once was.

All I have left of you:

these ashes of gray dust and white fragments--

perhaps half a cup.

All you had to do was open your eyes,

start your heart to beating

in my arms

as we cried over your lovely face.

Last night I gazed at

your brother's sleeping face,

and thought he looked like you did

that first and last day with you.

The immensity of our cities, inventions, ideas!

And you so tiny, now tinier still,

but not in my world.

or the one of invisible, unknowable mystery.

Thankful for Longing

I take great comfort from this passage in Edwidge Danticat's memoir Brother, I'm Dying:

   When my daughter was born, her face blood-tinted, her eyelids swollen with tiny light pink patches that Colleen the midwife called angel kisses, her body coiled around itself as if to echo the tightness of her tiny fists, I instantly saw it as one of many separations to come. She was leaving my body and going into the world, where she would spend the rest of her life moving away from me.

   Groggy and exhausted, I asked Colleen, 'Is it normal for me to think this?'

   'Maybe you're one of those women who enjoys being pregnant,' she said.

It wasn't so much that I enjoyed being pregnant. I simply liked the fact that for a while my daughter and I had been inseparable.  

These words remind me that I had a bond with Elise while carrying her--one that will always remain undefinable by our experiences in this world, but a bond nonetheless. We separated when she was born too, but of course in a much more painful way--that final separation, skipping the togetherness of being daughter and mother on this planet. 

But that bond we had while I carried her inside me: we were as close as we could be, though we could not see each other and I could not hear her. She could hear my voice, and her papa's and her brother's, and she could hear my breath and heartbeat. But this whole experience took place on a subconscious level, invisible to us in our sense-driven existence. I take comfort in the connection we had while still mourning its lost potential. 

When I think of this closeness with my children that I lost with Elise, that slips away from me with each day Felix grows up, that closeness I cherish and mourn at the same time when Felix cuddles and kisses and says "I love you" to me, the words of Cindy Sheehan keep coming to mind. Cindy Sheehan was the woman who held a vigil against the Iraq war outside President Bush's Texas ranch in August 2005 after her firstborn son Casey was killed serving as a soldier. Regardless of whether you agree or disagree with her actions, I once read of her devotion to her son that "he touched every part of me." She carried him inside her, gave birth to him, nursed him and bathed him and helped him grow up. That sensory intimacy with one's child is like no other for me, and missing it with Elise is what aches the most.

But it does not hurt anymore. It will always ache, but the hurt with its rage and devastation has faded away, thankfully. 

All of us long to be with someone we miss, whether they have passed away from us or live on another part of the planet. And all of us have some belief in the invisible, in some form or element. My relationship with Elise is invisible, subtle, not of this world. Much more awaits us after this chaotic, contradictory life on this glorious, crazy earth. 

A week ago, I visited a couple in Labor and Delivery as a Peer Companion when they lost their baby boy. On the same day I met the new baby daughter of friends whose firstborn died two days after her traumatic birth a year ago August. My heart swelled and swelled with relief and joy and sadness when I saw little Chapin in her beaming father's arms. She is perfect, beautiful--truly one of the most beautiful babies I've ever seen. I went to Frances as she sat up in bed in the recovery room and started sobbing on her shoulder. I wanted to keep crying like that, but thought I should pull myself together because this was her day of joy. Frances said she felt Emerson's presence at every moment of her pregnancy and delivery with Chapin. 

If anyone is familiar with separation and reunion, it is Edwidge Danticat, who learned of this kind of love from her father and his older brother: her two papas. She writes lovingly of her uncle, a pastor who raised her for eight years in Haiti after her parents emigrated to the United States.

'Death is a journey we embark on from the moment we are born,' [my uncle] would say. 'An hourglass is turned and the sand starts to slip in a different direction as soon as we emerge from our mother's womb. Thank God those around us are too blinded by joy then to realize it. Otherwise there would be weeping at births as well. But if we weep at a death, it's because we do not understand death. If we saw death as another kind of birth, just as the Gospel exhorts us to, we woudn't weep, but rejoice, just as we do at the birth of a child.' 

This is what I resolve to do: keep hold of life and death. Like laughing and crying at the same time. 

3 Years and Forever

Three years ago today we said Hello and Goodbye to Elise. This morning before I got out of bed I thought to myself, "Today is your birthday, baby girl. I love you. I miss you. I will see you again." I thought of those parents who suffer the loss of their child at any age: miscarriage, hours after delivery, months into babyhood, childhood flu, in the line of duty as soldiers.

Felix woke me from deep sleep with a sob and a call for Daddy last night. I went to him and found him trying to get his pajamas back on after changing his pull-on diaper. He had never done that before--he sleeps very heavily, doesn't wake up to use the bathroom yet, and only every once in a while does he cry for us at night. "I want to cuddle with you Mommy," he told me after I zipped up his pajamas and dried his tears. 

He leaned his head against mine as he fell asleep. The sheer solidness of his head on my brow brought back the memory of him inside me in the weeks before his birth, when I could feel that hard little head like a weight in my lower abdomen and his little bottom would wave back and forth under my belly button.

When I crawled back into my own bed, I thought about checking the time: it was about 1am three years ago when I woke up to go to the emergency room because I had not felt Elise move inside me all evening. But I didn't look at the clock, thinking it was probably hours past that.

The first thing Dan said to me when he returned from his Saturday group run this morning was that he had checked the time when Felix called out. It was four minutes past 1. He calls it coincidence, although he was the one to note the hour. I said I wasn't sure what it meant, but it felt "cosmic." Maybe what I mean by that is that Elise's connection to us is deep in our bones, our beings. It doesn't matter how much time she spent with us in her physical body on this seemingly solid earth: she is with us, in our flesh, in the deepest recesses of our minds, in our spirits. 

The tears well up and pour from my eyes because my body cannot touch hers and my senses ache for her face (what would it look like?), her hair (would it be dark like mine and Felix's?), her soft skin (I love to stroke Felix's pudgy forearm, hold his hand), her voice (my heart melts every time I hear the high pitch of any child's sounds).   

"When a loved one dies, the process of grieving is a completion that allows us to honor that person's life and claim the wisdom we have gained through the relationship." So goes an entry for November in my Pocketful of Meditations book. What relationship did I have, or Dan or Felix, with Elise? At a Share meeting I attended last week, I listened to a woman who suffered an early miscarriage bravely say that she didn't feel "worthy" of being at the gathering because the rest of us had lost our babies later in our pregnancies, when we thought about them and carried them for months as they moved around inside us. But this mother had imagined a future with this child. "You had dreams for you and your baby," I said to her. 

A relationship with someone, "knowing" a person: what does that mean? When I think of a person I love, I recall glimpses of them, moments spent together, snapshots in time; their smile, my gaze upon them, the shape of their hand. 

This is my relationship with Elise. It continues, and its length and depth equal any other on this planet. Because all relationships are a series of moments we spend together and apart, feeling, dreaming, seeing, missing. "As we receive the gift of understanding, it transcends time and space, simultaneously gifting the soul of the one who has passed over." This body of mine aches for you, Elise. But the me who is more than just flesh is listening to you, who live beyond absence. 

Yes again

This thought floated up and wants to be expressed:

I will always remain hopeful, no matter what the outcome.

*

Felix pointed out the full (almost full? Waning full? Anyway, big and beautiful) moon to me several times the night before last. I was still warm after dark, following an equally lovely, balmy day where we ate dinner outside at the Emerson Grill.

"And there's the first star!" he exclaimed. There was brilliant Jupiter, just to the southeast and holding its own, standing out even next to the moon's wide gaze. The first star of night always reminds me of Elise, for some reason. It doesn't have to be the same star, Jupiter or Hyakutake or Krypton--I'm no astronomer. Just the first star of the evening, whenever I happen to glimpse it.

Maybe connecting Elise with this star began around 6 months after her death, when we vacationed on a Mexican Pacific beach and I held a twilight ceremony with Uncle Jeff, Auntie Sarah and Uncle Ben, her cousins in girlhood and her big brother. We gazed at a candle I lit in the middle of our circle, and for a moment she was at the center of our world. I looked up once again at these loved ones gathered--I think Susie, Skip, and Francie were there too--and saw the first star of night was shining down on us from the west, just above where we admired the spectacular sunsets from our palapa.

Back to the night before last: Felix and I went on a twilight walk after dinner--maybe subconsciously beckoned by that moon. We met some new neighbors on Brady street and found that we have a lot of friends in common. Felix showed them his new handlebar headlight. I'd bought it months ago for Dan's and my bike, but was finally getting around to installing it until Felix said he wanted it for his own. He was so fascinated by the circle of glowing white that bobbed in time to his handlebars' movements. He hadn't been riding his bike for weeks, and I had not been on a walk on a balmy night for god knows how long.

We took the night air with his miniature spotlight. It was just what I needed.

Still Here I Think

This will be a short post because I'm writing it in the few minutes before some friends are due to arrive. I'm tricking myself into doing some writing, because I (A) haven't done any and (B) think that if I can only do it for a short sprint it will at least be something.

The thing is (C) I've been sitting in some low-level depression. It's the kind that occasionally keeps me from falling asleep easily and makes me snap at my Felix toward the end of the day. It's not the kind that makes me burst into tears and have a crying jag over the ongoing, underlying grief in my life: I've made peace with that. I think.

I just don't feel much motivation to do the things that make me feel better--things for me. Instead I get obsessed over endless tasks like tidying the house, running errands, entertaining Felix, and telling myself that since these things are never done I must keep doing them or I am not worth much.

Ick! I've transferred the habit of mind/ego I had while in academia to housework! Talk about a job never done. So far I don't think I'm drinking too much, but I sure look forward to a gin and tonic or two in the late afternoon.

Must re-route those neural circuits that say I must work, work, work and do, do, do to be someone. It's time to Be, Be, Be--and Now.

Working to Rest

My mind is struggling against the quiet my spirit wants. It tries to pull me underneath where all is churning and blurry and deafening with confusion. All I need to do is be still and float peacefully with the current, but I thrash around instead, looking for some kind of handhold or foothold that isn't there right now.

I can't keep still because it is work to do so. I confuse this effort at peacefulness with struggle, and my mind convinces me that I need to sleep in instead of writing in my journal, that I need to read the news and dink around on the internet instead of playing music, in order to relax.

But these are distractions and avoidances, not relaxation. I know because I feel even worse after doing them.

It takes effort to be at peace. It means waking up a little earlier. And not berating myself for NOT waking up early either--I'm in mourning after all--but telling myself gently that it is hard to absorb yet another loss, and that I know what will comfort me: writing and music.

My mind and ego say that I can wallow for a while. My spirit says, Be sad and grieve, but in a way that takes care to let those feelings flow in music and words. Oversleeping, excessive distractions like the internet, worry over housework that I don't get to: this is wallowing and stuffing away what needs to come out, and needs coaxing to come out.

It's OK to write and play music--it is NOT an indulgence. It feeds me, it heals me. Healing takes effort because it requires overruling the mind games of guilt and defeatism. My mind is even telling me I am guilty of laziness because I don't create, when really it's the reverse: I feel I'm avoiding the "real work" of chores if I play music or write. Or is that my mind/ego at it again? --I'm confused. My mind is either clever or diabolical. Possibly both.

Meanwhile, my husband has a career that he desperately wishes were something he cared about, because he works very hard at it yet has no interest in it whatsoever. At this moment Dan is standing by for a flight home from Chicago, where he has been all week. It sounds like it's been miserable: from what he's told me, there is literally nothing in the Chicago suburb where his client's offices are. He has been working in an office building in a warehouse district, and the only place to eat meals is at his hotel.

He tells me not to feel guilty. I am almost convinced not to (a Catholic upbringing and American cultural ideals about work have quite the grip on my psyche--a subject for a later post). He is a big boy, he says, and knows what he needs to do for himself (unlike me). I listen to him when he needs to vent and I don't try to fix his situation or give him advice.

He does great work for his firm, because he believes in doing a good job even though it's personally unsatisfying. But he has little time or energy left for seeing friends, and misses his time with us. I myself however, could go out for drinks with some girlfriends last night. I almost cried when one of them said she felt struck by Dan's commitment to do whatever it takes to care for me.

We are committed to our healing, in our own way. Every day I will move forward. That means writing something, every day. It means praying for me and for our little family we want to grow. It means getting one chore done every day and having that be enough. It means closing my eyes and opening my heart to listen.

Dying to Live

Ever since reading his 2006 book Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, I find myself thinking of the wise and tender words of Matthew Sanford, a man in his 40s who was paralyzed at age 13 in a car crash that killed his father and sister. He went on to suffer the stillbirth of one of his twin sons, become a yoga instructor, and establish a charity he calls Mind Body Solutions.

We all experience different levels of dying throughout our lives--the process of living guarantees it....If we can see death as more than black and white, as more than on and off, there are many versions of realized death short of physically dying. The death of a loved one sets so much in motion: grief, a sense of loss, tears, anger, a transcendent sense of love, an appreciation of the present moment, a desire to die, and on and on.

There are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel your mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet is is necessary for the onset of maturity....

Life and death, silence and action, emptiness and fullness at the same time--these are inward features of everyone's life. They are truths that do not lead to answers. Instead, they invite us to believe in and appreciate our own experience. When we do, when we carefully listen to that experience, the next story begins, the practical one, the story of what happens beyond waking.

As for me, the waiting is over. I can breathe again.

I have never witnessed a loved one struggling with a fatal diagnosis who waits for their death while still hoping to live. And I hope anyone reading this who has, does not take offense at my comparison. But this feeling I have right now brings such a situation to mind. For 2 years, 3 if you count the months I carried Elise and we looked toward the time when we would begin our lives with her, we've been waiting for another child to join our family. Today again, after trying another treatment and hoping this dream will finally come true, grief struck me down.

But at least the anxiety of wondering and worrying is finally over.

Felix has some mail-order caterpillars in a plastic jar. Every morning since they arrived a week ago, he has awakened with a smile of excitement on his face and urged me to come with him downstairs to see how much they've grown. In one week they probably tripled in size. This morning he forgot to check on them, maybe because I crawled into bed with him to tell him we were not going to have a baby because "the eggs in mommy's tummy didn't hatch."

I let him see my tears and told him he was our favorite boy in the world and we are so happy he is our big boy. At first his mouth curved down in that frowny face I find so endearing as he listened to my bad news. It made me think of the days and months after Elise died when I would burst out crying, and in his 2-year-old sensitivity and confusion he would cry too, perhaps scared he had lost his mother to some place he couldn't go. But this time he said, "Now we can play tackle again" because he didn't have to worry about being gentle with me and the "eggs."

So later this morning we did. And he kept holding on to me after he tackled me to the ground and said "I love you, you're my favorite girl in the whole world."

When we'd come downstairs, Dan told Felix his caterpillars were starting to hang upside down on the lid of their jar, getting ready to spin their cocoons. I used to look at the creatures and think of our microscopic embryos, growing and maybe wiggling their way toward a life outside.

Now as I look at the caterpillars, some of them quietly suspended, others getting their last nibble of food and crawling around looking for just the right place to start their next phase of life, I think, that is where I am now: beginning again. It's not such a bad place to be, even if I have to die a little first to take that next step. Even if I need to drag myself kicking and screaming, until I know for sure there is no looking back.