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. 

Knowing

It seems as if autumn is suddenly upon us. Today is chilly, and a light rain is falling. More sunny days are in store for us before winter though, I know.

I'm sitting with a lot of pain in this world lately. I attended a Share meeting the other day, the first time in a while since we stopped going as regular participants last winter. There were many in attendance, many faces of grief: one couple who have no living children because of half a dozen miscarriages and a stillbirth 5 years ago; another who lost their pregnancy at 14 weeks, just when they thought the pregnancy would work out and they started buying baby things; another whose 2-week-old son died of SIDS a year ago; and a couple new to the group whose son was fine and healthy in utero, but had a horrifically botched delivery at term and died 2 days later.

We spoke a lot about how to acknowledge our children when others react thoughtlessly or awkwardly. "You can have another one," "You have other children," or clamming up completely. At first I used to tell people who asked if Felix was our only child that we had a daughter who died in my 8th month of pregnancy. Sometimes it felt right, sometimes it made me angry when the reaction made me feel like a freak. Every so often I talk about Elise to someone who asks, but for the most part I keep her to myself, like a special hiding place I don't want anyone to violate. And that feels right too. I'm protecting her because I am her mother. And I'm protecting myself above all.

I think of Elise and all the loved ones who have gone as existing in another realm, where we the living can't see or hear them. Just as we are ignorant of so many things in this existence--who we really are, what another is thinking, why the world is so messed up--we simply can't fathom those things that aren't right in front of our faces. But we can feel them. I feel Elise with me all the time. This morning as I ran with Genki through thickets of aspen and cottonwood by Sourdough Creek, I thought of the places I'd been with Elise while she was inside me. We went to Hawaii for her cousin's high school graduation, to Tokyo where I had such fun visiting old haunts and seeing grad school friends, to Lindberg Lake where we camped and swam. She heard the voices of her papa and her big brother, and all of my family members when we visited Hawaii and they came to visit us that August.

I felt Elise moving inside me for the first on the way home from Tokyo. I was sitting sleepless on the plane, crying about my aunts not wanting to see me. My attention immediately focused on her when I felt that ripple in my belly from her. "You know what is most important," she seemed to say.

Light and Shadow

I felt on a high the beginning of November, and made it through Elise's birthday with flying colors. Everybody was saying how I looked different, sounded different, and I thought, "I made it!"

As if I wasn't going to be sad ever again.

After Thanksgiving when we returned from a relaxing, cozy 4 nights at the moms' house in the forest near Helena, where we got lots of grandma love for Felix too, I descended.

What comes up, must come down.

I keep thinking, habitually, over and over again despite what I know is true about life, that my pain and grief go into some kind of "remission," and that I'll be "cured" or healed someday.

I've been feeling low the past week, and couldn't figure out why. When I realized the reason, I was surprised at my ability to repress the pain. Last year at this time I was supposed to be looking forward to Elise's birth. Her due date was Dec.26-27th. She should be turning one year old soon. I wasn't acknowledging this consciously, but my heart was--her spirit was. And so I am missing her so badly again.

But my pain is part of me. The light cannot be appreciated without the dark. Light always casts a shadow, lovely shadows of mystery with their own unique form and suggestion. I need to embrace those shadows, as impossible and formless though they may seem.

The other night we had our neighbors over for dinner. Pete and Sanna's daughter Oskaria was born last year on July 1st, and died hours later from a rare genetic disorder. We met them through our Share support group, but in a strangely fortuitous coincidence, they moved in across the street from us a mere 2 weeks after Elise's death.

It was very comforting for me to talk about our daughters. Sanna is due to give birth to their second child this Dec.16th. I told them I am excited for them, yet we all felt so aware of the sadness mixed up in the anticipation and joy. Felix went up to Sanna and patted her belly. "There's a baby in there, Felix," I told him. "Oh!" he exclaimed, and ran into the living room. "Papa, help me get the picture down," he asked Dan. Then he ran back to Sanna and handed her Elise's photo. "This is Baby Sister," he said.

Joy and grief. Shadow and light. Winter's darkness is here, and I am drawn to candles. Maxwell and Annie gave me a glass star to hang in our front window, and I light a tea candle for it every evening. I'm going to light Hanukkah candles too, even though I missed the first day of it yesterday and I'm only just now interested in educating myself about it, and it's not an important Jewish holiday, and Dan's family isn't that religious.

I don't care. My gut says I want candles. Elise wants candles. I feel a connection to her with stars, especially the evening star. I bought a star ornament today for the tree we'll put up next week. I lit the candle Katy bought for us on Elise's birthday. "May this candle light your darkness," she wrote. It will, and the shadows will dance around it. And the stars will glow in the dark night.

A Break from...

I’m taking a leave of absence from my teaching this semester. I hadn’t posted anything in here for a while because I’d been freaking out about going back to classes, and then freaking out about not going back.

Even my body was telling me something wasn’t right: several people have remarked that I look like I’ve lost weight, and I got a stomach bug the day before the fall term was to begin that kept me home my first day of classes.

Again, I’d been doing everything to help myself heal: I got a massage from the fabulous Heidi, who sensed an emotional blockage in my belly region or chakra. I’m not well-versed in the chakra lingo, but the fact that I’d been going around with my stomach in knots, that my waist was shrinking with the weight loss, that my appetite was poor, and that I caught the flu two days after the massage, tells me my belly was trying to telegraph something. Also, it had been nine or ten months since Elise’s birth—the body remembers such timing.

When I told my mom about my leave last night on the phone, I didn’t hesitate, even though I had it in my head that Mom would never approve. She asked “How are you?” and I said I decided to take the leave. Surprisingly, she responded the way everyone else has: “That’s good. You need to take care of yourself.” She passed right by the news to tell me she was sending me a Joseph Campbell book, Pathways to Bliss. Her gesture is so touching: my mom the Catholic, who knows I am no longer a Catholic, much less a Christian, is reaching out to my intellectual side, and the part of me that still believes in some higher power or spiritual essence.

And the universe / God / cosmos / spirit seems to be speaking to me with synchronicity: the same day at lunch with Maxwell, we were talking about how life can be so cruel. “How do we go on?” I sighed with my head in my hands. Maxwell said that’s where mythology and theology must have stepped in. I’m not sure they’re for “making sense” out of this life, but maybe for imagining something beyond this existence with all its pain, for hope and deliverance.

Not that I don’t see the beauties of this life: my husband who is so loving, gentle, wise, fun; my sweet little son; my friends who don’t fear my sadness; the family members reaching out to us.

The other night at our SHARE meeting, I marveled at the courage and love of one couple who decided to carry their son to term after discovering at the twenty-week ultrasound that he had no kidneys. He lived for fifteen minutes after birth. His mother spoke of her gratitude for the experience of her first pregnancy with him. When I think about Elise, I picture her face as I gazed at her while she lay in my arms. Whenever I see her Papa’s funny long toes, so long they hang off the front of his flip-flops, I remember that she had his long slender fingers and toes. Somday I want to remember her with joy and gratitude.

My loneliness and pissiness has eased off today. Partly that’s because I had such loving responses from family and friends I’d told about my blog, and partly because we went to our SHARE support group meeting last night.

I don’t want people to think I was scolding them in yesterday’s posting, because for the most part I get the support I need when I ask for it. But “when I ask for it” is the key concept: sometimes I can’t ask for it, and tell myself people are too busy and I shouldn’t bother them. That’s my youngest-of-seven mindset speaking: Don’t bother anyone, you can handle it yourself, just stay out of sight and read your books.

Lo and behold, when I put it out there the universe responds: I’ve always been afraid to speak the truth about how I’m feeling, and grew up thinking that emotional expression and honesty are unseemly or weak. I’m trying to change that, even when it’s painful. These past few days in particular seem to be telling me I have NO CHOICE but to say what I need to, or I’ll end up one screwed-up, warped sack o’ woe (to borrow a Cannonball Adderley song title).

So on a run yesterday, I stopped to talk with a family friend I see every once in a while. I decided to thank her for the card she and her husband sent us when Elise died, and we had one of those talks that are so uplifting for their sincerity and compassion. She brought up the possibility that people might not mention Elise because they think it’s a private matter for us. That could very well be the case, maybe even with acquaintances here in town who infuriate me when they scurry away before the conversation goes beyond “Hi, how are you.” But one member of our support group definitely spoke for me last night when she said she cherished conversations where people asked about her daughter’s story, what it was like to be pregnant with her and experience her birth and death.

This morning I ran into my doctor, a wonderful woman who instinctively knows how to be encouraging without being clichéd. She recalled my anguish at Elise’s birth, and that reminded me of how all I could do at that moment was scream until the people in the room, the hospital ward, the whole world, could hear my rage and helplessness.

Last night at our meeting we talked a lot about people who forget about our babies in their busy distracted lives, and we talked a bit about how to hold on to the memories of our babies while still moving forward. I said that a friend had asked me whether I believed in an afterlife, and I wasn’t sure there was one but am clinging to the possibility there is. In any case, we carry our children with us in some form. The guest speaker asked if I thought that I can see Elise in the world around us, and again I said I wasn’t sure… “Keep looking,” she urged.

I know that even if I might not “see” Elise in a bird who sings to me or a butterfly landing on my shoulder, she is speaking to me: she is telling me to put myself out there and ask for what I need. She never spoke a word in her life, but she is teaching me how to communicate.