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. 

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.

Fear and Trust

We may not have a new baby on the way, but we did get a new family member. Yesterday afternoon, I went with Felix and our friend Shirley to the animal shelter. Shirley adopted two kittens that were buddies at the shelter, and Felix picked out a quiet-tempered, affectionate, sleek black kitty named Puma (we're not sure if we'll keep that name or not). It only took him about 5 hours last night to venture out from under the sofa to sniff every piece of furniture and pace back and forth alongside me to rub the length of his body against mine.

He is slowly beginning to trust this strange place with its strange smells and beings. He's staying in a small room off the kitchen, but early this morning he ventured into the kitchen itself and up the stairs where we were sleeping. I know this because Genki woke me by leaping up to charge down the stairs growling.

The kitty doesn't trust Genki yet, needless to say. I thought Genki's dogzilla behavior would send our new family member back behind the sofa for the rest of the day. But he came out as soon as I went downstairs to call to him, and is batting at his new toy. I have no doubt that soon he'll be roaming the vast new territory of our house, hundreds of times more vast than the nice, but small cage he lived in for 4 months at the shelter.

I've wanted another kitty for a while, ever since our lovely, feisty dilute calico Freud died in October 2007. But I didn't realize that he would teach me so many things in his very first hours with us.

Things like:
* Proceed with caution, but let yourself trust.
* Let things take their natural course, but participate in their process too.
* Let your heart be prepared for the unexpected, even if your mind is freaked out by it.
* Stretch and relax as much as you can in your new surroundings.
* No matter how scared you might feel about where your life is going, you will purr again.
* Someone will be there to inspire your purring, but having been through some of life's trials and weathered them somehow, you will find also that you've gained the ability to feel scared and to purr at the same time.

If I do say so myself (even though I grew up with the guilt of Catholicism and the outward modesty of a Japanese), I've become a much wiser person for the trials of the past couple of years. I trust my instincts more. I criticize myself less. I'm more understanding with my fears, and try to let them teach me about myself.

I haven't achieved these on my own: Elise is my greatest teacher, and the family and friends who show their love for me are my greatest living teachers. But I can give myself credit for calling these beings into my life. How else is the sincerity of loved ones tested, if not in times of trouble? I did not turn away from Elise's death, but let her take me to the darkest depths of pain. Now as I struggle with my inability to have another child, I see that sadness and joy, darkness and light infuse every moment, and I cherish both.

Elise's Birthday

At this hour two years ago, I was trying to get to sleep while feeling anxious that I hadn't felt Elise moving inside me. Usually she got active just as I settled into bed to read. Sometime after 1AM I woke up and still didn't feel her moving, so I phoned the doctor on call and was told to go to the ER.

As I write this I just had the realization that I also arrived at the hospital at a little after 2AM the morning Felix was born, and that was the same time two years later that the ultrasound technician in Labor and Delivery confirmed that Elise's heart was no longer beating. While waiting for that damn technician, who had fallen asleep with her beeper on vibrate and kept us in dread for 45 minutes while the L and D nurses tried--and tried and tried--to find a heartbeat with the Doppler, I was silent, not wanting to say or feel anything. I did want to shout at the nurses to go away with their useless Doppler, stop pretending you might find a heartbeat when you know there isn't one but don't want to be the ones to tell me my daughter is dead. For some strange reason I felt a flash of relief when the technician finally did show up. Maybe it was because I was going to get an answer.

I couldn't look at the monitor. Then, "There's no heartbeat," my doctor said. I burst into tears as Dan sagged against my chest, burying his face in my neck.

That was the last definitive answer we ever had concerning Elise: the certainty of death. I ask myself, the universe, "Why?" But even getting an answer would not bring her back.

I write about the moment we learned of her death because it is a chapter of her life and, more relevant to those of us on this planet, a chapter in our own lives; a chapter that will be written for us all eventually, whether short story or long novel. In Elise's case, I suppose her story might be the length of a haiku.

Two years after her death felled me, I can say I am on my feet again. I've been brought to my knees again and again over the months, but one of the best things I've gained, which some people might think very strange, is that I am able to cry, sob, wail whenever I need to. I haven't cried like that since I was little and my family called me a crybaby. I used to laugh at the memory of being a crybaby. Now I know I cried because my heart is tender, and I suffered for not being seen as tenderhearted, and for wanting to seem tough and self-sufficient. I am all of these things when I cry the gift of tears.


My friend Shirley, pictured here with Felix, lost a son in 1978 when he was killed in a car crash at twenty-one. She adores Felix, and will babysit him tomorrow night when Dan gets home from a week-long trip and we go out to be together and remember Elise on her birthday. As I spoke to Shirley on the phone tonight, she told me some more fond memories of her beloved husband, how handsome he was, how fun-loving, how they were "like boyfriend and girlfriend again" when their grown children moved out. I knew from previous conversations that he had died in 1984, and mentioned that next year, 25 years will have passed since his death. "He seems frozen in time," she said. "And I can't imagine my son Howie as a 51-year-old. He'll always be a young man in my mind."

Lately I've found solace in Barack Obama's book Dreams From My Father. At one point he writes:

I remember a conversation I had once in Chicago when I was still organizing. It was with a woman who'd grown up in a big family in rural Georgia. Five brothers and three sisters, she had told me, all crowded under a single roof. She told me about her father's ultimately futile efforts to farm his small plot of land, her mother's vegetable garden, the two pigs they kept penned out in the yard, and the trips with her siblings to fish the murky waters of a river nearby. Listening to her speak, I began to realize that two of the three sisters she'd mentioned had actually died at birth, but that in this woman's mind they had remained with her always, spirits with names and ages and characters, two sisters who accompanied her while she walked to school or did chores, who soothed her cries and calmed her fears. For this woman, family had never been a vessel just for the living. The dead, too, had their claims, their voices shaping the course of her dreams.

I never heard Elise's voice or saw the color of her eyes. But these things are merely audible and visible with the senses. I do long to hold her, but again, I console myself by remembering that she is much more than her physical being. My senses cannot define or contain her, nor can my intellect. But she is with me, with her Papa, and her brother, as we grow and change, and she remains forever our sweet baby.

Gifts

"Life and death are a continuum and this is revealed in initiation: that the end and the beginning are back to back, that life is circular. A great trust is required, often in the face of tremendous doubt or skepticism, for we have been well indoctrinated by the fear of the unknown and our own inner voice of guidance may be the last we are used to heeding.

....Facing our worst fears and meeting these powerful and often painful points of transition in a human life is to consciously connect with the mystery, with the order of the cosmos, with existence itself, and to be opened by its infinite potential.

To call on this greater power is prayer. To make ceremony to invoke it is ritual. To connect with it so deeply that it passes through you and leaves you irrevocably changed is initiation."

--from the www.Shematrix.com website


So many words, and yet so few, can describe how I feel upon my return from my weekend retreat on Whidbey Island: transformed, empowered, opened further than I ever thought possible. Every time I experience The Gift retreat, I am amazed, and this time I was on the organizing team and discovered more of my gifts (pun intended? no pun intended? doesn't matter!) by doing such mundane tasks as writing letters, talking on the phone, joking with the team, cutting and arranging flowers, replacing toilet paper rolls and wiping the bathroom sink, washing dishes and slicing cantaloupe. I grew up believing that whatever I did it wasn't enough, either for myself or for the one whose approval I sought. The day before the weekend when we all rushed around in frantic preparation, and the first day of the weekend when we welcomed 15 participants into a space where they could feel safe in their vulnerability and pampered with food and beautiful surroundings, I fretted over my ability to deliver.

All of us bring an intention we want to fulfill for ourselves to the weekend. I lit a candle to my intention to "feel into my power": not hide myself, speak what I needed to speak, be silent when I needed to, go with my instincts and trust my gut. By the second day of The Gift, I was there, and continued to blossom.

We formed a circle for talking about ourselves, and when each of the women spoke, they had my full attention. When I spoke, I felt heard by every one of the other 22 women there. This dynamic swelled into a compassion and companionship with every participant, whether during their rite of initiation or on a break when we could casually chat while marveling at the abundance of delicious food.

We all created this abundance through potluck and catered meals: chocolate, dried cherry muffins, granola-yogurt-cantaloupe parfait, fresh mango and pineapple, strawberries and raspberries, banana chocolate chip bread, lemon bars, deviled eggs, tomato and fresh mozzarella salad, chicken satay, smoked salmon, all the tea and coffee we could drink, all arrayed before us, for us.

I could walk outside or to another room alone on breaks to get some reflective quiet. Some breaks we took in silence as a rule. Then we would come together again and I would feel lifted up.

I've called on my strengthened sense of self through this work many times. I can let myself feel as much as I need to in times of upheaval. When it was time to deliver Elise, my doctor asked me if I was ready. I said I was scared, and she asked what scared me. "I'm afraid I'll die of heartbreak," I told her. I was scared also to look at Elise after she came out. But as soon as she did, I wanted to see her and hold her. When she came out, I screamed at the top of my lungs. I wanted all of the Labor and Delivery ward, the whole hospital, the whole world to hear me screaming my rage and grief.

I told the women in our circle last weekend that I left my job and all its stifling expectations behind because Elise showed me the way. She shows me the way to myself, in my writing, guitar playing, yoga, walking, in SEEING and connecting with those around me.

When I returned from the weekend, it was dear Felix's 4th birthday. That morning as the sun warmed me, I ran with Genki on Peet's Hill and stopped to take pictures of Genki and of a brilliant red cotoneaster. The song that Felix's classmates sang to him as he walked around a candle lit to represent the sun echoed in my head: "The earth goes round the sun, tra-la, the earth goes round the sun. The earth goes round the sun, tra-la, another year is done." A sweet, simple ceremony, invoking such power.

Whatever It Is

"I am not the sort of person to quote the Bible, but I'd hang my hat on "Be still and know that I am God": Be still. Be aware. Let the big picture come to you, so you'll know the right course of action. What more could any higher power ask of us than that we stop, listen, and then act to the best of our abilities?"

--Dana Wildsmith, "Survival Guide"




Today I am grateful that the snow has begun melting and the sun came out. I am grateful that my disappointment at discovering yet again that I'm still not pregnant after 16 months of trying has not broken me.

This Wednesday I travel to Seattle, Whidbey Island to be exact, to attend a weekend retreat for women called The Gift. This will be my fifth time at this event, and my first time on the organizing team. While in the area I'll also visit Seattle Reproductive Medicine to meet with a doctor about attempting in vitro fertilization.

I've passed through the Why Me stage: Why do I have to go to these lengths to have a second living child; Why do other people, even losers who don't even want them, get to conceive babies so easily; Why, above all, do I have to go through the grief of infertility when we've already gone through the hell of losing our Elise to stillbirth? We will never know. That's the way it is. I said to a friend recently that I never realized until now what a profound phrase this is: "THAT'S THE WAY IT IS." You can say it a million times, but it won't sink in until it knocks you over and kicks you while you're down.

So this morning while Felix was at his Kindermusik class, I spent a half hour waiting on the phone while the clerk for our insurance plan tried to find out whether my visit to the doctor on Monday is covered. Otherwise, it would cost 350 dollars (!). The clerk wanted to know the zip code of the doctor's practice, because she couldn't find him by name. "The doctor is in Seattle you said? What state is that?" she asked.

Talk about a broken health care system.

I sat in a window seat at a cafe while making the call, since I didn't have time to go home while waiting for Felix. The table next to me had a woman holding a newborn. While I spoke with the idiot clerk, the baby started crying. It was a very sweet cry, not screechy at all but the kind that went straight through me. The woman's friend who had been holding the baby handed it to the mother, and the baby quieted. As I stared out the window still waiting on the clerk, a couple with a very large pregnant mother and a father holding a toddler walked by. "Hm. Fucking ironic," I said to myself.

And then the feeling passed.

The last few minutes of Felix's class, the parents join in for a song and a little performance by the kids. Attendance was down by a couple of families today, so the other parents who were there each had three kids they'd brought with them, both sons and daughters. "VERY fucking ironic," I said to myself again.

And the feeling passed, and I held Felix on my lap as we sang a "Goodbye" song to end the class. Other people have their realities, and I have mine. There's no Fate or Destiny or Sin about it: it just Is. It's a lesson I recite to myself every day, along with my blessings.

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.

Trees and Feathers

"Watch any plant or animal and let it teach you acceptance of what is, surrender to the Now. Let it teach you Being. Let it teach you integrity--which means to be one, to be yourself, to be real. Let it teach you how to live and how to die, and how not to make living and dying into a problem." --Eckhart Tolle


Dan was out of town all of last week, so I traveled to Helena with Felix to stay with the moms, AKA Grandma and Jannie. It was comforting to be with them, as that day I had taken yet another pregnancy test that turned up negative. Weighing heavily inside me was the knowledge that two other couples in Bozeman had just suffered the loss of their babies this summer, both of them during birth. Then, when I checked my e-mail, I learned that a friend and bright spirit in this town, Liz Ann Kudrna, was hit by a boulder while climbing and had her spine severed. In the span of a few seconds, she was rendered a paraplegic.

On a day when the moms took Felix into town and the carousel to give me some personal time, I dragged myself out of the house to take a walk in the forest. At first all I could see were the dead and dying lodgepole pines: every branch and needle brown and lifeless, the trunks riddled with round beige circles of sap like bullet holes, where the trees desperately tried to fend off attack by bark beetles. Jan and Mary Anne had 50 dead or dying trees cut down and hauled away to be burned. They are lucky in that they have lots of aspen, Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir in addition to the poor lodgepoles: some people, they say, lost every tree on their property.

I forced myself to see the bigger picture on my walk. I saw bear scat, a few days old maybe, full of seeds, not too big but I talked loudly to Genki and clapped my hands just in case. I was bushwhacking through a berry patch I hoped harbored no hungry territorial ones.

I searched for a weathered piece of tree trunk or branch I could take home for our garden as a memento of this lovely place. The moms will sell it in 2 or 3 years. The work of upkeep, shovelling, de-icing and negotiating a treacherous winter driveway, snow-blowing the 1/3 of a mile of drive to the road, keeping the grass cut, stacking firewood, monitoring propane and sewer and plumbing issues, and now spending a lot of money to remove the ecological and fire hazard of diseased trees, is wearing on them.

As I bushwhacked toward the lodgepole stands in the foothills leading to MacDonald Pass, I emerged to find all kinds of seeds stuck to my light fleece sweater. Sesame-shaped brown seeds, oval bright-green burrs, fennel-like dark slivers. When I got to the house and took off my shoes, I found black burrs like tiny twigs in my socks. Tenacious sparks of life, renewing themselves by grasping at any possibility.

Thoughts of life and death floated in fragments through my mind. I had already sobbed my eyes out in the house on my way out for the walk. Now I was drifting, going with the flow and watching Genki sniff around, trot back and forth to check on me, both of us listening to the aspens whisper, the evergreens sough, the bees thrum.

At the end of my walk I found my treasure, right behind the wood shop: a star-shaped bit of weathered Douglas fir root. It was part of a once-enormous being that was now a pile of weathered stump and branches aging into soil for decades, after a fire burned it down in the 1930s. The earth had claimed more than half of it, and no doubt dozens of spiders and insects and soil bacteria were now calling it home.

While writing this, my eye just landed on the peacock feather Felix brought me this morning. Purple, caramel, iridescent lime green and indigo and midnight blue eye: "Let it teach you how to live and die, and now not to make living and dying into a problem."

Blossoming

Elise's rose bush is flowering. It's not the "official" rose we planted at her memorial, but even as a replacement for the one that didn't make it, it still represents hope for me.

We had planted two rose bushes at the memorial: one that we bought, and another my friends (then colleagues) at the Modern Languages Department gave us. November 10th was rather late in the year to plant, even though the weather was relatively warm for mid-autumn. The soil where we planted it is not the greatest either, since it was formerly gravel driveway and thus full of rocks and clay. And to top it off, we don't really grow roses and don't know much about their care. So both the rose bushes didn't make it the following spring.

But I had saved the receipt from the Department's gift, and got another rose from the nursery that had guaranteed the original for up to a year or they would replace it. When I returned from the nursery and planted the replacement, Dan said he was glad I could bring myself to do it, because he was feeling too demoralized.

I completely empathized with him. At the same time, I somehow felt driven to grow roses for Elise, even if they weren't the ones we planted at her memorial. I wouldn't be defeated by death, dammit: I had to prevail, no matter how small the gesture of my determination.

The soil is not the best, as I said, but the rose blooms have good company: the aspen we planted five years ago seems to grow before our eyes, probably 3 feet or more since it started out in our garden. The lilac that last year seemed plagued by mysterious black spots on its leaves is in full, fragrant flower. Along with its twin on the west side of the house, it never flowered much in all the years we've lived here, but this season we can scent its loveliness every time we open our front door.

So we live in the mystery, not knowing much except for one certainty: that flowers follow snow, which follows flowers, and so on.

Lightness

This is a picture I took of Felix at the end of a Tuesday we spent together. He likes these rainbow-colored gloves because he can put them on all by himself. Before bedtime, he stood brushing his teeth with one rainbow hand while waving at the mirror with the other.

We have Tuesdays and Thursday afternoons together, and today I was determined to just enjoy him and not worry about meeting time deadlines. These days Felix gets really upset when it's time to stop playing--get off the swing, park the Thomas trains, stop riding his bike--so we can get to the store /make dinner /get ready for bed. Even if we warn him ahead of time, he still mourns in his high-pitched wail when the fun is ending.

I can't blame him. How much do we tell ourselves to enjoy the moment? So I pushed him on the swing today for well over an hour, then we bought him a new bike with training wheels, his first. He didn't ask for one. He just had such a ball trying out the next-door neighbor's, and loves riding his tricycle so much that he pedals all the way to the library and back, which I think is over 1/2 mile round trip, that we wanted to see him on a bicycle. He rode it over to the neighbors' and again we spent as much time having fun as he wanted.

It was soothing for me. I was able to rest my spinning mind just hanging out with him. I started reading Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now, and it really resounds with me. I still am figuring out how to have Elise as a part of my life without letting the pain of losing her define me. I know her death has changed me, and in many ways for the better. But I want to access the peace I know is in me, bring it to the surface again and have it always at hand, just like she is always with me in everything I do.

Still Here

Felix had his Tuesday morning swim lesson today. Most of the children in the class have a younger sibling, so Elise's absence looms as I sit around the pool with the other mothers. Last time when I sat near 3 others as they talked about their multiple children, I read a book and discreetly stuck my index finger into the ear that faced them.

One of the women lost a 20-week old baby last summer and is 21 weeks pregnant. Her son is in Felix's swim group and is about the same age as Felix. I've spoken a little bit to her about the pain of Elise's death, thinking she could probably relate, but she never talks about the baby who died, maybe because it died from complications of Trisomy 13. I don't even know if it was a boy or a girl.

This morning the first thing she told me and another woman with a 3-year-old daughter and 6-month old son on her lap was that at her ultrasound, she found out that this baby was a girl. I was genuinely happy for her, and happy that the baby is all right. She and the other mother went on to chat about the age differences between their children, what a challenge it is with two little ones, etc. etc. etc. I turned away to watch Felix and discreetly stuck an index finger in my ear.

Then I went into the empty women's locker room and said out loud, "Elise, you are still our daughter, and you are still Felix's little sister. Others have forgotten you, but you will always be our baby." Later I said out loud again, "Elise, we can only see what's in front of our faces, and sometimes we even miss that. Our world here is so limited, we only acknowledge or speak about those who are here with us in our tiny little plane of existence. I know you are with me even when these poor eyes can't see you."

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.

Wordless Connection

Another gray day among many this winter, but at least we are getting some snow out of it today: sequin flakes are parachuting out of a windless sky. I'm clinging to the fact that each day brings a minute's more sun.

Considering the Seattle-like gloom though, I'm feeling pretty steady, if scattered. I haven't had any emotional crashes since the holidays, but even if I did, they are part of going along with what life brings.

One thing I did that brought some catharsis was to send out an announcement to academic friends and teachers about resigning my job. I heard from people I hadn't been in touch with for a while, and people I was sure had heard about Elise's death but hadn't contacted me. I'm trying not to dwell on those I thought I would get a response from but haven't, because people drift in and out of my life and bring me experiences and memories I can still savor, even if we never meet again.

I haven't written in here in a long time. Writing is not part of my days lately, I think because things feel so transitional, it seems I just have to hold on and go along even though the road is so twisty, there's no point in trying to see around any of the corners. I can't stop to process, but somehow this doesn't seem wrong or disturbing. I write in my journal, but that's about it. Otherwise, I talk with Dan, with some friends, read and watch movies. And of course, talking with Felix is always a treat, with those big brown eyes gazing earnestly into mine.

Speaking of wordlessness, a friend last night was saying how much she loved After Life: she said she especially loved the scene where one of the characters, an 18-year-old girl who is a trainee at the way station for the dead, stomps around on a rooftop angrily kicking and throwing snow after she realizes the young coworker she's infatuated with is leaving the way station. She expresses powerful emotion unusual for her in that scene, and with no words. Most of the memories the dead choose to take with them to the afterlife have no words either.

The most comforting part of the film for me in my relationship with Elise is the experience of a teenage girl who thinks at first she wants to choose a memory from a trip to Disneyland. When her advisor at the way station sits her down to point out that dozens of people have thought they wanted to choose a memory from Disneyland, the teenager goes back to the drawing board. Towards the end of the film, she runs excitedly to tell her advisor she's chosen a memory from her childhood: one where she is lying with her head in her mother's lap while her mother strokes her hair, and the little girl lingers in the comfort of her mother's scent and the sound of her heartbeat. Elise felt the warmth of my body, the whoosh of my heartbeat and the sounds of my voice, her papa's, her brother's. We were important to her, as she was and always will be to us.

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.

Giving Thanks

I haven’t yet written about what exactly Dan and I did on Elise’s birthday.
Dan set her photo and ashes on the dining room table, and together we lit the “Peace” candle my sister Mary and her partner Chris gave us. Dan said, “Happy Birthday, Elise.” We stared at the candle with tears in our eyes.

When we opened our front door to go out, there were a dozen pink roses on our porch. They were from Sanna and Pete, our neighbors across the street whose daughter Oskaria died of a genetic defect July 1st of last year. They are expecting their second child in just a few weeks. We placed their lovely flowers in front of the candle, along with their card. “Love is stronger than death,” they wrote.

We went out to breakfast and talked about how we were feeling. We spent some time taking care of ourselves: I did 2 hours of yoga and took a bath, Dan went to the gym. Sarah dropped off some narcissus bulbs in a lovely pot. Ann sent daffodil bulbs from Seattle. I’ll have to wait until spring to plant them: snow has settled in. Katy gave us a beautiful, tall candle: “May it light your darkness,” she wrote in her card. Throughout the day, we got phone messages and cards from friends and family. We both cried when we read Jan’s card. “Although I still grieve our loss of our tiny granddaughter, I am so grateful I was able to hold her and rock her that awful (awe-full) morning and could be a part of a family that mourned together. Whatever else Elise may come to give me over the years, that is a gift beyond measure to me.”

Oct. 31st: We had to put our kitty down yesterday. Her name was Freud. She was a beautiful dilute calico, a perfect balance of orange and grey fur on her back, tail, and head, with lovely white chest, belly and stockings. We named her Freud because under the triangle of white nose and cheeks and chin, she had a grey patch that looked like the beard Dr. Sigmund had. She was very sweet to everyone, and slept at the foot of our bed. Sometimes she would tease our dog Genki by rearing up and swatting at her nose. They would have a round in the ring with Freud swatting and Genki wheeling this way and that to dodge her “blows.”

At first I thought I didn’t want to be there when the vet administered her lethal injection. But when she had to endure two failed attempts to get a catheter for the injection into a vein in her leg, I decided she needed me. She had feline leukemia, and was so dehydrated from not eating or drinking that her veins collapsed when they tried to insert the catheter. When the vet finally gave her the injection in a femoral blood vessel, she was so weak that it was difficult to tell when she left her body. She lay on her side as the sedative took her away, while Dan and I stroked her head and cheek.

I knew yesterday morning that I was spending my last hours with her, but I only shed a couple of tears when I had Felix say goodbye to her before he went to school. I thought my lack of overt sadness was because I was tired of being sad, or that I was comforted by getting to say goodbye to her and by the knowledge that she wouldn’t suffer anymore.

But when I held her on my lap in the car while parked at the animal hospital, I sobbed. She shook her head to disperse the tears that fell on her ears. I sobbed with Dan after the vet explained the euthanasia process and left us alone to be with her in the examining room. And I sobbed over her lifeless body. The agony of death and abandonment came flooding back. I pictured Elise’s sweet but lifeless face again, and I wanted to scream helpless curses at the universe.

I was exhausted the rest of the day. I felt thankful that I had a simple life with no work obligations to drag myself through. I was glad we were picking up Felix from school to watch him make his cheerful, uncomplicated way through his day.

I had one work obligation that evening, but thankfully again, it was a comforting one: for the Bozeman Film Festival, I introduced and facilitated a Q & A session for the Japanese film After Life. The story takes place at a sort of way station for the dead: the newly deceased are given 3 days to choose one memory from their lives, which the staff at the way station will recreate on film and screen for them, at which point the dead will leave to spend the rest of eternity with that memory. It’s a languid, thought-provoking film, one that asks what is important to us in our own lives. It celebrates the art of filmmaking, our individual ways in the midst of our need for connection, and the unshakable belief that we will be consoled. One of the characters says that he made the wonderful discovery after many, many years, that he was important to someone. And that is what I hold on to: that even in their tiny, short lives, beings like Freud, who very few besides Dan and I care about, and Elise, who is forgotten or never remembered by most except Dan and me, are important to us, and cherished.

Phantoms

Sept. 26: I am having these muscle twitches in my lower abdomen that feel exactly like a baby inside me with the hiccups.

What the hell does it mean? It seems cruel and hopeful at the same time. It seems more cruel to my empty body than the usual sights that stalked me this morning at the public library: the mother with the two small daughters who opened her van door with its two carseats next to me just as I was getting out of my car; the woman with the preschooler and toddler walking by me as I entered the library; the hugely pregnant woman with the toddler boy passing by me as I went to buy some tea at the library cafe.

I know these are common sights, as are the multitude of hugely pregnant women I seem to see every day, and the FIVE friends and acquaintances I've learned are pregnant in the past couple of months. I want to believe these are good omens of another, healthy baby in our future, and good reminders of our Elise.

But these twitches...the hiccup-like ones are new. I've had phantom ones that were occasional, like the kicks and punches with which Elise once poked me. When I read about others having these ghostly movements in books about stillbirth, I could hardly believe it. But then they happened to me.

And I don't know what to do with them. I do remember seeing an item at the popular museum show Bodies: The Exhibition in Seattle that has stayed with me: in the room about fetal development, a passage read, "Fetal cells stay in the mother's body for years after birth." I felt comforted by those words. It seemed like a physical element of Elise's spirit living on in my life.

I think I need to rethink my connection to my body, let my body into my consciousness more. The weight loss, the illness, the feelings of disconnection are telling me this, not to mention the words of my massage therapist and acupuncturist. I'm not sure how to do it. Maybe I'll start by taking myself for a walk.