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.

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.