skeletons in my closet

I have been missing you lately. There isn't a minute that goes by that I don't think about you, but lately it is more than that. It's the time of year, I think. These months of fall were so heavy with hope and excitement over your existence. You, this tiny little spark in my belly, changing the way my world turned. At the end of October, we saw you on the ultrasound screen and I finally allowed myself to fall totally in love with you, even though in my heart I felt that something wasn't right. Thanksgiving brought a table full of family, giddy with anticipation and twinkle-eyed imaginations of how different the next year's feast would be.

I was so happy.

I cleaned out my closet the other day. I pulled everything out to sort and threw countless pieces of clothing into a donation pile without thinking. Then I came across a pair of maternity jeans that I only ever wore while I was pregnant with you. They were the first pair of maternity pants I bought, actually, and I loved them. They quickly became the most comfortable pair of jeans I had, and eventually the only ones I could still fit into. I wore them to the hospital. And then one day, after you were gone, I was wearing them--out of habit maybe, or just because they were still the most comfortable jeans I had--and I caught the back pocket on a nail on the deck and ripped a huge hole in them. Into the closet they went, forgotten through my entire subsequent pregnancy and following year, until just the other day, when I pulled them out and just sat with them for awhile, remembering.

I couldn't get rid of them. Is that ridiculous? They are pants. It's pretty unlikely that I will ever wear them again, but I just...can't. There are so few reminders of your life, of our time together, that I find myself clinging to every shred of evidence I can.

I miss you, baby girl.

fall

In the quiet moments, it is you that fills my thoughts. For days, I haven't been able to shake the memories. In the not so quiet moments, the grief lingers in the perimeter, trying my patience, making me anxious and irritable and distant. Tears gather in my throat, sometimes even making it to my eyes, but I cannot cry. I pulled out your blanket yesterday for the first time in months, maybe even a year. Folded up inside, there is still the extra fabric we placed underneath you, stained with fluid from your open spine. I stared at it for a long time, almost in awe. It is one of the only things that still convinces me that you were real, that you existed at all. You are so very far away.

the great disconnect

I am feeling it lately, little girl: the disconnect as time stretches and expands between us, between our experience, and you just get farther and farther away. Yesterday was two years since I first learned of your existence, since I stood in the bathroom, listening to my heart pound as if it were going to explode, while the hourglass flashed. Two years since I looked down and blinked again and again, because it was early and I swore I had to be missing one of the words...where was the "not" part of it? But there was only one word on the screen, and in an instant, my life changed.

How can it be that we are coming around to all the dates again? It seems just yesterday I was reeling at the fact that a year had passed, and now two?

At the same time, I am so busy, so immersed in the work of raising your brother, that it seems a lifetime ago. I feel myself drifting. I have reached that point that I wasn't sure existed, where I don't feel quite so...haunted. You are still an ever present part of my thoughts, but there is a sort of veil over the dark parts. I can stare them in the face now without falling apart.

And, perhaps fittingly, your brother has decided to cut this post short by refusing to go back to sleep. There is no time for missing you.

unexpected anniversary

When I wrote the date down today it resonated somewhere in my mind, but it took me awhile to realize why. August 17th...not a birthday or an anniversary or a holiday. No, it was my "LMP" in my pregnancy with you. The date of my last period, the official beginning of the cycle that changed my life. I wrote it down a thousand times, told it to midwives and doctors and secretaries and genetic counselors and ultrasound techs, over and over again.

It has been two years. Already.

I miss that girl I once was sometimes.

finished

She is on my mind a lot today. I don't know why.

I keep thinking about the little things that were lost. The room we never got to decorate. The dresses we never bought. How utterly and completely everything has changed.

And it isn't a bad thing, really. I can't even imagine having a girl anymore. I love having my boy, but I am still a little bitter that it didn't all go right the first time. I'm a little bitter that I didn't really get to enjoy my pregnancy, the good one, because I was so preoccupied with the possibility that it wouldn't last.

We ran into a mom with a three month old at the store yesterday, and she was asking all kinds of questions about the baby and the birth and here I am with this perfect story, beautiful baby, and a...weight. That's the only way I can describe it. It's like a nagging feeling that I am forgetting something. I feel like a fraud. Because I'm not a normal mom, not really. I have all these dark corners, flashbacks of the kinds of moments that nightmares are made of.

I guess what it comes down to is...in my heart, I have two babies. Sometimes there are moments when the world is bustling around me and the subconscious, instinctual mother part of me sort of stops to take count, and there are always two babies there. Only one of them I don't have to wonder about. In fact, I am already finished mothering her.

That's just it, isn't it? She has no diapers to change, no boo-boos to kiss, no piles of clothing to fold and sort through and grow out of. She just came and went and there isn't anything else for me to do. And somehow, I am supposed to be okay with that.

some days

some days my heart beats too big

sometimes I am utterly overwhelmed with love for this bright and lively force of a boy in my life. my love for him grows daily (hourly, even) and it has reached the point that if I reach down and really try to feel all of it, try to comprehend the enormity of it, it hurts.

some days, the ever increasing real estate he is occupying in my heart seems to shine a light on your corner--the one that is still barricaded and reserved for the daughter who will never exist in quite the way I imagined. this corner is full of love too, stuffed to the brim, but it is different. it has to be different. there is still a hollow there, an ache. sometimes the contrast of this intense joy lighting up my life draws my attention to that darker hollow, and I feel that sadness, that weight, a little bit more than usual. I seem to realize more and more what I am missing, just how much was lost when you died. it is constantly more than I could have imagined at the time.

and yet.

without you, without the loss of you, I would not have this particular incredible child. I would not have so many things that have become strong, fundamental parts of who I am. after you died, everything changed. I used to resent that change, but I don't anymore. not really. our experience together has become part of me, woven into the fabric of my life. you are gone, and yet you are in everything I do.

some days I still wake up angry. some days I am bitter. some days that instinctual mother in my heart wants to take the pregnant woman next to me by the hair and scream at her because doesn't realize just how fucking lucky she is.

some days I stop for just a moment to shed tears for the daughter that never was, for my little broken baby that I still love beyond measure. for that once stranger of a self, lost in my own life.

I am not so lost anymore.

but some days, I still miss you.

fresh paint

we are flying down a familiar road again, speeding toward the hope of an answer, although this time the question lacks any hint of optimism. the sun beats down defiantly on our tired faces. the sheep in the fields keep their babies close, taunting me with their good fortune. this isn't fair.

it is new year's eve day, though the holiday barely registers. the date is almost too trivial to comprehend. there are no dates, and there is certainly nothing to celebrate.

there is tension in the car as we navigate through turning lanes and stop signs into the cement box of the parking garage. somehow, we gather ourselves and set foot on the ground again. one step at a time.

the smell of fresh paint and new carpet are overwhelming as push through the doors of a new hospital building. we seem strangely out of place among the brightly colored walls and modern artwork, among parents wrangling running children and caressing swollen bellies. what a sight we must be, tear-streaked and ashen-faced, wandering the halls of a place we never wanted to know. and somehow, we step into an elevator and ascend to the correct floor. a small miracle, as i am outside myself. my body goes through the motions, but i am not here. not really.

there is a wait. there is always a wait, as we will quickly learn. we sit among pregnant bellies, bellies larger than mine will ever get, and i stare at the circles on the wall, at the pattern of the carpet, anything but the round protrusions that remind me of what i am already losing, although i haven't lost her yet.

we are ushered into a small office with a round table. framed pictures and certificates of a genetic counselor litter the perimeter, not yet hung. i slide into the farthest chair, with him at one side and the window on the other. the counselor places a box of tissue in my vicinity of the table: a permission of sorts, a silent message that says, this will be hard. it is okay to cry.

her eyes are sad and her voice is thick with sympathy, quiet with the weight of her words. she offers another ultrasound but i refuse. i cannot bear the thought. she opens a folder, heavy with papers that sum up everything we have learned thus far. and then she pulls out a long string of shiny paper printed with fuzzy images in shades of gray, pointing out lemons and lateral ventricles and a spine that splits nearly in the middle and curves to the left. this is what we know, but there is so much that we don't. there is talk of necessary surgeries, of shunts and metal rods and braces, even to sit. potential brain damage, advanced hydrocephalus.

somehow, we reach the subject of the other side, of that other option that is tugging at us because we love her so much that we cannot imagine putting her through this. she looks at us knowingly and says, it sounds like you are leaning towards ending the pregnancy. and the pit of my stomach falls out and the tears spring to my eyes like a thousand pins as she pushes the box of tissue closer. and there, there is the increasingly familiar pull and tug of how can we, how can we not? she assures us it can be done peacefully, with respect, extinguishing the fear instilled in me by my own ninth grade persuasive speech with a pro-life angle. how ironic.

the office is too small for this conversation, this choice that feels like anything but. she gives us her cell phone number and we file out, sinking back down the elevator without a word. i am numb. dizzy with grief and fear and uncertainty, and yet i feel very little.

in the breezeway, a mother pushes her son in a wheelchair, his gaze absent as he stares out the window. our pace simultaneously quickens as we pass, pushing our way through the heavy metal doors into the damp darkness of the parking garage once again. we do not stop until we reach the car, the doors falling shut on either side as we collapse into our little portable bubble. the silence settles in, thick and ridden with unspoken questions.

and there are the tears again, although this time, they are his. suddenly, this is all very real to him, too. suddenly, we are tiny, helpless, powerless to fix this. there is a ripple of injustice as reality continues to set in. why us. why her. this isn't fair.

we lean into each other and cry, tears sliding off our noses and mingling together on the upholstery. he is the first to muster words:

i think we have to let her go.

i know it is the truth, and yet it is sickening, sitting in the pit of my stomach like a rock or something equally indigestible. there are no good options.

we cry a little longer, and i am thankful for the dialog that has finally been opened between us. because suddenly it is real, and it isn't fair, but we are in it together.

slowly we settle back into the hum of the rest of the world, where our bodies already know what to do and our minds just follow along.

i start the car and we keep moving.

we have no choice.