March 29, 2011: Margot June
I have written a thousand words in my mind over the past five days, but now, as I lay my fingers to the keyboard and ponder the immensity of this tragedy, none seem to suffice.
The simple heartbreaking reality is that our sweet Margot June never had the chance to enter into our lives. She was there alive, all seven pounds, eleven ounces of her, only days away from emerging, when a tiny misstep sent Kari's protruding belly into the sidewalk. Her placenta ruptured on impact, cutting the oxygen off to our little one and altering the story of our lives in a single, solitary moment.
For nine hours, her swaddled body was with us. She was there against my chest when I mourned over her in a private room while waiting for her momma to wake from her emergency cesarean. She was there in my hands as I held her out to Kari and told her the news. She was there, her body curled up in my forearm, as I begged Kari to keep fighting until the blood and platelets could be transfused into her system. She was there, taking care of me, as I listened intently to any words Kari uttered, wondering if they would be her last. She was there clinging to my body as the seven nurses and two doctors rushed Kari around the hospital to the coronary care unit for more blood and platelets and a morphine drip and IV's and fluids and oxygen. She was with us two hours later, lying in my lap, as I began seeing clots of blood emerge from Kari, the first sign that Kari might be stabilizing.
She was there in the arms of a few family and friends, who quietly wept at what was going to be. She was there lying between us, as we spoke to her softly, telling her that we were sorry and that we loved her and that we were sad she didn't get to meet her big sister, who would have loved her as much as we did. She was there when we unswaddled her and tried to memorize every inch of her body. Her wet black hair, jet blue eyes, Jackson nose and Bray cheeks, her enormous hands and big Stella-like belly. And she was there as we said goodbye to her for the first and last time.
Though only a few hours, her presence carried me through one of the most decisive moments of my life.
As the grief sets in, a new story begins.
Margot June
7lbs, 11oz
21 inches
Stillborn March 24, 2011
March 30, 2011: Something
I wish I was tired. I would kill to be sleeping right now. There are lots of wishes, but this one takes center stage at 10:31pm tonight. I don't want to be awake anymore today.
As Kari lies near me in a mechanical bed, sleeping as deep as she has since around week sixteen of her pregnancy, I stare blankly at this screen, lost at where to navigate. I see those damn bookmarks dangling in front of me, all leading down familiar paths. MLB. Apartment Therapy. Bank. CraigsList. There are folders for gardening and for work and for blogs. There is my documents folder, one I opened and ventured to many times a day for business and personal bookkeeping. Now these little icons and words simply serve as a reminder of what I was doing before all of this happened, a life that seems so foreign and distant now.
I'm only left staring at a blank page that beckons me to slowly tap my fingers. Out of her white space and blinking cursor, she calls me to write about nothing and everything all at once, knowing this thing called grief has no formula or pattern. And tonight, a few measly written words seem like, at the very least, something.
March 31, 2011: 163 Hours
April 3, 2011: Found and Lost and Found
We endlessly swing back and forth, from grief over Margot to fighting for Kari's health, blown by the winds of bodily pain and baby reminders, neither one being easy, both frightening and unpredictable. It seems we oscillate between these two forces almost moment by moment, never letting one take too much precedence over the other, but never allowing us to fully engage with each emotion either. For when we're focused on getting better, on walking and hydrating and resting, Margot is there. And when we're remembering Margot, Kari's pain and bruises and immobility hangs thick in the air. This is our predicament, the reality of this new story we find ourselves living in.
On the one front, today was the kind of day we needed. We laughed more, smiled more, felt like ourselves more. We shared a meal with friends, wrestled and sang with Stella, spent time laughing with our families and went an entire day without the stay-in-your-bed nausea that has consumed most of our other days. We took long walks around the fourth floor of our building, stopping in a certain window to let the sun drench over us. We shared intimate cheek-to-cheek hugs and tender forehead kisses, moments nearly impossible to have with all of the tubes, pain and nausea that have dominated the past ten days. We spoke of hope and the future and began scratching the surface of what this new story might look like.
But I also lacked emotions today. My eyes were dry, my heart confused. I wanted to join Kari in tears when we spoke of what we were going to do with the tiny room we created for Margot in our bedroom closet. I wanted to cry when Stella innocently asked where Margot was. But there were no tears and few words, leaving my heart in a state of confusion. Where did the gratifying, therapeutic tears go? Why did these emotions, which were always on the edge of my heart and on the tip of my mind, suddenly seem distant and removed?
These are the thoughts and questions I have tonight. They stream back and forth tirelessly from my head to my heart and back again. I search for clues and look for meaning.
If I find solace in anything about today, it's this: whatever we're going through, whatever we're thinking, whatever emotion is dominant, whatever we may feel or not feel, however the day plays out...this is our grief. There are no easy answers, no wrong or right way to grieve, no expected formula. This grief is complicated and simple, creeps in slowly and harshly and manifests itself in many forms. I guess in these early days, I'm learning to embrace griefs tricky, soul soothing complexities, from one day to the next.
April 4, 2011: Due Date
By today, you would have been close to nine pounds. Your hair would have been darker and thicker and those important feeding reflexes even more ready for latching. And if you were anything like your stubborn sister, who came fourteen days late, this date would have come and gone without much hoopla.
April 4, 2011 has been marked in our minds and hearts for some time now, as we eagerly anticipated your official entrance in the flesh. We think of you constantly and today is no different. We miss you Margot June. We miss what was going to be.
Yes I understand that every life must end,
As we sit alone, I know someday we must go,
I’m a lucky man to count on both hands,
The ones I love.
Stay with me,
Let’s just breathe.
Eddie Vedder. "Just Breathe." Backspacer
April 6, 2011: Home
After 14 blood transfusions, 13 hospital bed nights - 5 of those in ICU - 7 days of extreme nausea, scales tipping over 180 lbs, elephant feet, 6 days of oxygen, 4 sessions of dialysis, 4 enimas, one catheter sticking out of my neck like a finger, one bruised abdomen, one c section...we are going HOME.
So much to be grateful for. So must lost.
April 7, 2011: The Hospital
We went through so much here, I hardly even know where to begin. Our Stella was born here and our Margot was lost here, just a few rooms down from one another. Years from now, when we reflect on this delicate place in the foothills of the San Gabriels, I imagine this is what we will remember more than anything. But for the fourteen days we lived here, it has been agony and triumph, nurses and specialists, movies and visitors and cries of grief for Margot and desperation for two fist sized kidneys to regenerate.
A few pictures to remember these long, tiresome days:
[perhaps the defining picture of our entire stay here. when kari was fighting for her life, she remembers wanting to simply feel the sun again. every day on our walks together, we would stop for several minutes in this window, letting the beautiful sun rain down on our bodies and our grief]
April 9, 2011: The Hardest Part
It shouldn't be this way. We shouldn't be packing up a closet that was meant for Margot, shouldn't be telling Stella that we lost her little sister. We shouldn't be having to face reminders around every corner. The flowers shouldn't be covered in sympathy. The cards shouldn't be wet with heartache. Stella shouldn't have to be so confused by our constant tears and blank stares. Our families shouldn't be flying in for this reason. Her body shouldn't have gone through all of that for nothing. We shouldn't be picking up her ashes and deciding on a memorial site and thinking about a service.
We shouldn't have come home empty handed.
And yet here we are, facing this reality, without any warning or instruction book.
Oh, how it hurts. Oh, how it hurts.
And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?
Lights will guide you home
And ignite your bones
And I will try to fix you
Coldplay. "Fix You." X&Y
April 15, 2011: The Memorial
Since death is such a part of life, today we choose hope and acceptance, because despair is too great a burden.
April 18, 2011: Morning. Afternoon. Evening. Repeat.
I’m struggling to put these last several days into words. Our emotions seem a steady portion of sadness with a dose of peace sprinkled in from time to time, which only seems to come as the tears stop rolling and we find ourselves remembering how much death and loss and grief are part of the full human experience.
We are finding ways to cope.
We have learned to measure our days and weeks in small blocks of time. Morning, afternoon and evening. The mornings seem to be the hardest, like a cruel Groundhog Day repeat moment, except the clock radio that wakes up Bill Murray is replaced by images of Margot and the harsh reality of her death. Getting through each block is our main focus, knowing that in the end, the simplicity of the clock ticking on and the calendar pages flipping over will bring healing.
Distraction has become our closest ally, giving us much needed breaks from the grief that often seems insurmountable. An afternoon playing with the kids outside, chasing them around the yard, looking for worms in the garden. An hour watching Survivor. A meal with friends. Late night fires on the back patio.
Music has helped. From The National to Eddie Vedder to Alison Krauss, we have found solace in the beautiful, soul soothing lyrics and sounds. The three of us slow dance to “Fix You” by Coldplay and for those brief few minutes, the world seems just fine.
There is sleep, precious sleep.
There is all there is to be grateful for, which we calmly repeat every single day, multiple times out. For life. Stella. Family. Friends. For all that could have been worse but wasn’t. The hundreds of strangers who have shared in our grief, sent meals and even some who have told their own tragic stories of loss.
Our thoughts and rational allow us to be comforted. We know this loss is a common experience for so many individuals and families, that death is a part of life. We know this has been the case throughout history, is the case now and will be into the future. It feels like we’re just waiting for our emotional feelings to catch up to our rational thoughts.
Ashes to ashes, morning to morning.
April 20, 2011: The Society Of the Suffering
Every day we’re astounded by our sudden strange and intimate connection with those who have experienced loss. There are those in our inner circle who have experienced this sort of sorrow in the past. Others outside of our circle have shared their own tragedies and each story seems to trigger these unexpected feelings of intimacy and empathy. Even the grief of the people we’ve only heard of seems to move us. All of these people and their stories suddenly mean something more, as if there is this alternate reality out there, this society of people who have learned to find normalcy and harmony within the grief. These people, near and far, dead and alive, are like magnets that keep drawing us in. Their stories call to us, asking for our brokenness and sadness, inviting us to share in the pain together, and in doing so, they weave our shared pain into this complicated and beautiful tapestry of grief.
These people look at us differently, with deep pools of understanding in their eyes. They’re not afraid of grief or death or freak accidents or confusion. They have a quiet strength about them. They are resilient. They have sure foundations. Somehow they have made peace with their own losses and become fuller human beings, more capable of love and empathy. They remind us that while death is no stranger and though life is not certain, hope remains.
We joined this society of the suffering not by choice. It would have been nice if death could have passed us by, if we could have lived a little while longer without this deep sorrow, but here we are.
Life is fragile.
Death comes when you least expect it.
A dozen different decisions on March 24 could have prevented the accident.
But,
Kari did fall.
Margot did die.
And grief hangs over us.
My hope is that eventually we can become like those we have joined.
April 22, 2011: The Beach
The old man with the jeans and white tee shirt searches for buried treasure. He looks as weathered as the cliffs that dot the coastline. He swings his arm back and forth, waving a broom, listening for metal.
An oversized teenager yells to her parents from the edge of the water. Momma! Momma! Look! Seriously, look! Come on! The mom creeps closer and closer to the sixty-five degree water, her feet slowly shuffling forward to the last inch of a wave about to retreat.
A boy in board shorts chases pigeons. His shorts depict the American flag; red and white stripes on the legs, blue stars in the rear.
Pigeons aimlessly walk around the sand, bobbing their heads up and down with authority. They work in pairs and occasionally peck into the sand. The purple on their backs glisten in the sunlight. They seem comfortable yet tentative around humans, as if they haven’t quite figured out the difference between a chasing little kid and a bread generous adult.
A teenager catches a wave on his boogie board and miraculously floats on it nearly one hundred feet to the shore. He screams and hollers the entire ride and his smile is as epic and free spirited as his ride along the white washed wave.
Two sailboats in the distance. Four girls scream with delight just before the wave crashes.
The man in search of treasure disappears over the small rise without his shovel ever touching the ground. Just another day, he thinks to himself.
A couple celebrates ten years of marriage by sitting in rusty beach chairs where the sand and rocks meet one another. They type and write, grieving together, taking the sun in one ray at a time. This is nice, she says to him.
April 23, 2011: About Today
We hardly talked today. There were few exchanges and little effort. We slept in and then laid next to one another, our eyes and toes facing the ceiling, our hearts fragile. She showered and I slowly packed up our shared suitcase. We had breakfast at a little diner and made a few comments about the food. A pregnant woman sat in the booth across from our table, looking so happy and free in her third trimester. On the drive home, we couldn’t even muster a sentence. Sadness hung over us like rain and every time I tried to claw my way back to a rational thought, the sadness seemed to take notice and gush with more force.
But what is there to say? Do we repeat everything that has been said already?
In the past, pre March 24, sadness never stayed around very long. Partly because I’m not one to dwell on the despondency of life. And partly because my nature has always been to overcome it with some form of distraction or positivity. But now, post Margot, the sadness comes and I have zero motivation to overcome it. Nor do I feel any need to get over it. And sometimes, like today, I don’t want to get over it. For there seems to be some kind of strange healing in my new friend named sadness. It feels like this sadness, which lurks around every new hour, hides in every conversation, and stares at me in the distance, just might eventually be my ticket to acceptance.
April 25, 2011: Standing In the Rain
My Dear Stella,
I am so, so, so proud of you buddy. Despite all that you have endured over the past month, you have handled everything with so much strength. You have been shuffled between grandparents and aunties and friends, so many different people putting you to bed and singing you their own songs and feeding you and taking care of you. Knowing your love of regimen, I can only imagine how hard this must have been at times. You had to visit Mommy in the hospital, even when she didn't look like Mommy, with tubes sticking out of her neck and fifty pounds of fluids in her body. You have had to deal with constant tears and sadness, all for something you don't fully understand. The rain has come, and stayed, and you keep walking along and singing your songs. You are the bravest of all of us these days.
Love,
Dad
April 27, 2011: Amen and Amen
The waves of grief continue to pound the shores of our hearts, slowly breaking off tiny pieces that sometimes feel irretrievable. Some of the waves are familiar now. Like the subtle and obvious reminders of Margot that seem to be everywhere we look. Babies, sisters at the park, ashes in the fire, an empty belly, the eery quiet of our home that should have been filled with infant wailing and dancing and friends. Or when I look at pictures of Margot, which I do every single day. I stare at her face and limbs and try to see something new, like the shape of her knees or the tiny dimple above her lips. Or the inevitable reality that most of the world has gone back to normal life. To jobs and counting their blessings and happiness and Facebook updates and exclamation points. I’m not sure this familiar grief has gotten easier to face, but it’s gotten something....perhaps there is comfort in the familiarity of it, or maybe even peace.
Then there are the waves of grief that come as a surprise and force me to take a deep breath in order to avoid throwing up. Like why must I wake up at 5am thinking about the fall on the sidewalk? Why does it replay over and over in my mind like a cruel slideshow where every slide is the same image? Or sometimes the grief is a sudden flash into my future life. This wave seems to build up steam, getting louder as it approaches, and then states boldly in no uncertain terms: Margot is still missing. I don’t even know how to begin handling this kind of unexpected grief. It builds and crashes and knocks me over until I’m standing naked and overwhelmed, lost at where to turn next.
And yet. AND YET.
Every so often, even smack dab in the middle of this grief, as the waves pound with fury, I find myself face to face with something so profound and beautiful I can hardly believe it can exist. For there in the darkness lurks courage.
From the early moments of this tragedy until now, a poem by William Henley has allowed us the words to declare our courage.
I whisper it in the depths of my despair. I chant it when the anger bubbles up, when I’m the worst version of myself, in order to bring myself back down. We utter it to each other in the most hopeful of moments, when it feels like we actually believe and feel it.
It was one of the first thoughts Kari shared with me after waking up from our five hour nightmare, when life and death teetered back and forth almost inevitably, as if losing a baby and a mother in the same evening isn’t out of the ordinary.
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul...
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
Amen and amen.
April 29, 2011: The Day I Picked Up Her Ashes
[part 1 in a series of reflections, so we can remember as much as possible. from april 14, 2011]
We decided on a Thursday that it wasn’t the right day to pick up her ashes. Something just didn’t feel right about it, as if we imagined there would be a day when it would make sense to pick up the ashes of our dead baby girl. So we went on Friday, in the afternoon. We picked a particular funeral home because they only charged $241 to cremate Margot, and the other funeral home I called wanted $635. Screw that, I said to Kari after hanging up. For a split second I wasn’t calling around about the price of cremation, but something more ordinary, like the price of carpet cleaning or an oil change.
I had driven by the funeral home a hundred times since moving to Pasadena. I always marveled at the beauty of the place. The red stone walls, the spanish bell tower, the lush landscaping.
I parked the car at the back of the lot, in a place where people wouldn’t be able to see the tears that I knew were coming. We walked in through the double doors and made our way down a long hallway with classy carpet and ornate frames filled with fabricated images of nature. Kari sat in a chair halfway down the hallway and I walked up to a large woman sitting at a desk. She wore a business suit and a look of disregard. I didn’t know what to say. What do you say? My name? My daughters name?
I felt like the whole world should know about what happened to us. I felt like this woman should have seen us coming and had everything ready.
Hi, she said blandly, as if I just interrupted her.
For a moment, I wanted to slap her. Any of the anger I had experienced suddenly had a target. I felt like unloading the shitstorm of the past two weeks onto her with every gruesome detail. I wanted to ask her how it was possible to be so damn surly, even when almost every person she encounters is there because of death. Then it was gone and I’m standing in front of her with my head down and my eyes glazed over, trying desperately to find some words.
Hi, I muttered back.
I’m here to pick up my daughter.
May 4, 2011: Thank-You
When it comes to giving thanks, to all of you for everything you have done for us, I feel very short on words. We have simply been overwhelmed. From the very moment this happened until now, some forty-two days later, we have been inundated with kindness, love and generosity.
To our inner circle of family and friends, we would have barely squeezed by without you. From weeping together on the first night, to holding Margot together, to the morning food runs, the daily hospital visits, the massages, sharing in our tears, caring for Stella and for sharing in our grief into the future, thank-you.
And to everyone else, from family and friends far away, to those who brought over meals every evening, to those who sent cards and emails and texts, to those who left comments, to the strangers who reached out to us, thank-you for everything.
The road ahead appears long and tiresome. There are good days and awful days and we are learning to let each day be just a day, not giving too much credit to good days and not giving too much weight to bad days. We will continue to share our journey on this blog, so please feel free to stop in from time to time.
If we could have added emails, Facebook messages and texts to this picture, the entire room would have been filled. Our deepest thanks for all that you have done and all you will continue to do.
May 6, 2011: The Day I Went To the Dentist
[part 2 in a series of reflections, so we can remember as much as possible. from april 15, 2011]
I knew the dentist I was about to see. I remembered him from three years before, when he examined my teeth and told me a crown was probably needed.
He looks to be in his late fifties. Gray hair, but full and coarse. He’s tall and slender and has the appearance of old wealth. A few wrinkles dart across his face. His smile shows average teeth, which makes him seem trustworthy. I remember his gentle spirit, the way he gracefully moved the utensils around my mouth, the way he carried himself in and out of the room. I was drawn to his sense of calm and paternal concern.
I was a different person way back in 2008 when I saw him last. It was, as I’ve come to think of it, the Before Margot time in my life (It’s strange to think that six weeks ago was also the Before Margot time in my life). Kari was five months pregnant with Stella and we were blissfully happy. After finishing his examination, he gently explained that I needed $1500 worth of work done in my mouth. I may be the only person who smiled contently after such news. Well, it’s better now than after she’s born, I told him happily. Let’s do it, I exclaimed.
That was back when I thought being pregnant would automatically lead to having a baby.
Today I slip into the chair and wait, with wet eyes, in the After Margot era of my life. In this moment, all I want to do is tell him what happened. That I just lost my baby. That she weighed 7 pounds, twelve ounces and that her name was Margot June. That she was just as gorgeous as my first born, with her big cheeks and blue eyes. I want to tell him that I feel sad.
I can’t seem to understand this desire to tell him, or to tell others who I think might empathize, as if their pity will somehow validate my pain, give meaning to my sadness. Perhaps telling strangers is some form of acceptance, acknowledging out loud that this tragedy did happen. And any little trace of acceptance that creeps out of my heart feels good these days.
Good morning, Josh, he says casually. How are you?
May 13, 2011: They Smell Like My Past
I went back to work yesterday for the first time since March 24. I didn’t really feel like going back to work, it was just that we thought it might be a nice distraction. Normally this would be quite the break, the kind of prolonged vacation only reserved for long trips or a new baby. Or a dead baby, come to find out.
I dug out my tattered jeans from the bottom drawer and slowly slipped into them, trying to avoid putting my feet through the holes in the knees. I snagged my t-shirt and pulled it over my head. Since I was planning on working the day after The Day, neither article had been washed. They smelled of sawdust and sandpaper and the rich odors of reclaimed wood and it just about killed me to realize they were, perhaps, the last tangible reminder of my former life. I remember walking home from work that day. I remember placing the clothes in the drawer and getting in the shower. I remember how excited I was for Stella to get up from her nap, to hear her say “no night night time daddy.” I remember the sweet taste of anticipation, the kind that seems to build exponentially from week 37 on. For we were having a baby girl and Stella was having a sister and we were going to be a family of four.
There are other reminders of our former lives. I look at pictures from the month before and the days before and I can see the anticipation, the happiness oozing forth in every shot. Me kissing Kari sheepishly over pizza with a friend, us holding our dear friends new baby, Kari and Stella laying together in the rocker. Or I remember events like parties with friends or moving or trips around the world or getting married and all I can think about is how innocent we were. But these clothes, this ridiculous work outfit, it's like I can physically touch and smell my past.
I practically choke on the smell. Tears burst forth as a desperate longing to rewind takes over my whole body.
This is the lay of the land these days; trying to live while never forgetting. Wake up, think of Margot. Go to bed, glad to tick off another day. Play with Stella, wish Margot was here. Eat dinner, cry over Margot. Laugh with friends, hope to get pregnant.
Go to work, remember your former life.
May 17, 2011: The Day My Daughter Showed Her Innocence
[part 3 in a series of reflections, so we can remember as much as possible. from april 25, 2011]
The three of us sit on our uncomfortable couch. Stella in the middle, us flanking her on either side. It’s in the evening, curtains are closed, our Margot June mix playing in the background. The oldest of us are crying, missing our second child, wishing desperately she was here. Stella is playing a word game on my phone until she interjects at the appropriate moment, as if she was listening the entire time.
“Margot died mamma?” she asks it like a question, but there is a certainty behind her tone. We go through these motions every day with her.
“Yep, Margot died sweety.” Kari replies.
“Sad so much?”
“Yes, we are so sad buddy. We miss Margot. She is your little sister.” I repeat these words several times a day, hoping they will one day mean something special to Stella.
“New baby?”
“We’ll try.”
“Baby brother?”
“Maybe,” I say. “Maybe.” Kari looks at me longingly. I know what she’s thinking.
We reach out our arms above Stella and grab hands, tears welling up as Crazy Heart plays in the background.
Suddenly Stella giggles for no apparent reason. An innocent smile darts across her face as she reveals her little secret.
“I farted.”
May 20, 2011: Old Blood, Young Body
I donated blood today. It was the first time I’ve ever donated. It was the first time I ever considered donating. There have been many chances in the past to donate and I dismissed each one of them for various reasons, but mostly because I just didn’t feel like doing it. During one blood drive in College, I played ping pong in the same room where everyone waited in line.
The mere thought of losing Margot and my life staying the same is enough to make me lose my mind. For nothing to change, for nothing to be different feels like she died all over again, as if her life came and went without any significance. I find no meaning in her death, no good reason whatsoever. But I desperately want my life, in some way, to be a tribute to her.
I walked in through the door marked “donor entrance.” My pockets contained my photo ID, headphones and my iPhone, which was already cued up to play my Margot June mix. I was ready for the needle and the tears and the reflection.
On first glance, the inside of the center was as I imagined it to be. White walls, florescent lights and floors scrubbed to a glossy finish. Nurses moved around gingerly from donor to desk, looking purposeful and bored all at once. The large open room smelled fresh and seemed to breathe hope, as if the pints of blood were letting off an aroma of life.
As I sat down to fill out my information, a more careful look revealed an unexpected sight. Several old men were wrapped in red cross blankets and watching a television that was suspended in front of them. They too had needles, but their tubes were connected to big machines.
By the time I arrived in the little room where a nurse took my vitals, I had already been thanked four times by various nurses and volunteers. I didn’t know how to reply.
The nurse took my blood pressure, pulse and poked my finger to see if I had enough red blood cells to donate. I found out the old men were donating platelets and that it takes nearly two hours a session. She says most of the platelet donors are older folks. It was all I could do to stop myself from leaving the room to run to the old men. I wanted to kiss their cheeks and hold their hands and thank them for donating the miraculous platelets that help people's blood to clot. I imagine Kari an old soul now, her blood filled with platelets from the elderly.
Following vitals, I had to answer personal questions on a computer screen. Have I lived in the UK for a total of three months between 1980 and 1996? No. Have I had aspirin in the last 48 hours? No. Have I paid for sex anytime since 1972? Nope (but why is 72’ the cut off?).
I wanted the nurse to ask me why I was donating. I wanted to tell her it was because my daughter died on March 24, 2011. And that my wife would have died without the 14 blood and platelet transfusions she received. I wanted to tell her that I want my life to be different now as a tribute to my daughter, that I want to join the beautiful cycle of giving and receiving that happened when Margot donated her heart valves to three babies and strangers donated their blood to Kari. Instead I sat in silence, with a band-aid on my finger and straps around my arm, and thought of my tiny Margot.
The needle goes in on the right side and immediately takes me back fifty-five days to the hospital. As the blood flows out, I remember the blood flowing into Kari, one pint after another, as I desperately waited to see clots form.
Maybe it was better to keep our story to myself. Because for those seven minutes, in the presence of nurses and white walls and televisions and cubicles and red cross blankets, Margot and I shared some time together, just the two of us.
The Clouds Rolled In
[guest post from Kari, written a few days after the tragedy]
Death. It is one of the most dominant parts of life. It overshadows everything. And yet we don't have to face too much of it as our lives begin. It rolls in slowly, like a storm that always threatens to burst but will likely hold until the season is old and late.
I have always known I would face this dark storm eventually, always hoping in my quiet hours that it would hold off, hold out, just pass by us until later in life when I will be able to hold my head high and welcome the storm that clears away everything from one generation and paves way for the next, leaving seldom a trace behind even on the landscape of the former lives and moments and joys and pains.
But today, I feel the rain on my face. I close my eyes and I can taste the rain and hear the thunder and the feel the hot lightning flash across my face.
I feel brave. I feel like I can face it full of weeping and agony, that I can let it ravage through our lives, with out needing to ask the storm questions that seem so frivolous. How can you stand in the face of such power and not be in awe, in reverence? How can you ask such a force why it didn't blow just a little bit to the west? Always, forever in life, the storm clouds of death could pass through softly, fiercely, long ago, ten miles away, or straight down my heart.
I have always somehow known this. I have always somehow been looking at the horizon waiting for it's approach. I have always somehow made peace with it.
My very first words to Josh when I woke - after I begged the weeping nurses and distraught Dr. Wu for the news of my daughters death - were simply that "death is a part of life." They were the first things I felt. The only thing I could mutter in my drugged stupor.
I glimpse moments of the future when I will grab my husband in my arms, wrap myself around him, and drink in the life that was spared this time around. My own. We still live on. The clouds rolled in, the foundations of our lives were shaken, and yet. we. survived. And now we can continue to drink in the sweet summers and seasons that lay ahead of us, together.
I will still rage my fist against the storm, curse the sky and weep that it had to come at all. Because what else can I do when I am so powerless to change it all? Such a silly mis-step. Such a small fall in the yard. And I will keep my eye fixed more watchfully in the East for signs of the next storm of death, and I will have to remind myself to not be afraid, not to let caution become a rule in my heart. But mainly, mostly, deeply, I will look long and hard at the departing clouds and thank them silently for sparing me.
May 29, 2011: Right Where I Am: 67 Days
My free moments often take me down long and heart wrenching rabbit holes looking for stories about baby loss. Sometimes I click and read and click and read, digging deeper and deeper until I suddenly find that the depth of my despair has plummeted to the depth of the rabbit hole I’m lost in. Like when I read about parents who seem to give up hope or when I read about the mother who lost four babies. But every so often, I dig down and click and read and then, promptly, I find myself emerging out of the ground in a better place, with more hope and less despondency. I had one of those moments today when I stumbled upon a beautiful blog called Still Life With Circles. In her latest post, she asks her baby loss readers to write about where they are now in grief. So that is what I will do.
It’s been sixty-seven days since our Margot June died. We were so, so close to meeting her. She was right there, breathing and kicking, just about to enter into our lives. And we lost her. And I miss her so much I can barely let myself think of her, my actual physical second child who weighed nearly eight pounds and closely resembled her older sister. And this is perhaps the dominating face of my grief on day sixty-seven. I miss my daughter. I want her to be here. I want to lay her across my bare chest and breath together. I want to see Stella interact with her. I want to share her with our friends. I want to crawl into bed happily exhausted from caring for two children, instead of crawling into bed hoping the nightmares will pass by me. I miss her. I miss her. I miss her.
There are other emotions of course, less forceful, but lurking none the less as I approach seventy days.
My mind and heart continue to be on different teams, each vying for my allegiance, each making the necessary arguments. My rational reminds me that death is part of life and that it wasn’t long ago that losing babies was somewhat normal. It implores me to hold these truths close and tells my heart to relax a bit. My heart gushes forth the obvious. Margot died. Her body was cremated a few days later and a few weeks after that, we poured her ashes out in the river. And we will always long for her, no matter how normal and frequent death is. My mind usually sweeps in when my heart can’t take it anymore.
I wondered in the hospital how long it would take for us to laugh again. I wondered how long life would run in slow motion. I wondered when I’d be able to walk at a normal pace again, or smile to a passing stranger. I wondered when we would care about anything else, like who won survivor or what to build next or where to go on vacation, if there could ever be such a wonderful thing as a vacation again.
But in the midst of Everything That Happened, we have laughed since Margot died. We laugh when Stella uses her funny voice, a low, deep sound, like she is old and southern. Helllllllo Daaaadddy. And Kari and I still laugh about random things, just like we used to. We dance every day together as a family, just like we used to. Of course, we swing our hips to the Margot June mix instead of Bob Marley, but we’re still dancing. I walk to work at a normal pace and sometimes, when I’m ripping a 2X10 or sanding a beautiful piece of reclaimed hickory, I feel a tinge of normalcy. And we leave for Palm Springs in the morning for two nights in the desert. I can’t call it a vacation, but it’s something I guess. I couldn’t have imagined that in the midst of the constant pangs of loss and a sorrow deeper than I could have ever imagined, all of this would somehow still exists.
If you took the pieces of my emotions from the last twenty-four hours and scattered them around the screen and dissected each one, you would learn rather quickly that where I am on day sixty-seven is an utter mess. And by mess, I mean depressed and hopeful and sad and happy and angry and controlled and desolate and content all at once. And I’m learning to be okay with this new reality, however long it exists.
[as a side note to everyone who has been following our journey. thank-you for reading this blog for the past sixty-seven days. i can't even begin to express my gratitude for your repeated hits and comments. each one seems to be a shot of hope and your empathy and shared grief is often just what we need. so please keep following and say hello from time to time.]
June 1, 2011: Cold Water
We walk along the trail at a leisurely place. The winding path is dusty in most places and wet in some places, mostly down near the creek that moves rapidly over boulders and the roots of swollen palm trees. Jagged rocks tower over the north side of the gorge. They take the oppressive heat in stride and have an air of intimidation about them, as if they are keeping watch over the miraculous water that helped form their very existence. A dry, mountainous desert borders the south side and seems to go on forever, ridge after tiresome ridge. Lizards run over rocks and around trees and seem to be anxious about everything. This is Indian territory and we tread solemnly, with regard for the sacred land. A half mile in, we find a nice smooth rock near the edge of the creek and take our shoes and socks off. Sitting down, I wrap my arms around my knees and dip my feet into the cold, cold water.
I can already feel my daughter, running over my toes and around my ankles.
Looking back, I don’t think there was ever much of a choice about what we would do with Margot’s little body. A casket and burial seemed like too much in those early hours after her death, as we held her in a state of shock. It felt like too many details and too unnatural, her body slowly decomposing away in a sealed casket underneath the ground somewhere in a city that we have just started calling home. Besides, what if we moved one day? How would we access her then? Instead, we opted for cremation. We wanted to spread her ashes into the earth.
We placed most of her ashes into a seasonal creek that runs out of the rocky and formidable San Gabriel Mountains. Once out of the foothills, the creek joins forces with the LA River and eventually makes it’s way out to the Pacific, the largest puzzle piece our earth possesses, connecting continents and bodies of water to one another. I didn’t know how important this one act would be until I started sensing Margot’s presence every time I entered into the ocean or river or stream, as if her ashes multiplied a million times over to cover every body of water I find myself in.
I slide my feet deeper into the water until the coldness hits my knees, the hair on my calves swooshing back and forth in unison. Margot rolls past, over and over until I lose myself in the symbolic water. I want to tear off my shirt and submerge my whole body under the surface. I want to swim with her, downstream, as far as she will take me.
I wearily immerse my hands into the water and collect as much of her in my cupped hands as possible. I miss you, I whisper, and then bring the water up to my face and let it wash over me.
June 8, 2011: The Day We Said Goodbye and She Rode Around the City Alone
[part 4 in a series of reflections, so we can remember as much as possible. from march 25, 2011]
It was 2am and everything was a blur. My face was soaked with tears, my eyes were red and blotchy, my heart felt relieved and broken all at once. Kari lived, Margot died.
A nurse waited outside our door with a baby cart from labor and delivery. Her eyes were kind and her smile dripped with empathy, the raised corners of her thin lips said everything that needed to be said. I’m so sorry.
We took some pictures with Margot. We said things to her. We kissed her cheeks. And then it was time. I picked up her swaddled body, pressed her against my chest and walked out to the nurse. She stood off to the side as I gingerly placed my daughter in the cart.
As Margot rolled away, I turned back towards our room, towards my wife who was pushing her morphine button with one hand and waiting for my hand with the other. And that was that. She was gone.
There was little sleep that night. I could physically feel the brokenness of my heart, rapid beats interspersed with slow, monotonous pumping. It felt like it was fragmented into three parts and spread throughout the city. One piece was at home with Stella, who was sleeping peacefully, innocence still intact. One piece with my Kari, the first to get my heart a decade earlier. And one piece went rolling away with Margot, slowly cracking as it followed her down the halls toward the morgue.
As a father to Stella, I have been there, with her, almost every step of the way from the very first ultrasound to last night, when we sang row your boat in our funny voices before bedtime. We took baths together when she was a baby and we went to the doctor together for shots. I was there for her first words and first steps and first friendships. She is simply always in our care, or in the hands of our family or housemates or friends. She has never been alone in her life, she has never felt a moment of being lost.
But there Margot went, off without us, alone for the first time after only nine hours in the world. Her father was missing and she was alone and this still pains me to no end.
I wish I could have rolled away with her that night, my hands on her cheek and chest. I wish I could have sat by her in the morgue. I wish I could have held her as she rode to the clinic for surgery. I wish I could have watched over her as they opened her heart and removed her valves. I wish I could have told the coroner her tragic story as he tried to make sense of her death. I wish I could have been on the freeways with her, roaming around Los Angeles, from clinic to hospital to funeral home to cremation center. I wish I could have been there when she was cremated and I wish her sacred ashes were never in the hands of impassive strangers.
The irony in all these wishes is that she has always been here with me. For somewhere that night, perhaps after I finally fell asleep, her presence filled that cracked piece of my heart that followed her down the hall and made it’s way back to me.
June 11, 2011: DIY: For All Of Us
I finished building our new reclaimed wood dining table in the shop last week. I cut and ripped and planed and cried while listening to Margot's mix, my tears and sawdust coming together to form something of a tribute. Going along with our desperate desire for our lives to be different now, in some small way to honor Margot, we decided to build a new table for our family and friends to sit around. I engraved the bottom with the date and our initials. K. J. S. M.
June 15, 2011: Desperate For Different
There's a thought that haunts me. It quietly creeps in when I wake up in the morning and then lurks around during the day, getting a little louder as the sun sets, and then in those dreaded late night hours when the moon is high, it knocks me over.
What if nothing changes.
What if I lose a baby and my life stays the same?
But the fucked up irony is that I want the most important aspects of my life to stay the same. I love getting to spend so much time every day with my partner and first child. I like my job and I like that my life controls my job and that it’s not the other way around. I like where I live. I like my friends and the community we have created for ourselves. My values and desires have always been right in front of me, as if in the back of my mind, I knew death could come at any moment. Take nothing for granted. Love passionately. Live the life you want. This kind of thinking, passed on by my parents and fueled into fruition by my woman of a wife, consumed me from week to week. This tragedy hasn't really changed any of this. As I held my Margot and willed my partner to keep fighting, there wasn't any wake up call to life.
And yet I can’t just settle all the way back into my former life. I need something to be different. I need Margot’s death to produce some sort of change in me, or my day to day routine, or something. Otherwise it all seems so much more tragic. My baby died and then nothing happened.
Some changes come through effort. I am now a blood donor. I am having two tattoos done. I go to a support group for babyloss parents. My blog, formerly a family record, is now a family record and a diary about loss and sorrow and dead babies.
Some changes have come unexpectedly, without much effort. The rivers and lakes and oceans I find myself hiking through and wading in have miraculously turned into Margot. It’s her way of saying, I’m still here Daddy. And I see people differently now. As grief latches onto my skin and pulls me under, it’s like I can see the color orange for the first time. This was what it was like after having my first child. A new color emerged, one I had heard about, but never experienced for myself. Now another color has suddenly burst onto the scene and it changes the way I see people who are hurting. My innocence and naivety and have been replaced with an empathy that I never knew before. For the first time in my life, I better understand what it means to be fully human, to be fully alive, to be able to identify and understand the world's suffering in a new light. Full of joy and now full of sorrow.
What changes lay ahead are simply there. I don't know what they are. I can't see them. But I sense they are coming, eventually, and I hope I'll embrace them when they do.
June 24, 2011: The Weeks Turned Into Months
I remember when Stella turned three months old. My best friends were in town and it was the last time I used weeks to describe how old she was to the world, just as I stopped counting in days when she hit number seven. On 5.21.09, she was no longer twelve weeks old. She was three months old and it blew our minds at the time. And it kind of felt monumental, a milestone in her little life.
Even though only ninety some days had passed, the three of us had already been through so much together. Her birth was a thirty-six hour saga that left us in a state of blissful exhaustion. We brought her home, which at the time scared us to death. Can we do this? Are we ready? We parented with total abandonment and lots of sleep deprivation. We kept a detailed diary of her feeding and sleeping and pooping and watched her change from day to day. We saw her first smiles and coos and watched television during her three am feedings. I bathed with her in the tub every single day, studying her little limbs as I gently cleaned her on a nightly basis. When she spent a week straight in collicky hell, I had to hold her like a football, her face down in my hands, her legs straddled around my forearm, and take her on long walks around the city. I would sing You Are My Sunshine on repeat until she finally fell asleep, somewhere between our loft and Pershing Square. The camera lived around my neck in those three months and we constantly found ourselves repeating to one another, look at her, look at her, look at her.
We took this photo on her three month mark and quietly congratulated ourselves for making it that far. She was so big and mohawky and full of independence. This was the only way she would let us hold her those days. Girl needed some space.
If it is possible to miss Margot more than yesterday, I miss her even more today, three months to the day since she was here and then wasn't.
June 29, 2011: The Night I Used Birds To Fight Off My Demons
I lay in bed and stare upwards. My hands are folded across my chest, my legs outstretched on the bed. There is a flicker of light coming in through the heavy curtains, enough for me to imagine cosmic shapes in our outdated popcorn style ceiling. My eyes are blank. My breathing is slow. I have things to say to Kari, who lies next to me, but before I can move my lips, my blank stare takes over, paralyzing me as it does from time to time.
My demons named fear and irrationality and anger have burst forth, taking advantage of my tired state of mind and heart.
I think of the accident. It replays over and over, almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. Where I was, where she was and all the calculated changes in our day that could have prevented it. I think of Stella in the next room over, sound asleep, and this new fear of death makes me want to sneak into her room and double check that she is still breathing. Scratch that. It makes me want to sleep right next to her on the floor every night until she leaves the house for good one day. I think of Kari’s broken body. I think of how unfair it is that she suffered so much and got nothing out of it. I think of how lucky everyone around me seems to be, with all of their kids and all of their hearts still intact. I think of quitting my job. I think of moving away, to some far off place, where every family has lost a child. I think of how impossible tomorrow seems, facing people and our new reality and my job.
There is a reason my lips can’t seem to form words. Kari doesn’t need to wrestle with my demons tonight. I shift under the sheets and turn on my side towards the wall, my back pushing up against Kari’s side, as if she is my grounding force, the only energy keeping my mind from drifting off into hopeless skies.
I’m scared. The inevitable death that is somewhere in my future, in my families future, seems so real and possible and close. I plead with the universe. Give me five years. Five years before something else happens.
I can hear Kari dozing peacefully and I hope her dreams aren’t too awful. I crawl out of bed and head to the bathroom for some perspective. I have learned over these long three months to not trust a single thought I have while laying in bed. I find my phone near the sink and turn it on without much thought. I see Angry Birds, an app that filled my sleepless nights at the hospital, and open it up. I start chucking tiny colorful birds, with all different special powers, at little egg stealing green things that hide in structures. Before I know it, twenty minutes has gone by and my demons have receded.
I clamber back into our loft bed, phone in hand, and continue flinging birds through the air in a frenzied, pathetic attempt to get three stars on each level. And somewhere between one level and the next, I’m sound asleep.
July 9, 2011: Anticipation
It was July 2010 and the line on the pee stick was faint. I hardly even believed K when she showed me, my eyes squinting and focusing, trying to find the line that meant we were having a second child. But there it was, all fuzzy and gray as I held the stick in front of the window.
We embraced near the toilet and exchanged a few excited words. We imagined the little pin point embryo taking shape inside her, the cells multiplying to form the tissue and organs that would become our second little tike.
All it took was that line. We were in. The colossal ball of anticipation began rolling down a mountain that was forty weeks tall. We walked out of the bathroom with eyebrows raised and a lightness to our steps. I could feel my heart expanding, making room for another child to fall madly in love with. We were going to be a family of four. Stella was going to be a big sister. April 2011 couldn’t come soon enough.
And then we thought and talked about that little person every single day. We followed it’s progress week by week, looking at pictures of how big it was, reading about what new development was happening inside K’s growing belly. We guessed the sex, our guts always playing games with our minds. It’s a boy. I think it’s another girl. No, it’s gonna be a boy. Back and forth we went on it’s gender, just because it’s so damn fun to think about.
We sat in front of a screen at twenty weeks and saw it for the first time. It swooshed and turned and flipped while our doctor probed and pushed until coming to the conclusion that we both guessed at different times along the way. Our little baby was a girl. A girl. We held hands and smiled to one another as our doctor continued to look things over. Stella was going to be a big sister. The colossal ball of anticipation became even larger, if it’s possible, as it rolled past twenty weeks, halfway down the mountain.
The naming of this SHE immediately followed our appointment and the conversation went on for months. We started in on the car ride home. Do you still like Margot? I asked Kari. I think so, she said. I think so.
Prepping Stella for this new sibling was an easy task. Before K’s belly was even noticeable, Stella was already elated. When we told her she was having a sister, just like mommy and daddy had, she grew even more excited. And when K’s belly began protruding farther and farther out, Stella talked about it every day. Momma’s belly have baby, she would say. She would usually follow this up with a joke that was funny even after the 100th time. I HAVE BABY TOO, she would yell as she pulled up her shirt. DADDY HAVE BABY TOO! Her older sister responsibilities began when we told her the baby’s name. Margot? she asked. Margot! she yelled. Almost every day she was gently rub K’s belly and kiss her belly and talk to her little sister. Her engagement with the whole process was something we talked about every day because it seemed so astonishing.
As it is for most, pregnancy is not easy with K, as I wrote about in some detail at thirty-two weeks: Her ribs hurt this time around. They feel as if they have been kicked, on repeat, for several months straight. The only nice part about aching ribs is that it steers the pain away from her back, which has methodically worsened with each new pound that adds itself to her chest, legs and belly. When she's not shifting uncomfortably in bed due to muscle soreness and joint pain, she is getting up, on average, six times to pee at night. She is inevitably tired for most of the day, as universal a sensation as there is for a woman with child. Her emotions swell and contract on a weekly basis, depending on the hormonal shifts that tinker and toy with her mood and eating habits and outlook on life, as if she needed something else to push her over the edge. There is also energy inefficient Stella to contend with this time, the little tike that can go from sunrise to sunset without taking a breather, blowing energy on running and talking and getting dirty and always asking us for "two more minutes" to play before nap or bedtime. And all of this while miraculously carrying a little fetus that is developing on auto-pilot just below the surface, whom she shares nutrients and oxygen with through a small, life allowing cord, a feat so primal and beautiful it's hard to even conceive.
And there was everything else. Getting our closet ready for her arrival. Ordering those tiny little diapers and bringing back out the baby clothes and planning for the arrival of our families. We spent more time with Stella as our family of three would soon be no longer. We ate out more, took longer walks, wrestled and loved and cherished as deeply as we could. It’s the end of an era, we kept saying to one another.
We knew what the final push in labor and delivery would mean. The single greatest moment of my life had been seeing Stella’s body emerge from K. The rush of love in that moment practically barreled me over. The pure joy, the sheer ecstasy of that first moment is almost too profound and mysterious for words. As the great ball of anticipation charged past thirty-six weeks, this moment was all we could think about. What will she look like? What will labor be like? Will she be big and long like Stella? Will she have lots of hair? It simply goes without saying. We couldn’t wait to meet her. We couldn’t wait to introduce her to Stella. We couldn’t wait to introduce her to our family and our friends. We couldn’t wait to introduce to her arranged best friend Lyla, who was due to make her own entrance just a few weeks before Margot. We couldn’t wait to dump the copious amounts of love on her that we had been storing up since first seeing the fuzzy line.
By the time the ball of anticipation plowed through thirty-seven weeks, it was all there was. It felt as though we had been holding our breath for her arrival for so long that we couldn’t wait to exhale again as we held our little girl. When people asked if Stella was my only one, I would tell them she wouldn’t be my only one for long. Our baby is coming, our baby is coming. I wanted to shout it out Paul Revere style everywhere I went.
And then, right at the very very very end, just as the anticipation was nearing climax and after all of the deep longing and build up and growing love and physical hardship and everything else that went into those nine and a half months, Margot died.
July 14, 2011: The Best Case Of the Worst Scenario
I am grateful. I am grateful. I am grateful.
I find myself thinking of these words between the rising and setting sun, as the weeks and months click over and move into the past.
But what I have found to be remarkable about these words is that I don’t need to remind myself of them. It’s not as if, in the middle of the sometimes intolerable sorrow, I need to dig deep and remember what I’m grateful for. Nor is it conjured up, a coping mechanism to get me through. Instead, this gratefulness is always just there, as with my grief, and together they seemed to have formed a balancing act that allows me teeter totter my way through the day. These two powers reside somewhere deep inside the cavernous parts of my being, both existing together without being forced or contrived.
For how can I stay in the dark when there is my Kari? How can I keep sinking when there is my Stella? How can there only be sadness when there is my life, which is still filled with more beauty than I could have ever imagined?
Some days my grief shouts louder than my gratitude, leaving me in a paralyzed state of sadness. On these days, I would trade everything good in my life to have Margot back. But some days, like today, I close my eyes, stretch out my hands, crank up the volume and let the gratitude wash over me, one person and experience and fortunate circumstance at a time.
July 18, 2011: Right Where I Am Project: 141,471 Words Later
This piece is dedicated to the 160 babyloss parents who took part in Angie's epic Right Where I Am project (as of July 18) and to all of our babies that were lost. It is also dedicated to the thousands of faceless parents around the world that lose babies every year (some 30,000 in America alone). I originally joined the project because I wanted to soak up as much as I could from everyone who has gone before us. And as I feel Margot slipping away from me as the days without her trudge on, I felt like this was a way for me to be close to her and to honor her death. So, I read and read and read, all the way up to last night, when I read and filed away the 160th post in the project.
I just want to say a huge thank-you to all of the babyloss parents who participated. Words cannot describe the gratitude I feel for each one of you, whether you are years out from your loss or just a few weeks or months. Each and every post, whether heart breaking or hopeful or a blend of the two, was so meaningful and raw and beautiful in it's own right. There is solace in this beautiful mess of a community we have formed since all of our losses. I titled this piece Right Where We Are because in some strange and mysterious way, no matter how many miles separate us, we are in this TOGETHER. There is strength in numbers and I pull from your strength every day.
Cold is the water
It freezes your already cold mind
Already cold, cold mind
And death is at your doorstep
And it will steal your innocence
But it will not steal your substance
But you are not alone in this
And you are not alone in this
As brothers we will stand and we'll hold your hand
Hold your hand
- Mumford and Sons. "Timshel." Sigh No More.
A few notes on the project:
- Basically, I took one word or a few words or a sentence from every single post and added to the piece. Each line and color represents a new post, starting with the first post and ending with Angie's. I read every post at least twice and looked for a theme within that post. Whether it was sad or hopeful or depressing or content, I tried to honor that person's post with what I chose to include in the document.
- On a deeper level, to begin with, I also put all of the collective posts together in one document and then read through the document as a whole piece to see if I could find lots of repeated ideas that were communicated. For example, how we will all miss our babies forever or how hard it was for so many people to deal with friends or how anxiety filled the subsequent pregnancy was...stuff like that. And then I tried to include this kind of thing as well from different posts that were written for the project.
- All in all, there were approximately 141,471 words written or 239 pages in my word document.
July 26, 2011: State Of Flux
Sunday, 8pm: I am SO motivated.
We have our calendars out - my laptop and keyboard, her paper and pencil - and sit across a wooden table from one another in our kitchen nook. I feel ready for a schedule. I feel ready to plan five days in a row. I am done shuffling listlessly from here to there, without directions or purpose, blown by the winds of grief from hour to hour.
This time every Sunday evening is sacred in this household. For our parenting sanity. For my routine driven personality. For productivity. And it prevents me from wasting time, something I can occasionally do with reckless abandonment. We haven’t sat down like this since late March.
Monday, K says, let’s talk about tomorrow. We trade tasks and plans and switches and meals and add them to our calendars in unison. I start by typing 5:45am: WAKE UP and feel steadfastly confident in my ability to get up that early again, as I did in my former life.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Lock it in.
As it stands on paper and screen, it’s going to be a good week. We are going to exercise more. We are going to tackle some home projects. We are going to try for another baby. We have time for reading and writing, time alone, meals with friends and enough shared energy to give Stella another action filled week.
Sunday, 8:30pm: The shutting of my computer is the beginning of the end, though I don’t know it yet. My shoulders drop. I stare out the window as the traces of light shoot across the yard. She is always on my mind. Would she be sleeping now? K gets up and makes a couple of drinks. Whiskey and vodka, for this crew.
Sunday, 11pm: We fall into bed early. I set my alarm. You can do it, remember this feeling of motivation, I press myself, and I still have a small part of me that thinks I can manage. I read a little Bukowski and laugh again at his dedication in Pulp: Dedicated to bad writing.
Monday, 5:45am: A soothing sound rises from my phone, which sits on the ground just within reach. For a split second, I’m awakened to a new world, a fresh day that doesn’t have a dead baby stamp on it. Then I remember. Margot is still dead. This is still my life.
Before all of this happened, the bed was like a magnet, pulling me back towards it, beckoning me to rest just a wee bit longer. I rarely caved in then. Now the bed is a wall of concrete, with a heavy ball and chain deeply set into it. The chains wrap themselves around my limbs, the ball sits on my chest, leaving me in a state of heavy submission.
I stare upwards for a moment. The fan blows cool air in from the window. I feel a small drop of comfort in the familiarity of this grief. I skip the snooze altogether and reset the alarm for 7:30. I turn towards K and close my eyes.
August, 2011: The Day I Lied
I could sense the question coming as soon as the woman started in on Stella’s eyes.
“Oh my God, them are the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen,” she pronounced with an oomph.
Stella dismisses her casually, as if she has been here before. I say thank-you, as if I’ve been here before.
“What color are yer eyes, boy? Let me see them eyes!”
“Hazel.” I say, without giving her a chance to see the pain.
“Oh, she must get them pretty things from her Momma then.”
“Yep,” I add, hoping my dismissive tone will be picked up on, ending our brief exchange as soon as it’s started. I’m weary of these kind of conversations now because I know where they lead. I avoid them at the park and the grocery store and just about anywhere else I go alone with Stella, even willing to act a fool, or a jerk, just to skirt around them. It’s not as if I mind going there, of answering the question, but I don’t want to put them through it. I don’t want to see their face. I don’t want to be what they think about for the next thirty minutes or two hours or the rest of the day. I don’t want to burst their bubble of innocence.
I look at her, pleading with my eyes for her to simply finish ringing our lunch through the checkout. My face contorts this way and that in a hapless attempt to express my misfortune without opening my mouth. Surely, I think to myself, after months or years in her profession, she has learned to evaluate the mood of customers and then act accordingly.
“Girl, come look at the eyes on this little girl.” The cashier calls for her friend, the barista, to come over for a peek.
“Oh, sweetheart, just look at you!” her friend says with almost the same sense of urgency and pizazz as her co-worker. These two are a match made in sanguine, extroverted heaven.
Stella can no longer shrug it off or resist this persistence. She has taken the bait and all but forgotten about her pizza and juice and one promised chocolate covered peanut. She laughs as big as ever, showing her teeth and puffy cheeks, giving them everything they asked for and more.
“Oh lordy!” the women shout in near unison as they raise their arms and sway their hips to Stella’s reaction. The main culprit’s big hoop earrings flail about, shooting in one direction and then another, signaling the climax of her blue eyed obsession.
I can visually see this scene unfolding before me. I can hear it. But I’m already drifting, wondering how I’ll answer the question that is inevitably about to rise forth out of this woman.
Just as she finally settles back into ringing the last of our lunch items through, she finally comes out with it.
“Is she your only one?”
My mind races, my mouth freezes.
“Is she your only one? You got any other beauties with blue eyes?” she asks again, laughing this time as she clarifies her question.
Under normal circumstances, with my family and friends and acquaintances, Margot is all I want to talk about. There have even been times when I want to talk about her to strangers, as if spreading her story around the city might keep her spirit alive a little longer.
I could be straightforward. Actually, no, my second child died three months ago and her eyes were as blue as the Mediterranean, I could say. I could just come out with my sadness and deal with her face and the possibility of a sweet or frustrating response and then eat my food a few steps away and walk out of the store.
Or I could tell her more gently, in a more removed, it’s in the past sort of way. I could tell that I have two kids, but only one who is living. And I could try and conjure up some sort of contentment in my face, as if I have made peace with the fact that my second daughter died.
But, as it happened, neither of these responses came to my lips.
“She’s my only one.” I say quietly.
As my lips utter this lie, I have this unexpected moment with Margot. It’s just her and I together, looking at one another playfully as if she is my little secret. I know you’re there baby girl, I say to her. I know Dad, she says with a wink. And before I can tell her how much I miss her, she is gone. Just like that.
August 6, 2011: 2:12am
I wake up. I'm back there in a flash.
It's the hardest part. And the best part.
She is there, wrapped up in a pink blanket, a little hoody hiding her black hair.
Her face is close. I touch her nose with my nose. I kiss her lips with my lips. I nuzzle against her cheek with my cheek.
We are both sideways. My hand on her back, her cold body against my chest, her head under my chin.
I open the lids for a peak and find blue.
I'm so sorry sweetie. Repeat.
The rain pours. Water cascades down the window, as if trying to reach out and wash over us.
I'm back there in a flash. As if I ever left.
As if I ever left.
August 14, 2011: An Open Letter To Grief
Dearest Grief,
It seems as if we’ve been intimate for as long as I can remember, even though it’s only been a little over four months. I suppose this is where I should start.
I’m grateful it took so long to become acquainted with one another. Thirty-one years seems like quite a long time of living without you, especially when there is life to be considered. The possibilities for death seem endless, yet I never knew death. The reality of heartache and depression and sorrow seem almost inevitable in this life, yet I somehow managed to escape their grip. Nor have I known the pain of a life that didn’t turn out like I hoped, something I was always frightened of.
Was it simply my good fortune we haven’t met for so long? Was it my background or family or decision making? Was it a fluke?
I guess it’s neither here nor there. Everything happened and nothing happened all at once, preventing our paths from crossing, allowing my innocence and happiness to fill your absence. I suspect you were always right there, weren’t you? Waiting for me if the time came.
And then, of all the beating hearts that had to stop, it was my daughter’s.
You stretched out your hand and I didn’t accept.
I held my hands behind my back and closed my eyes.
I’m strong enough, I tell myself.
I peaked at you.
Before I could reach up, you reached down.
I lie on the ground, beaten and bruised, empty and bloody.
You flood my mind and heart, I almost drown.
Your weight is a thousand pounds, I can hardly breathe.
I can’t do this, I tell myself.
On my knees in the mud, clawing ahead, clawing together.
The mud turns to grass and then back to mud.
My knees become my feet and then I’m back to my knees.
The months go on, we trudge together through the storm.
Sometimes on my own, sometimes with K.
Sometimes with her.
Sometimes with a thousand others, with all of history, we trudge.
Sometimes I see friends, on a parallel path, with dead babies, with you, in the mud.
They whisper over to us, you are not alone.
A friend you have become, a friend you are.
You are my dark cloud and my hopeful sun.
To whatever may come, to however long we will be intimate, I reach out my hand in surrender.
August 22, 2011: The Loss and The Losses
I thought it would just be the loss of Margot. And it was, for a while. Her death was all there was and everything else, the other losses that sat on the other side of the imbalanced teeter totter, seemed rather inconsequential compared to the reality that our second child died on the freeway as we rushed to the hospital.
And now, not so much. The other losses, some permanent and some temporary, have crept up, adding to what already seemed hard enough.
Like the fact that we recently made an appointment with an infertility specialist. Even though we luckily got pregnant on our first try with Stella and Margot, it seems that massive blood loss and placenta abruption can lead to other problems, some of which may affect our ability to get pregnant in the near future. Every new monthly blood spill feels like another chip off the block of hope.
K has now been denied health insurance from everyone on our list, due to her kidney failure, a pre-existing condition that now marks her health history, like the scar that runs across her belly. Sometimes when the tears dry up, the wonderful gift of black humor comes rolling in, and we joke with one another. We got a dead baby and a pre-existing condition! Can’t say that very often.
The loss of our day to day is starting to weigh heavily. No more meet ups or mom groups or play dates with close friends. Too many babies cooing and crying, too many innocent mothers gushing over their newborns (as they should), too many mothers complaining about how hard it is to have two kids (as they should). Too many conversations that could lead to painful places. Like when a well meaning friend recently said, “When you have your second child, at least Stella will be older and having two kids will be easier. I guess in that sense, you’re lucky.”
Instead of the normal day to day, our vast community of friends and moms and neighbors has been replaced with a cave where few are allowed to enter. And we stick mostly to our cave, where it’s safe, where we can have the freedom to express our sorrow and our joy, without pressure to get better or cry less. It can be lonely in this new dwelling, so we fill it with books and our family upstairs and work and Stella, who bounces around excitedly as if this new normal is actually normal.
There is the constant reminder of what could have been, a haunting reality that comes and goes as easily as the wind. They say that when you lose a parent, you lose part of your past. When you lose a spouse, you lose part of your present. And when you lose a child, you lose part of your future. I feel this particular loss so deeply, the loss of all the ways our lives would be different if Margot had lived.
A dear friendship sits in hiatus. We mourn with them, separately and sometimes together, hoping this too shall pass.
And then there is our precious little L who preceded Margot by a week, who lives a few houses down, whose parents happen to be our best friends. We dreamed of sharing our little tikes together, of daily hang outs and nightly card games and watching Stella care for them and most of all, watching them grow up together, little hand holding little hand.
Some days, like today, when the grief feels heavier than ever, when it feels like this will never end, I have to remember that it’s not just Margot we have lost.
August 25, 2011: If Margot Could Talk
Margot,
Hey buddy. I miss you something fierce.
Did you know that we were second guessing your name the night before you died? We stood in the kitchen with our housemates and laughed and drank wine and talked about calling you Vivian. It’s funny to think about now, too, because you were Margot from the very start. Your Mama picked your middle name and as soon as she said June, I was in. I told her it was perfect because I could call you MJ, and she said that June was out if I was going to call you MJ. For the rest of the pregnancy, as you were growing limbs and developing lungs, I would call you MJ just to give her a hard time. She always kind of laughed and kind of gave me that certain beautiful eye, like she’s gonna kick my ass if I ever utter MJ after you were born.
You weren’t named after anyone in particular, but we did get your name from our favorite movie, The Royal Tenenbaums. Margot in the movie is a depressed chain smoker, living a complicated adopted life in the middle of a complex family. I secretly hoped there wouldn’t be any irony in this one day.
Did you know that being a dad is my favorite thing in the world? I knew it long before your sister was even born. I felt it on a ferry in Norway and wrote it down on a piece of paper, alongside one other little tidbit.
WHAT I REALLY CARE ABOUT IN LIFE:
Kari.
My kids.
I’m still trying to figure out how to be a parent to you. And I’m so sad I couldn’t parent you in the flesh.
I think your big sister, if she knew what she was missing, would probably miss you as much as we do. I wonder if she’ll grieve this one day later, when she understands death and sisterhood. Perhaps she’ll have another little sister or brother, and it will make the grief lighter. It’s hard to say what she’ll take from all of this one day. I wonder if these will be her first solid memories. Your Mom in the hospital, all swollen with tubes coming in this way and out that way. Our daily sobs and blank faces over the reality of your death and our new life filled with sorrow. I hope she can see the gifts you’ve given us, even though I don’t even know what those gifts are yet. I hope she will be better equipped to face a complicated world, where death and life go hand in hand.
Some days I wish you could have talked to me for a few minutes before you died. And I don’t mean little infant sounds. I mean a real conversation that takes place a few minutes before we both know you’re going to die. I hear stories of folks talking with their loved ones on death beds and get a little envious. These people talk about how their loved ones told them to be happy in life, to move on, or whatever little gushy and beautiful thing they said just before dying. I wish we could have this kind of moment. It would have been nice to hear you say that everything was going to be okay. Or that you were content with your pending death, or that you wanted us to be happy, or that we will see the light again one day. Things like that.
Sometimes I just tell myself that Margot would have wanted me to be happy. It gives me a little hope amid the darkness. I hope you’re okay with that.
Dad
August 30, 2011: Glow In the Woods: Searching
Today was my first post as a contributor for Glow In the Woods. I feel grateful for the opportunity to write for such a beautiful site designed to help those who have experienced babyloss, and I feel grateful for the way in which it connects me to Margot. Feel free to stop by Glow and read my post, Searching, and join the discussion.
September 4, 2011: Your Life Is Your Life
Charles Bukowski's novel, Ham On Rye, is neatly stacked alongside my other sixteen favorite books, which sit in a sacred place on top of my bookshelf. I was deeply moved by troubled Henry Chinaski, Bukowski's alter ego, and his difficult and lonely Los Angeles upbringing. I went on to read the rest of Bukowski's novels and much of his poetry, and despite his sometimes crude writing and dark outlook on life, something kept bringing me back.
I stumbled onto this beautiful poem through a close friend, who wrote about the poem so eloquently, and it came at just the right time. I keep reading it over and over, finding solace and comfort in these beautiful words.
The Laughing Heart
your life is your life
don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission.
be on the watch.
there are ways out.
there is a light somewhere.
it may not be much light but
it beats the darkness.
be on the watch.
the gods will offer you chances.
know them.
take them.
you can’t beat death but
you can beat death in life, sometimes.
and the more often you learn to do it,
the more light there will be.
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
you are marvelous
the gods wait to delight
in you.
___________________
your life is your life.
know it while you have it.
YES and AMEN.
September 15, 2011: Hi, My Name Is Josh and I Have A Dead Baby Too
This is why I loved the support groups so much, if people thought you were dying, they gave you their full attention. If this might be the last time they saw you, they really saw you. Everything else about their checkbook balance and radio songs and messy hair went out the window. You had their full attention. People listened instead of just waiting for their turn to speak. And when they spoke, they weren’t telling you a story. When the two of you talked, you were building something, and afterward you were both different than before.
- Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, page 107
We go to a support group. It’s on the second Wednesday of every month and the group is held in this little blank room in the middle of some kind of Jewish center in the middle of West LA.
On these Wednesdays, we get in our car and start and stop and turn and start and stop and use my blinkers and somehow, some sixty minutes later, we’re on the other side of the city. I couldn’t tell you a solitary thing about the drive, as my mind is transfixed on what is about to commence. What will it be like today? Will there be anyone new? What part of our story should we talk about?
Upon arrival, I’m faced with a security guard who mans the entrance to the parking lot. He sits in his booth looking purposeful, wearing a gun and motioning people through after a brief interchange. I never know quite what to say about why we are there.
Hello sir. We’re here because our baby recently died and my wife and I don’t know how to handle it and we found this support group and thought it might be helpful because we are in so much pain. Could you let us through?
I mumble something about a support group and then it’s a blur again and suddenly I’m sitting in a chair with a sticky name tag attached to my chest, feeling what can only can be described as anxious exhilaration. My heart pounds within my chest, I twitch this way and that, trying to get my nerves together. Tears have already begun lining up near the back of my eyes, waiting in unison to fall freely if the need should arise. We’re ready when you are, they murmur.
I watch as people come in slowly, like a whisper, and gingerly find seats. Some of the faces are familiar. And some are heartbreakingly new, like last night when two more couples came for the first time, their desperate stares a reminder that babies are still dying.
I’m never sure what to say, so I find myself lost in thought, staring downwards, my arms folded together. And then, as our caring and insightful facilitators open the group, the exhilaration begins to sneak into my anxious heart. I feel like smiling, like laughing, like breathing a huge sigh of relief.
Because these are my people.
They are young and old, african american and caucasian and hispanic and asian, married and single, years removed from their loss and months removed from their loss. Their broken bodies and broken hearts enter the room from around the city, from incomplete families and empty cribs, from lives that they didn’t imagine. And while I can hardly remember their names and I know next to nothing about their backgrounds, or where they work or where they live or what kind of people they are, I do know one thing: Their babies died too.
We share our stories of loss, down the line we go. Genetic disorder. No known cause. Cord accident. Medical malpractice. Placenta abruption. Heart defect. Around the circle we go, trading tissues and tears, our stories uniquely different but with the same tragic ending.
And then we cry some more, and laugh a lot, as we trade updates on our present grief, as we share our sadness and hope.
This stranger said this. This family member said that.
I lost this friendship. I found this friendship.
I’m infertile. I’m pregnant again.
I don’t think I can make it. I think it’s getting better.
My hair is falling out, this new life is so hard, I miss my baby so much.
Us too, us too, us too.
And then our time is up.
See you next month, we say to each other afterward, a little different than before.
September 22, 2011: Fly Like Tinkerbell
Most first kids eventually get the fortune of holding their little sibling, just like I did when my first sister arrived. They get to observe them nurse and have their diaper changed, they watch for smiles and tears, they listen for coohs and cries and laughs. They learn how to help out and nurture and then one day, the little wordless sibling morphs into a little playmate. And the rest is predictably beautiful, as the story goes, a future filled with friendship and angst and fighting over the front seat.
My social little Stella is navigating a different journey. She is learning about death and about life, how elusive and tragic and beautiful it can be. She is facing sadness and heartache, things that she knows very little about. And without knowing it just yet, she is missing out on the beautifully complexities of siblinghood.
The only way Stella can be a big sister is to think and talk about Margot, which she does every single day. She wants to see her ashes. She wants to drive up to Margot's river. She picks flowers and then asks if she can trade her flowers with Margot for one of Margot's rocks in a jar. When she is sad, she says it's because Margot died. When we recently asked her what it means to die, she stated in no uncertain terms, "Margot die. Squish a bug it die. Mamma almost die." Yep.
And then yesterday in the car, out of the clear blue, using her new multi-sentence speaking abilities, she said:
"after school i'm gonna put on my wings and fly like tinkerbell and like airplane and i'm gonna look for margot and i'm gonna put margot in my belly and fly to my home and put margot in momma's belly and say 'YEAH!!!' and then say, 'does that feel better?' and i'm gonna put my wings back in my room with george and say 'YOUR WELCOME!!!"
Brilliant idea.
September 24, 2011: Falling In Love
There was this moment, in the balcony of an old church, during the first days of my freshman year of University, that I still remember so vividly. It’s when I first saw her. I mean, I had seen her before, but this time I really saw her. And I heard her talk. Her voice sounded exactly like tender ferocity, and her words were articulated magically, and her tone and expressions filled the dark balcony. I’m not exactly sure if I fell in love with her in this moment, but I sure fell in something.
I’d like to think that somewhere, deep inside my brain, something was signaling me, pointing me towards her. Shouting at me: THIS IS THE GIRL. THIS IS IT. STOP LOOKING. YOU WON’T FIND ANYONE BETTER. SHE WILL BE THE BEST THING THAT EVER HAPPENED TO YOU.
A year later, we were rounding the bases in softball dugouts and eating sunflower seeds on road trips and pretending to care about anything else. And I figured that was the last time I’d fall in love.
A decade later, though, I found myself in a room full of white coats and reeboks and bright lights, and it happened again. I saw the top of a cone shaped head, with jet black hair all wet and warm, and I was dizzy once more.
No one ever told me having kids was like getting to fall in love all over again.
I knew I’d love being a father. I knew I’d deeply love my kids. I knew they would be everything to me. But I didn’t expect the same range of emotions I had experienced ten years earlier. The gushing, the pride, the inability to focus on anything else, the magic of it all. And perhaps what surprised me the most is that it all happened, it all began, so instantaneously. Her head, her hair, her face, her shoulders, her belly, her knees, her feet, her cries. That was all it took. I was in love with my Stella, her big cheeks and blue eyes and crazy hair, her whole being.
+++
Margot was handed to me by an older nurse. She was swaddled in a hospital blanket, a little stocking cap on her head. The nurse said, “We did everything we could,” as she handed me my second daughter.
In the rush to the emergency room, in the agonizing wait to see if Margot lived or died, I had hardly given her face a thought. I wanted her to be alive, I wanted everything to be okay. I had forgotten what it feels like to see your baby for the first time. I forgot it’s love at first sight.
And then I looked at her.
And she was perfect.
And my heart swelled with love,
and my heart broke into pieces.
+++
Six months later, I'm still not sure how to handle this simultaneous feeling of love and brokenness.
Six months ago today, I fell in love with my beautiful Margot. Dead or alive, she is mine.
October 3, 2011: Glow In the Woods: ESCAPE!
I'm writing for Glow In the Woods today. Feel free to stop by Glow and read my post, ESCAPE!, and join the discussion.
October 18, 2011: Quiet
It’s quiet around here. Unbearably quiet. The silence is getting louder as the months trudge on.
I can practically hear Margot, her hands clapping together in wildly uncoordinated fashion, throwing small objects, yelling here and there. I can almost see her too. She is crawling around the dining table, under and through the chairs, she is pulling her big sister’s hair. She is sitting at her high chair, scooping mashed bananas and scattering cheerios to the four corners without even trying. She is outside, the last of the non-walkers left in the yard, eating grass and dodging kids.
Her car seat faces backwards. Stella pulls at her hand from across the seats and updates us on all her silly faces and unseen gestures. She is there at the beach, in the park, down the street, up the stairs.
She is in my arms, in the middle of every night, gulping down milk and making little faces, just like her sister did. I sing to her, yawning between each little rhyme.
I love you Margot, yes I do,
I love you through and through,
every part of you.
I love you Margot, yes it’s true.
I love you Margot, oh I do.
I can feel the emptiness on little vacations and around meal time and on little jaunts around the neighborhood. I feel it in the happiness of others. I feel it in my own happiness. And I feel it at nighttime, when there is nothing to do but wait for the morning.
Stella is here. Kari is here. I am here. We are here. But our noise isn't enough to overcome the silence of her absence.
She is everywhere and no where to be found.
October 25, 2011: The Heartache Of Infant Loss
I read this piece in the Milwaukee Journal last week and thought it was worth including here. The piece is written by Laura Schubert, who lost her daughter five years ago, and her words ring so achingly true. In some ways, her piece feels like a summation of all the heartache I have been writing about since Margot died. There are two sides to every lonely day, both the sorrow and joy, and she captures the sorrow part well.
Infant loss is nature's cruelest practical joke. It's investing all of the required time and effort into pregnancy, only to be robbed of the result. It's cradling a body that grew within your own and trying to reconcile the cold, lifeless form in your arms with your memory of the baby who turned double flips in your womb.
It's worrying that you'll forget what your child looked like and snapping an album's worth of photos that no one will ever ask to see. It's sobbing so hard you can't breathe and wondering if it's possible to cry yourself to death.
Infant loss is handing off a Moses basket to the nurse who's drawn the unfortunate duty of delivering your pride and joy to the morgue and walking out of a hospital with empty arms.
It's boxing up brand new baby clothes and buying a 24-inch casket. It's sifting through sympathy cards, willing your foolish body to stop lactating, clutching your baby's blanket to your chest in hopes of soothing the piercing ache in your heart.
It's resisting the urge to smack the clueless individuals who compare your situation to the death of their dog or who tell you you'll have another baby, as if children are somehow replaceable.
Infant loss is explaining to your 7-year-old that sometimes babies die and being stumped into silence when she asks you why. It's watching other families live out your happy ending and fighting a fresh round of grief with every milestone you miss.
It's being shut out of play groups for perpetuity. It's skipping social events with expectant and newly minted mothers because, as a walking worst-case scenario, you don't want to put a damper on the party.
It's listening to other women gripe about motherhood and realizing that you no longer relate to their petty parental complaints because, frankly, when you've buried a baby, a sleepless night with a vomiting toddler sounds something like a gift.
Infant loss is pruning from your life the friends and relatives who ignore or minimize your loss. It's recognizing that, while they may not mean to be hurtful, the fact that they don't know any better doesn't make their utter lack of empathy one whit easier to bear.
My baby girl would have been 5 years old this month. I don't know what she'd look like, what her favorite food would be. I've never had the privilege of tucking her into bed, taking her to the zoo or kissing her boo-boos. I will never watch her graduate or walk down the aisle.
Infant loss is more than an empty cradle. It's a life sentence.
- Laura Schubert, The Heartache Of Infant Loss
November 3, 2011: Glow In the Woods: Signs
I'm writing over at Glow In the Woods today, telling a story from a recent trip to Whole Foods. Please feel free to stop by Glow and read my post, signs, and join the discussion.
November 13, 2011: For George
I built this little box for our friends, Leif and Brianna, and for their son George, who died on March 31, 2010 after twenty-four short minutes of life. They wanted something to hold his precious belongings, so I crafted this box out of reclaimed doug fir wall paneling.
We never got to meet George, but the impact he has had on my family through his Dad and Mom is tremendous. I don't know where we would be without the love, tenderness and understanding that their friendship has brought to us since meeting them shortly after Margot died. The very existence of our friendship, the profoundness of it, the sadness behind why we met, the source of joy it brings us, is still a complicated mystery to me.
To George Ellsworth Hanson. Thanks for all you have given us.
November 24, 2011: To M On Thanksgiving
Letter #63
Margot,
Hey kid. I started referring to you as M from time to time, which I think sounds kind of endearing and wonderful. I like to draw little pictures of the lowercase m. I stamp it in my little journal and doodle it at work while I'm thinking through a project. Truth is, I'd like to scatter little m's and m phrases all over the city; on trees and sidewalks, on concrete walls, in the front cover of books, with stones in the river, with shells at the beach.
m was here.
Sometimes I wonder if I would have called you this if had you lived. Way to go M, I might have said. Or, happy Thanksgiving M. I always wanted a hip nickname when I was a kid, but unfortunately, all I got was juicy jackson. Hey juicy, pass me the ball! Ain't nothing hip about it. And then in dreaded middle school, one guy started calling me jacksypads. That was a long month.
Your big sister has been calling your mom and I "sweetie" lately. Sometimes when I call her name, she'll say, yeah sweetie? as if it's a completely normal way to respond to someone. I'm pretty sure you would have been added to her selective sweetie list. And I think she would have called you M sometimes too.
Well, today - on the eight month anniversary of your death - would have been your first Thanksgiving. I can just imagine you nibbling on a tiny piece of turkey, and posing for pictures with your buddy Lyla, or getting sideswiped by the older kiddos. If you were going to be anything like your parents, I think you would have had a grand time.
I normally spend the days leading up to Thanksgiving thinking about what I'm grateful for. It's a habit I got from your sentimental Papa Dennis, who always wanted us to share what we were thankful for. And even though you're not here, I couldn't help but to do the same this year.
I'm certainly thankful for you. I know this is complicated, but I'm so glad you're a part of my story, even if I can't always see it. For now, it seems missing you is mostly where I'm at. I'm thankful for your mama. I still can't believe she is all mine. I count my great fortune every single day. Her beauty and intelligence and strength is something that I see every day in your sister and miss every day in you. And your sister, of course, whose very existence feels like a miracle. She is simply perfect. I'm thankful for those family and friends who talk about you openly, for those who ask how we're doing, for those who don't ingnore or diminish what we have lost, for those we can be our whole selves with. I'm thankful for our new friends, who feel like a gift from you. The first of many, I hope. And I'm thankful for less important things like the movies and a job that allows me to work with my hands.
Even without you in my arms, even with the brokenness that I feel, there is much to be grateful for. Thanks for helping me remember.
Sometimes in the quiet mornings, before the sun has come up, when it's just the two of us, these little chats bring me comfort. I like to imagine the world consisting of just you and I, that I'm the only person on earth in these moments that is thinking of you, talking with you, picturing your face. There is a sacredness in this space my dear. Don't worry baby, your memory is safe with me.
Dad
December 5, 2011: Beautiful Empty
It was a Saturday, 8:30 in the morning. I was humming down Orange Grove Boulevard on one of those rare, glorious Los Angeles overcast days. A gray fog hung around lazily while the landscape seemed to be collectively exhaling, on account of the sunless sky, which normally burns and glares and sears until this desert landscape is charred brown. Trees drooped in thanks, flowers lay still, doing their part to not jinx the unfamiliar sky. Even the sidewalks and streets were near empty, as if work and play and errands and coffee were traded in for longer sleep in darker rooms.
I was alone. My mind seemed to match the stillness with one of those rare states of near nothingness, where thoughts and ideas and people and conversations and to-do lists and worry are replaced with what is only visible to the immediate eye. Red light. Green light. Trees, houses, fence. Turn left. I relished the unusual clearness of mind.
It was in this peaceful state, this nothingness, when Margot suddenly rushed up to the surface. Her being, her name, the idea of her seems to have taken up residence in my pores and under my skin and in all of the recesses of my mind that I never knew existed. Out of all these places, she rose up, speaking to me in this nothingness. But this particular morning, it was just her.
Her. Margot. Without everything else.
There weren’t any questions about the future state of our emotions. Will we be happy again? How happy? Will our grief continue to evolve? Will the sadness ever really feel lighter? What happens if she starts slipping away? There weren’t any thoughts about friends who have let us down or those who have been there. There wasn’t any anger. There weren’t any concerns about impending situations of social anxiety. There weren’t any dark thoughts about her death and cremation. Or frightened memories of the hospital and almost losing another life. There wasn’t any confusion over the philosophical questions of life that have resurfaced. There wasn’t any anxiety over the possibility of future children or losing the living one we still have. There wasn’t any jealousy over the happy and innocent families that took their babies home. There wasn’t any hurt over insensitive comments or those who diminish or ignore our heartache. I was free of disappointment and depression and regret. In this moment, it was just my Margot, in the purest form of missing, without all the baggage that usually clouds up her absence. It was, perhaps, the first time the missing held me completely captured since the first time I held her in a darkened hospital room.
I pulled over and cried out for her as I did in the hospital. I screamed her name. I spoke to her as a Father speaks to his children. The brokenness was as raw as ever, yet it left me hanging delicately in a state of calm. The missing felt real, felt good even.
How nice would it be if grief were this tangible, this straightforward? How convenient to simply miss our kids off and on through the days and years, not having to face the other elements that come with grief?
Because so much of the time it’s not just her anymore. Somewhere along this lonely path, the worries and jealousy and concerns and confusion and hurt and anxiety and over analyzing and constant evaluating have ganged up, in an organized mob attempt to distract from the very core of what matters.
My daughter, my second child, the one who should be pulling ornaments off the tree, is missing. And, well, I simply miss her.
December 10, 2011: 5 X 7
I copied her to a USB drive and slid her into my pocket.
We arrived to the neon lights and glossy floors and aisles of nonsense just in time for an upbeat version of jingle bells.
Not so jingle this year, I thought to her, squeezing the plastic drive.
I pushed her in and she appeared, still warm, hair still wet, still wrapped in blankets.
Hey kiddo.
I stood up to cover the screen, surprised by my own instincts, to protect her from indifferent eyes.
4x6? 8x10?
How about 200x200? Would that be okay?
Here is your picture, he says, handing her back to me.
December 10, 2011: Her and You, Then and Now
The following is the address I gave last night at the MISS Foundation's candle lighting service for National Children's Memorial Day. It was a beautiful evening, remembering our kiddos, talking about our kiddos, sharing it all next to dear family and friends. Thanks to Sari and our dedicated leaders for putting this together and inviting me to share.
Her and You, Then and Now
December 11th was a Saturday last year and already, our house was dressed in Christmas. Ornaments and colored lights adorned our tree. Festive trinkets were neatly placed around the house. An ironic glass snowman in the bathroom. A vintage santa clause on the bookshelf. And my relentless christmas playlist blared on repeat, pounding us with Mariah Carey and at least eleven of the sappiest versions of Silent Night that I could find.
On this day last year, my first child Stella and I played in the yard with our housemates. That evening, we prepared for our first christmas movie night by making popcorn and turning her room into a fort, outfitting our creation with a plethora of blankets and pillows. We watched a Charley Brown Christmas and snoopy's hysterical antics were the hit. And my wife Kari was twenty-four weeks pregnant with our second child, Margot June, and the holidays were a welcomed distraction from the hibernation that we normally go into during pregnancy.
Looking back on this day, I can almost smell the innocence on my breath. I can practically taste the richness of life, and feel the simplicity of my emotions.
Fourteen weeks later and twelve days before her due date, my blue eyed baby girl was dead.
The pain was, as you can attest to, more fiercely felt than I knew was possible, as if all of the heightened emotions I had ever experienced in my life were suddenly reduced to utter dullness in comparison. For the heart to swell with the deepest of love, and to break into a multitude of pieces, one right after the other, almost simultaneously, is something that only this unfortunate group can know.
I could have never imagined on that December evening, watching snoopy slide across the icy pond, that a mere fourteen weeks later I’d be facing the darkest of nights, smothered in anguish and sorrow.
But, such is life, I have learned.
It is full of accidents and full of fortune, full of complicated twists and full of predictable outcomes, full of beauty and full of gloom, full of exhaustion and full of youth, full of hope and full of despair, full of suffering and full of wellness. I have come to see these attributes of life as not either-or, but both-and-together. A freak accident took my daughter, a fortunate clotting of blood saved my wife. And on and on we could go, showcasing the audacity of life’s complicated nature.
I feel this new life around every corner, both the splendor and heartache of what it means to be alive, what it means to be fully human. I think of this more acutely, I feel of this more deeply, especially on a night like tonight.
Thirty-eight weeks after Margot died, the exact amount of weeks she was alive, I stand here with you. My fellow survivors. YOU who comprehend, YOU who whisper the names of our children, YOU who abide with us, YOU who we can be our whole selves with, YOU who usher us out of the loneliness, YOU who say, “I understand.”
I could have never imagined, on that dreaded day when my daughter was here and then wasn’t, that thirty-eight weeks later I’d be sitting here with you, facing our losses in abiding unison.
In you, in this society of the suffering, I see the beauty of life. And on this cool December evening, as we light our candles and remember our lost children, I see the hope, however soft and delicate it may be.
December 15, 2011: After the Storm
We head up to Margot's River, as we have all come to call it, every so often, when the day feels right or when Stella feels like picking out a rock for M, or when a massive wind storm hits Los Angeles, which happened a few weeks back.
We hiked and crawled around the forest, picking our way across the creek and climbing over downed trees and logs. We carefully selected the biggest rock yet to add to M's jar, and Stella, of course, wore her pink dress with a recently added star patch, which covers an impossible stain.
December 24, 2011: Muddle Through Somehow
We pulled up around seven, parked in a nice little spot, and ordered some food. Burgers, fries and a soda. The three of us sat in the car and waited for our number, the interior lights giving the older of us enough light to see the younger of us swinging wildly between the seats. Chocolate! she screamed in anticipation. A morsel of mint cocoa for a finished burger.
It's Christmas Eve and the weather is mild.
Nine months today.
We turn on the radio, looking for Christmas music, the first Christmas music of the season, some six weeks later than usual. An older gentleman begins singing while we dunk fries into ketchup and she tosses the bun for quicker patty access.
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now
December 26, 2011: One In the Other
Sometimes when I allow myself, when I can't take it anymore, when I can't feel M, when I achingly long to hold my little girl, I look at pictures of Stella at the same age as M would be now.
Today, December 26, Margot would be nine months and two days old.
Stella was nine months and two days on November 23, 2009.
I search through iPhoto, scrolling through the months until November 2009 and the days until the 23rd and the pictures until my Stella appears.
There we are, the three of us, happy as can be, walking the streets of our downtown home, ice skating in Pershing Square, frolicking around our loft. And there is Stella. Smiling, making mischief, living freely and willing to wear pants.
Blue eyes, thin upper lip, full cheeks and the Jackson'est smile you'll ever find.
Margot, Margot, Margot, my love, my dearest, with your perfect blues, are you in there somewhere?
December 30, 2011: Jackson Family Christmas
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| M. |
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| Margot Was Here |
January 2, 2012: Evening By Evening: A Scattered Review of 2011
One of my kids runs around the living room making mischief in her underwear, her heart beating miraculously, while the remains of my other kid rest softly in a little brown and gold box from Budapest, which sits on a shelf in our living room, next to the rocks from her river, next to the photograph of water, next to the necklace with her name on it. I'm as used to this reality as I am shocked by it.
This was 2011.
We spent the majority of our evenings on the couch, heads on either end, feet tangled in the middle, talking about our new reality. After long days with Stella, with work, the evenings were our time to sit openly with our grief, to face the sadness and heartache without worrying about how it affected Stella or how it affected our friends. We wept and cried. We lit candles. We counseled one another through anger and jealousy and guilt. We stared at the ceiling in disbelief. We held each other fervently, allowing a decade of flourishing and perpetual love to wash over our brokenness. Evening by evening, we faced the darkness, hoping enough evenings would accumulate to slowly heal our aching hearts.
Our days were spent with our Stella, who turned two in February and never looked back. She potty trained the week before her second birthday and marveled us with her words. Hearing her talk is like a dream coming true, slowly and steadily, always inevitable but still surprising. By summer she was screaming out little sentences and by December she was successfully negotiating with us. Our little firecracker of a girl, so full of life, of jokes, of independence. The burden of 2011 was surely eased by the joy of watching her live so fiercely.
We made two new friends that I think will be around for the rest of our lives, a rare gift in the complicated scheme of life.
We lived in community as we have always imagined, with our housemates who rock the floors above us, with our friends who live ten houses down, with our gang that gets together for wine and vegetarian food.
Everything else about the year seems trivial, forgettable, barely worth a mention.
Perhaps the most stunning thing I can think of, on this warm January morning, is that we made it this far. We haven't completely lost our minds. We haven't lost our substance. And in the ocean of sorrow we find ourselves in, we are facing the waves and undertow and storms with as much courage and tenacity as we can muster. We are still here, clawing forward, somewhat intact, and this feels like something to cautiously smile about.
January 11, 2012: Nine Days
The two of them met for a brief moment. One of them was alive, nine days old, seven pounds, four ounces, and still under the lethargic haze of infancy. One of them was dead, four hours old, seven pounds, twelve ounces, and still warm from the womb, from the closeness of working organs and a rapid heartbeat. The dead one was lifted in front of the live one, a surreal sight if there ever was such a thing. She was going to be your best friend, the mother whispered. It was hello and goodbye in the same minute.
They were meant for each other, our two girls, Lyla and Margot, born nine days apart to best friends who live on the same street.
Long before children were on the immediate radar, the four of us dreamed of a scenario where our kids grew up together, close in age and close in proximity. We imagined our babies crawling around together, our toddlers fighting over toys, our pre-schoolers trading sentences. It's only natural, of course, for two couples to wish the sort of closeness between their kids as they share themselves.
The mothers navigated the frightening waters of middle school together, and then high school and then University. The fathers own a business together. We have backpacked through three continents, riding crammed busses and jumping off bridges and sleeping in cars along the interstate. And somehow, despite living in different parts of the world for the better part of six years, our friendship remained steadfast.
And then one day they decided to move across the country, straight into our neighborhood. Then they fell pregnant. It was July when they told us, on a blisteringly hot afternoon.
Almost incredulously, ironically, we conceived Margot on the same blistering day we found out they were pregnant with Lyla. One tiny miracle created out of knowledge of the other. The women who became fast friends at the age of twelve, who have known each other for nearly two decades, were just five weeks apart. The stars were aligning.
In those early weeks, those early months after Margot died, it was hard to even imagine what we needed from our family and friends. It was shock and awe, the inability to focus, night time meltdowns, a mountain of anguish. Friends and family came and went, supporting and helping and listening in any way they can. But mostly we just tried to survive each day, one long minute at a time.
And then, suddenly, without notice, it felt like we were all alone in our grief, as if the veil of sadness had been lifted for all but us. It’s all fine and understandable, but the longing for wholeness became a desperation, to be able to share with someone our whole selves, both the anguish and the joy, however unbalanced these emotions were in our early grief. I found myself fracturing, turning into a splintered version of myself. I would smile and nod and deflect questions and give the world a sad, but more or less coping, version of myself. I longed to be my whole self, with more than just my partner. If we couldn’t share the aching burden of our missing child with friends, how on earth could we share any joy we found out of life?
But there is Brooke, mother to Lyla, friend since middle school, standing with us, kneeling with us, walking with us, crying with us, never afraid of our grief, never afraid to talk about Margot. She asks questions and then asks more questions, always wanting to share in our pain as deeply as she can. When a group of us are at a party, with babies everywhere, it is Brooke who talks about missing Margot, it is Brooke who asks what it feels like. Whenever I post a new vulnerable blog about our grief, it is Brooke who talks about it. She has abided with us, without a timeline, without expectations. And what is most astonishing, is that she has done all of this while in the midst of mothering a child for the first time. If there have been sleepless nights or breastfeeding issues or colds or exhaustion or hard days or figuring out the right bottle or any of those new parent realities, we never hear about them. And the love, the sheer perfect love of a child, that normally oozes out of a new parent, has been miraculously toned down around us. Her abiding grace, under such difficult circumstances, is perhaps the most selfless act I have encountered in my lifetime.
Nearly ten months have passed since our babies passed by one another. For a long time, it was hard to even look at Lyla, the most physical reminder of my Margot. The smiling, the giggles, the sitting up, the pure baby charm. Each little milestone was so acutely felt. But somehow through the months of abiding with Brooke and her husband, through the inevitable time that has passed, I can smile at Lyla now, hold her hand, watch her laugh. I can ask about her. She has become integrated into my pain, fused with it. She is part of the missing and she is part of the remembering. But it is not too bitter. It is sweet. And somedays I wonder, when the rest of the world has forgotten my darling girl, when only her mother and I really miss her, will Lyla be like a marker in time, a beautiful reminder of our little girl, gone for so long?
February 2, 2012: 2 + 1
This was written on September 12, 2011, one hundred and seventy-two long days after March 24.
____________________
We are driving on the 134, past Eagle Rock and over the hill that provides panoramic views of Downtown and the Pacific. My nerves are running laps between my heart and head, my knee is bobbing up and down, my mouth is unable to deliver the thoughts streaming in. We sit quietly as we roll down the hill towards our exit.
I am surprisingly confident. I am painfully terrified.
It was like this once before, almost exactly, except we were breaking the speed limit and Kari was screaming in pain and I was on the phone.
"Yes, hello. My wife just fell on her belly. We are driving to you now. Is Dr. Wu there?"
"Kari Jackson."
"39 weeks."
I hung up in a haze and relayed the news. The doc is there, I told her. It’s going to be okay. Maybe we’ll meet her now, we mumbled to one another while she lay sideways, clutching her belly.
"Something isn’t right." she said with measured doubt. Her eyes signaled the coming calamity.
"We’re almost there," I replied.
I hugged the right lane and exited frantically, my right arm extended towards Kari, my left doing the driving. Every last ounce of hope I could muster went into that right arm, down through my elbow, past my hand and into the life inside that broken belly.
My mind raced about where to go. I contemplated the ER for a split second before deciding on Labor and Delivery. I stopped near the valet, just in front of the double doors, and barely had enough time to shift the car into park before leaping off the seat and running into the building.
"I'll be right back," I blurted out as I slammed the door shut.
I ran past the security box and down the hall, past the waiting room where balloons and family members waited anxiously, and straight into the nurse's station at Labor and Delivery.
"I need help!" I stopped to catch my breath in a desperate plea with my body and mind to remain calm. My stomach was somersaulting around my insides. My heart pounded ferociously, each chamber pumping and moving my blood, which was laced with a fear I had never known before.
"My wife just fell on her belly and something isn't right. Wu is our Doctor and she's full term. I need a wheelchair"
I must have floated back to the car, back to Kari doubled over on the front seat. There is no memory of getting back to her, of lifting her into the chair, of hurtling her towards the ultrasound machines. We were just there, suddenly, with a team of frightened nurses. One of them pulled out a fetal pocket doppler and placed it on her belly.
In the agonizing sound of nothingness, time stood still.
We gently roll past the valet, past the double doors and head for the parking garage. Our hands lock together in a sweat. We nervously kid about our new willingness to happily pay for parking. I ignore the obvious, even though The Day is still more fresh in my mind than any other day of my life.
It's September.
We take the stairs out of the garage and head towards the outside entrance. We walk past the valet and through the double door entrance. I can see pieces of my former self scattered around the place, my dismembered ghost calling out to me from the tiled floor, from the ceiling, from every little nook and cranny. My innocence in one corner, my naivety in another. Luck stares at me from under a chair, and unwavering optimism glares at me from down the hall. I stare at them with indifference.
She sits on the table, I pace the compact room, shuffling back and forth, my nerves still running laps, my hands still moist. There are few words between us.
There he is. Our frail, sixty-nine year old Dr. Wu, who delivered both our girls, one who was resuscitated after a thirty-six hour labor by a team of six NICU Dr's and nurses, and one who they tried to resuscitate. His eyes fill with empathy, with a gratefulness that we are able to be here again.
"How are you?" he asks. "Any morning sickness?" He asks in a way that suggests he is hoping with all the hope in the universe that there are other signs of pregnancy, that he finds a heartbeat.
"Okay, let's have a listen."
And there it was. The most beautiful sound of all, so primal and miraculous and hopeful.
Another beating heart.
___________________
We are now six months along with a growing baby boy. He's due in early May. We really, really, really hope he makes it.
1 comments:
Your post took my breath away. I vividly remember these days. The days when the fog starts to clear an you realize that your child isn't the only thing you lost. I am so sorry you are here.
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