2016

I hate the phrase "time heals all wounds".  Because it doesn't really.  All it does is add another layer over the top of a broken heart, a lame attempt to seal inside grief and pain and tragedy.

It's been three years since our baby girl died.  All along the way I have imagined her, wondering how she would be on this day when she should've been alive.  Even now, after having a baby boy last year, I look down at him nursing and I think how I never got to care for Beatrice this way.  She never got to know the feeling of being a baby cradled in her mother's arms, being comforted, fed and loved.  Looking into each others face and eyes, we seem to know what the other is thinking.  She never got to play with my hair as my son so loves to do.

I admit, I nurse him now and at times in the half dark, my eyes see you there instead.  I see your eyes open, gazing at me in sleepy contentment as babies do.  I see your eyes open.

And my comfort helps you sleep and your eyes slowly close and I would not be afraid to lay you down as I sometimes am with my son.  You would be here and I would not be afraid.

I sometimes hear it in my mind, an echo of that day nearly a year ago now. 


My baby!


I hear the sobs, too.  Always. 


Andrew is holding me, but he is shaking so badly I cannot tell who is supporting who.  I have him turn her small body towards me so I can look at her from my hospital bed.  Her face is tiny and sweet there in the half dark and I can't look away, willing her to move, to breath.  I try to memorize her features, the shape of those little lips and the upturned nose.  I wish I could see her eyes.  


Later, cradling her in my arms, we take off the hat she is wearing and kiss her soft head, her hair, her ears.  We look at her fingers and toes.  Over and over, I stroke her cheek. 


I don't want to let her go.  The nurses tell us to keep her as long as we want.  To love on her as much as we can.  They knew, though.  Of course they knew it would never be enough.  And as I wondered at the delicate skin of her neck and her earlobes, I knew too.  My daughter was taken from me and this will never even come close to being enough.

I wake each morning now with a stiff and painful elbow and a clenched fist.  At first I took it as another sign that my body is broken too.  Or maybe I am clutching my heart while I sleep, willing it to knit itself back together again.

But now I realize you are there with me in my deepest dreams.  I have my arm bent, cradling you just so to support your head and my hand rests behind the crook of your knees.  I hold you through the night until the day breaks and I have to let you go again. 

My perfect sleeping girl.

I am not myself any longer.  I have changed.  I have told myself and others these words too many times to count.  I have said them in my head, as if to confirm what I already know.  But I didn't realize that calling myself changed is too weak, too inadequate. 


I am not just changed.  Part of me is dead.


And realizing that in the throes of remembering my lost daughter made so much sense, it was almost a relief.  Yes, part of me is dead; that explains the numbness I feel.  I could lay there, my face stiff and cold, and hours could pass without my knowledge. 


And then there is the other half of my heart.  If I am dead for Beatrice, then I am also alive for Imogen. 


It's easy to be in one side or the other.  I can relive every precious moment with Beatrice, weeping for her and all that she lost.  I can lie in bed, detached from myself and the world around me, with no thought but the flickering images of that day back in October.  But I can also smile at Imogen and feel the happiness radiate from her joyful face.  I can hold her, keeping her solid little frame next to me as tightly as possible, savoring each breath I feel her take.


It's easy to be in one side or the other.  It's the line between my death and my life that troubles me, for how can I ever reconcile the two?  How could they ever fit together?  There is no bridge, yet the two sides of my heart shift and grind against the other, one or the other rising to a pinnacle of emotion, leaving me never knowing whether I will be in death or in life from moment to moment.


This line, this rift in my heart, dulls what was once a happy life, blurring the edges of everything sweet and joyful, mixing with it agony and despair. 


Yes, I am alive.  But part of me is dead.

"how do you pick up the threads of an old life? how do you go on? and in your heart, you begin to understand... there is no going back. there some things that time cannot mend, some hurts that go too deep - that have taken hold."

- Tolkien

Beatrice's face is superimposed over every thought I have.  Every thought I see through the watermark of her still face.  I might be looking at you, but I'm not really, its only her face I see.


I flashback to that day we lost her, mostly at night before I fall asleep, moments and voices, fragmented and out of order.  The weeping of my father as he held her for the first and last time; the rock of my childhood, breaking.  My mother looking at her as she does what only comes naturally when you hold a newborn baby, rocking her gently from side to side.  Then to my youngest sister's face before the memorial, the tears free flowing down her cheeks as if she was in the rain without an umbrella.  Imagining my brother's face, not knowing what to say.  Another sister gazing at Beatrice's photo with such love on her face, drinking every detail.  I feel the hands of my other sister, squeezing my own, trying to give me what strength she can, even as she shakes with her own tears. 


I see you, Beatrice.  In my mind, I do see you... as you were, as you will yet be. 
And I do so long to hold you.

I have such a happy memory from the day I lost my baby.  I sat on the couch and watched my husband and two year old daughter dancing, her legs around his waist, their hands clasped together and her face lit up with smiling laughter.  I saw all this over the view of my 38 week pregnant belly, so glad that our family would be complete when we finally met our next daughter and our "baby sister", Beatrice.

How much can change in a few hours!  No heartbeat on the Doppler, a still form on the ultrasound, an unbeating heart.  My midwife grabbed my hand. 

The next few hours were a blur - my father coming to take my daughter, another ultrasound, words like "we lost our baby", "delivery soon" and "you will want to hold her and see her" floated around me and past me.  

Inside I was screaming.  I was wailing.

I asked for a cesarean because I felt I would not be able to give birth to her naturally.  It's become one more thing to add to the list in how I failed her.  I should have given her that.  In my heart, I felt I would not be able to do it, that I would break down in the middle and end up with a cesarean anyway.  So I watched the clock until 8 pm, visitors coming and going, nurses asking me things to do with losing your baby.  Did I want the delivery chronicled in video?  Did we want a charity to come take photos of her?  How could I decide these things?  I could barely comprehend why I was in the hospital on this day, when I should be home preparing dinner for my family and preparing my home for my new baby.  

Not that I had much left to do.  I was ready for her.  I felt ready since the day we knew we were going to have another baby.  Ready even before we knew she was with us.  And now.  She was just gone.

***

We held her but not enough.  We kissed her soft head of hair, her cheek.  We stroked her skin, the spot below her neck, the skin as yet untouched by death.  They told us we could keep her with us as long as we wanted.  Really?  As long as we wanted??  To me, that meant taking her home with me, nurturing her through her infancy, caring for her through childhood, guiding her through her teen years and seeing her finally as an adult.  

There would never be a time I didn't want her.

Now, it was as if I was saying she needed to be fed because she was rooting, or she needed a diaper change because she was crying... we arranged for her grandparents to say goodbye and then we held her for the last time.  Her little body was breaking down and we didn't want her to get any worse, protecting the only thing we had left.  So we decided it was time to let her go.  It was as if we noticed she was getting sleepy and it was time for a nap.  

Except it was none of those things.  It was watching her through swollen eyes leave our room and our lives.  Our last act as her parents.