Right Where I Am: Three Years, Five Months

Mostly these days, I find I am content. I feel the sunshine, see all the vibrant colors, smell the damp-hope smell of spring. I laugh. I dance with my daughters. My smile includes my eyes.

***

Right now, there is a tautness under all that content. Sunday should be Henry’s fourth birthday, so while I’m sailing smoothly on the surface, I feel everything wound a little tighter in anticipation. I’m a little on the verge, though mostly, so far it’s been okay. It is not the crushing weight of the first May or the utter exhaustion of the second. It is not my sudden realization of the third that my baby would be in fact a little boy not a baby. Would be if he were here.

This May is easier than the past, but with Memorial Day weekend approaching, I find myself taking deep breaths a little bit more often. Still, I have a plan. Whatever else happens that day, I will work in his garden. I will take that time and space, in the middle of a busy weekend of work and family cookouts, and claim it for him. This is my tradition. It isn’t something I set out to do, it simply became what I do, what feels as right as anything probably could.

***

Last Tuesday we went to dinner at a friend’s house. There were three babies there and somebody wanted a picture. There she was in the middle, my girl. On one side the baby five days older than her, on the other a boy four months older. I peeked and then turned away breathing back tears.

I stood stirring the cheese sauce so I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody, caught up in the swirl of memory. Not long after Henry died, we went to dinner here too. It’s a weekly potluck and all through my first pregnancy I was there with these two other pregnant women. That night when we were back after he died, a mom and a dad but two babies down on the floor to “play” with each other. I was standing right there. I wanted to throw up. I wanted to run. And I was paralyzed. I couldn’t move, couldn’t stop staring at the babies he was supposed to grow up with. B— rescued me. He came over and said simply that he couldn’t imagine how I was feeling but that he thought he would come be with me for a little bit. Even now, I am thankful for that kindness.

Last Tuesday after I stood almost crying into the cheese sauce, I smiled at the babies and talked to the “big” kids. I watched Kathleen, a year and a half younger, with them and didn’t see the ghost of Henry at all.

***

Right now, I can talk to other parents about my children, all three of them. I don’t know how it makes people feel, and I’m not sure I care. When I had Kathleen, a year after Henry died, I didn’t know how to talk about being her mom because I couldn’t quite figure out how to talk about being Henry’s mom. I still dread saying that I have a baby who died, but I can say it without coming home and going to bed. I can say it and then I can talk about him as he comes up as I talk about Kathleen, as I talk about Elizabeth.

***

I have pictures of Henry that people printed for us on their home printers. Over the past almost four years they have faded. I can still see me and Brian eager and anxious with Henry as we get ready to take him home from the NICU. I can still see me smiling, too broadly, as they get ready to take him into surgery. I can still see him, my post-surgery no oxygen golden boy with a half smile sitting in his car seat. I can still see us, but we are fading, ghosting, as my memories seem to sometimes. I still struggle to hold onto the surge of joy smiles while letting go of the fear and constant red-alert of his hospital days, but it all dims until something triggers it all sharp and bright again.

***

Right now, I’m frustrated sometimes as I get mired down in work and laundry and making dinner and washing dishes and packing away outgrown clothes and getting out things for summer and . . .

I hate the notion that death gives us perspective, helps us fix our priorities. I don’t think mine have changed all that much. I just get more irritated that I can’t figure out how get the crap out of the way to focus on what matters to me.

***

A few days/weeks ago, I met a friend for chocolate stout cake. We talked about writing and gardens and our husbands’ terrible sense of time and running and food and dead babies and live babies and yearned for-hoped for babies and travel and what we were like in high school. I met her because of the dead babies, and I’m liking getting to know the other pieces of her too. She is but one of the people I’ve been lucky enough to meet on this unlucky journey.

***

Right now, I’m up because I’m liking the quiet not because I’m afraid to go to bed. I remember the restlessness that would come over me at night for those first many months, how I dreaded turning out the light to go to sleep of the wave that would hit me of the sadness and longing and hurt that I had kept slightest bit at bay all day. Now, I just wish I had more time so I could stay up and do all the other things I’d like to do—write, read, think, simply be in the quiet—and still sleep too.

***

Last weekend we had a neighborhood work day to fix up a playground down the street. While there I saw a friend of a friend there with here two kids. “So O’s got a fourth birthday coming up soon,” I said, maybe a bit too brightly. “That’s right! How did you know?” And I reminded her we were in the hospital at the same time. And she remembers, remembers meeting me at baby group, remembers hearing about my story from our mutual friend.

I don’t know what made me mention her son’s birthday. Was I really prompting her to remember Henry? I don’t know. More often these days I find myself trusting that people I know will remember him. I have let go of the need (mostly) to remind people that while I am happy I am still sad, that while I love my daughters I still miss my son.

***

Right now, I still miss Henry and know I always will. I am still confounded some days that he is gone. I still find myself asking How? How can I have a baby who is not here? How can he be gone? I know there will be days that are dark and heavy. I know there will be triggers that send me spiraling, set me sobbing, and I know they probably won’t be the things I expect or prepare myself for. I know too that the dark days will retreat once again and I will again feel the sunshine and see the bright colors and smell the hope. Right now I’m content, happy even.

Three years, five months, nine days out, this is where I am right now.

Much thanks to Angie for this project.