Sea of Holes, Sea of Grief

This space is full of holes. Ridiculous ones, like those black comic dots in Yellow Submarine that turn edgy as they swallow up people and turn them back out, looking for one another, until one among them goes lost.

So much of the story is missing here--the first two pregnancies and those miscarriages. The infertility that preceded them. One or more of the chemical pregnancies. Other, familiar and familial losses over the time this place existed. This space became along the way bound up in writing about the in-betweens and the making of a life, and it did see out the agitated wait of a pregnancy that gave me a living child, whom I do not forget to be thankful for not just every day, but over the course of hours that make up daylight and nighttime and the hour she wakes me from her sleep to call out for me and tell me she's here. She who brings me out into the world when I threaten to go missing, lost in that sea of holes in which it's so easy to slip down and go.

It's a new story that's pulled me under, but one that draws on all the others--one more hole after another, so that it seems there's nothing but loss to our lives. I'm too swallowed myself right now in deep black nothing; writing might help that. I think I have to believe it, as I believe nothing else right now.

After Squiggle, I was pregnant. And then, suddenly, I wasn't.

A son died and born at 22 weeks. Bear with me as I bear him still.  I am coming to understand the word stillborn--the stillness after birth, but also how the mother carries the body before and something much different in the after, the immediate body, and then the ghost child for thereafter. How that will always be in the state of still for me--as in yet, as in what the dictionary tells me is archaic use: steadily; constantly; always.  

Maybe I don't have a right to the word, given why he was born when he was. He was induced, after we received a terrible diagnosis of severe fetal anomaly, with no hope from any of a number of doctors. There are many names for this: termination for medical reasons (TMFR), interrupted pregnancy among them. But there is no doubt I bore him, that he was born. Even if he did not breathe out in this world, he came out into it, and I want him to have some rightful place out here, not in some forgotten way, as if he just disappeared, ended.

Every loss is distinct and terrible in its individual way. Types of losses do have their patterns and shared pains, especially in the early, searing weeks. But after as much loss as I've seen and known--after the infertility (which entails loss, too); the chemical pregnancies; the miscarriages; and this last, late loss; after the death of my father the same week as my second miscarriage; after other losses of family on my husband's side; after the near loss of my brother to despair of deep depression last summer--I  less and less understand the deep divisions we insist upon based on circumstance rather than recognizing how common the afterwards is, and how much we need all of each other there.

Lennon./.McCartney wrote in their song "Fixing. a Hole," a song I'd never considered anything but entertaining, "And when my mind is wandering / There I will go. / And it really doesn't matter if / I'm wrong I'm right / Where I belong I'm right / Where I belong. / Silly people run around they worry me / And never ask me why they don't get past my door. / I'm taking the time for a number of things / That weren't important yesterday / And I still go. / I'm fixing a hole where the rain gets in / And stops my mind from wandering / Where it will go." Suddenly this song strikes me not fun at all, but both sad and determined. I'll admit on the spot to being guilty of misreading, forcing meaning from what I'm going through. But the defense is built in right there: a wrong and a right might be the very self-same thing when the hole in your life is big enough to contain them both.

I'm taking the time for a number of things that weren't important yesterday.

What's important? What matters now in this time when some days it can seem that nothing means anything?

I don't know. I don't even pretend. All I can say is that I'm looking for help in climbing out of the hole I'm in without teetering right down into another one. I'm trying to find one, small place where I can stand and belong. Just don't tell me where that is. Not unless you believe in the common, underground country of the lost. Not unless you've been down here, too. Not unless the day has felt too bright, the world too hard, people too cruel, life too nonsensical.  In the end, that means everyone who dares to call her or himself  human. All of us, some time and then forever after.  

Comments

[Michele]

Sending you many hugs... You may find help from "Life Without Ellie", (lifewithoutellie.blogspot.com) a blog about a mom who also had to induce prior to viability. Her story is touching and may help you in your journey through this grief.

Our babies were born pre-viability and, although they lived a little while, we also struggled with finding the right words. And you have found it, too. "BORN". Your baby was born. That is what we can hold onto.

Many warm thoughts...

[Jen]

I'm so sorry. I will be thinking of you and your son.

[Bluebird]

I'm so sorry honey, my heart absolutely breaks for your loss. I understand, I suppose, as much as one can - my twins were born still at just shy of 20 weeks - but yet I'm still at a loss for words. I suppose I always will be, since there is no way to explain or describe this. . .

Thinking of you, and sending you ((hugs))
Here from LFCA

[Mary]

I will never, ever understand why families have to suffer the loss of their babies. As mothers, we are primed to hope for the future and do everything to care for and nurture our children, and some of us just don't get the chance to do it. I just wanted to send some love and some support your way. Your words are haunting, fracturing, and I cannot imagine what your soul is feeling. I'll be thinking of you.

[Kate]

I'm sorry for your loss. Truly from the bottom of my heart saddened by your news. You are in my thoughts.