Living Into the Answers

The first bleed came one night in March, seven days after the quiet ultrasound that revealed what my bones already knew; the usual secret lifeforce of early pregnancy had felt muted this time around, I could not feel the soul inside me as I had in my previous pregnancies. Thirteen weeks of morning sickness and crushing fatigue, the drooling naps, the easy tears, had led me to this moment in the grocery store checkout line. The cashier made small talk as the first contraction gripped me like a vice, quickly followed by another. I felt the flush of adrenaline course through me and my cheeks set fire as my forehead broke a sweat. Panic swept through me. Would I miscarry this baby in a grocery store bathroom? What would I do with the baby? I envisioned myself wrapping it in paper towels and holding it in my lap on the drive home. Hot tears sprang to my eyes. I had to get out of here. 

The drive home was a blur of contractions and road rage as I pleaded with the other drivers to hurry up and go. The red and green of the traffic lights welled up in my tears, a kaleidoscope of loss. An eternity later, I pulled up to the house and left the groceries in the car. My baby would be born en caul, still enveloped in the amniotic sac, a good luck omen in live births. As I held the tiny pocket in my hand, my tears were transmuted into wonder, awe, love. Hands shaking, I opened the sac to find the tiny toes, ten of them, the sweet face, the little limbs. The child, still sexless, was visible perfection. I inspected and remarked and beamed as I had with my liveborn children, then ached with the knowing that I would return my baby to the earth. A woman who has lived some life becomes acquainted with these thresholds of beauty and terror, this is our ancient keeping. 

The second bleed arrived as the chill of October descended the same year, another child returned to the earth. My body had made ready a home for a life, built a new organ, increased it’s blood volume, become ripe for sustaining another. The exodus of hormones had left me teetering between exhaustion and madness. Grief muted my days. It was only the beginning.

They found the tumor in January. It grew there in the dark, while we slept unaware and ate breakfast, and carried out the rhythm of our days. The cranial sutures had begun to separate on her tiny skull. “The size of a baseball” they said. She had just celebrated her second birthday with purple cupcakes. I watch that video still sometimes, her golden ringlet pig-tails bobbing as she blows each candle out wholeheartedly. I watch myself sing happy birthday, certain that the worst was behind us. The next birthday was a relief, she had made it through surgery and sepsis and chemo. The fourth birthday would be the last. We knew it going into the day. The last cake, the last candles, the last. 

The last breath left her as the chill of October descended. With the softest winged sigh, she left. In her yellow room, in her canopy bed, I removed the oxygen mask, and untaped the ng tube from her cheek and took it out for the last time. No more machines, no more tethers, nothing preventing me from holding her to my chest. I strained with all of my love to imprint the feel of her in my arms on my soul, her foot in my palm, her cheek on my shoulder. MINE! I wanted to scream into the night. MY BABY! How do you give your child back? No one can teach this. It is the stark raving shock of a violent maternal soul excision, instant death to the part of you embodied in that child, bound up with their lifeforce. Darkened, snuffed out, stolen, maimed. In the black cool of the night, we placed her in the hearse, every cell in my body in uproar. How wrong to send your child away into the dark, to a cold place, alone. The tail lights disappeared down the long driveway. The woman I was before, disappeared with them. I dreaded sleep. How would I wake up without her? I tore at my pillow case with a rage of fiery tears, screamed into the fabric. This is what is meant when the Hebrews rent their garments in the Bible I thought. I understood. I slept between worlds. 

And then we gave her to the earth. She would forever wear the tiny dress and satin headband bow I bought two weeks before in the children’s section at Dillards. I remember how the sales clerk smiled and asked me what the special occasion was when I purchased it. “It’s for my daughter,” I had answered.  When the graveside service ended, they lowered her into the darkness, covered the tiny casket with dirt. Every day since then I have tried not to imagine her there. The sun drenched afternoons spent at her headstone I have willed myself not to think of her beneath me, in a box, with the living things of the soil. I have pushed away such imaginings at the first hint of a thought.

Until this year, year ten. By year ten, I discovered, she is in all probability, a skeleton now. This is a shocking thought. This is a hard bump up against reality, against the passing of time. But it is mine to consider. I am her mother, the keeper of her body. I nurtured her life into existence, kept the long nights of nursing and teething, and then illness. I know the bend of her elbow, the intricacy of her ears, her little teeth. It is mine to consider her bones formed in my womb, resting in the earth. 

This I have in common with every woman for time and eternity, past and future. We are the portals for new life, the keepers, the late night singers of gentle songs and rocking, and soothing. Every grave on this wide planet cradles a child that came through a woman. Some children go back to the earth at 84, and some at 4, like mine. The earth is filled with the fruit of the woman, and in this way she goes on forever. She is the bearer of great love and great loss. It is our ancient keeping.