Alone

M. says life and death aren't opposites - birth and death are. The only guarantee of birth is death. And who gets to decide how much time a soul spends earthside? We certainly don't. Time is irrelevant. Who says William's life wasn't full, then, M. argues? Who says the time he spent wasn't the time he was supposed to spend? 

We live life in the continuum. And can only see some things in hindsight I guess. 

But me, I can't help but think of what his life "should have been." To imagine that his whole existence was "meant" to be spent in my womb... what kind of life was it, then, I wonder?

What was it like, living inside of me? Feeling my heartbeat, my emotional tides? I wish I’d laughed more for him – although there was one night I peed myself during MST3K. ;) I wish I'd been less distracted, more focused on the time we did have together. I didn't know it was going to be just that, just those three short seasons, that we would spend. I didn't know, and I guess that's the point isn't it? We never know. We just never know how much time we're going to have.

I did spend time every day with my hand on my belly, just feeling him, sending him love. I knew he was going to be my last, and I wanted to remember the lasts. Like the last first flutters. He let me know he was there very very early. The doctors and nurses and even the midwives looked at me doubtfully when I said I felt him at 10 weeks... but I did. There's no mistaking that sensation, not when you've had as many babies as I have. 

Did he know somehow he wasn't going to get as much time with me, and so he wanted me to know he was there as early as he could manage? 

I knew him from the very first. I loved him before the moment he was conceived. It sounds crazy, but I felt him one morning in bed, half awake, half asleep, about a week before I was even due to ovulate. This sudden warmth and peace and knowing came over me, and I knew it was our baby. I didn't know his name, I didn't know what gender he was... because he wasn't anything, and yet, he was. He existed, hovering, present.

Am I just telling myself stories now, to make myself feel better? I have no idea. I really don't know. 

But I know that when he was with me, inside of me, I was never alone. Even when everyone else was gone for the day, the kids at school, M. at work, William was with me. And that relationship remains probably the most connected I'll ever be with another person. I felt him completely. I knew his waking cycles, his sleep cycles. I felt his little hands up by his face every morning as I sat on the couch while the kids got ready for school, his elbows moving sharply sometimes above my pubic bone, and I just knew he was sucking his thumb or his fingers. His older sister and his brother had, too.

Now I sit in the same place every morning and remember that time with him. It was my time, only mine and his. No one else could have understood it, or felt that same sweet connection, that knowing, that tender feeling of love and care, knowing he was comforting himself until I could comfort him skin-to-skin, flesh to flesh, finally on the outside.

I remember every ultrasound, ever peek I had into the window of my uterus. It was the only time I saw him moving, alive. I so wish M. had taken the time off work to be with me at the gender u/s now. I was the one who discovered we were having a boy - it was the ultrasound tech who laughed and agreed, "Yep, that's a boy." I wish he could have been there for that moment. I do have the video, though. I can see William kicking, turning, rolling, such an active little man. He was communicating with me, even then. He always was. 

Then why couldn’t he tell me, at the end? Why couldn't he tell me he was going, going, gone? What happened to that stream of communication? 

Did he try? Was he trying, all the way up until that very last moment? 

I think he was. 

I think I stopped listening, I was distracted by my own pain. I didn't listen to my intuition. I didn't trust my body, my own authority, my instinct. I lost that connection, I let it go, just for a moment, and I lost him.

I failed him. 

I’m so sorry, baby.