Body Memory

My hormones are shifting.

All the normal patterns are coming back. Migraines have returned, skin changes are happening, my weight is stabilizing. My breasts no longer leak milk every time I cry and think about him. Everything is slowly adjusting to pre-pregnancy levels. Pre-William levels.

I feel as if I'm losing him all over again. My body's mourning is coming to an end. When that happens...what will that do to my heart's grief? Will that dissipate too?

When I close my eyes and try to remember his face - so very clear to me just a week or two ago - the image is soft and bleeds around the edges. I keep his picture close now, not for the same reasons I did at the beginning - the instant relief and relaxation of every muscle in my body the moment I saw it - now I keep it near to remember, because I feel as if I'm beginning to forget.

I don't want to forget.

Last week I asked, horrified, how long anyone could be expected to walk around like this, with every nerve ending on the outside, exposed and raw and tender to the touch... today, I'm terrified at the thought that I might not feel his death this way forever. The pain of his immediate loss was better than this slow losing of his memory. I can remember little things still...the curve of his belly, the wet flop of his umbilical cord, the soft, dark remaining hair on his shoulders that would have fallen out as he grew outside of me instead of inside... but the whole becomes fuzzy in my memory when I try to put them together. I don't want William to deteriorate into a few details. I want him whole, I want to feel his weight, even if it means carrying him like an anvil in my chest.

I want my grief back, open and bleeding, like it was. Today, it feels muted, softer. I'm getting used to the hurt. My eyes are adjusting to the color in this world. I'm starting to be able to see in the dark. I'm no longer afraid of losing my way... I'm afraid of finding it. Yes, I know he will always be with me. But it's changing. The world isn't just moving around me anymore... I'm moving with it. That's disconcerting, after being so still for so long. My muscles ache from the stiff, aching posture of mourning.

Today, a friend offered me something in the way of comfort in this new phase of my grief:

"Did you know every time we carry a child, they leave their DNA in us? So if someone takes enough of our blood, they can find traces of every child we've carried within us, for the rest of our lives. I love knowing that. Because you were pregnant with William, he is part of you forever. You have your own indelible blueprint, your own map physically and permanently stamped inside you, of William. He will always be yours, you will always be his mama. Not even his death can take that away. Maybe we don't know it, but it's a way for them to come back to us sometime down the road..."

I had no idea. But it's true. It isn't just a story, something made up. It's a scientific fact. According to the article I read:

It's part of a process known as fetal microchimerism, in which the mother and fetus exchange certain cells during pregnancy that live on in each other's bodies for years and years.

The fear of losing him began to dissipate the moment I read that, no matter how much my body was changing, adjusting to a state of being without William inside of it. My hormones might be balancing themselves out... but there was a part of me that still held him. Would always hold him, for the rest of my life - he was in my blood, swimming in my veins, pumping through my broken but still beating heart.

The article also said:

One thing researchers have learned, Dr. Gadi said, is that we can no longer be so certain where one person's identity ends and another's begins. "There's no fine line dividing our identities," he said. "It's completely intermingled."

It also adds new meaning to the bond between mothers and children, Dr. Gilmore said. "The old saw is that mothers are closer to their children because they carried them, and in a way that's actually true, because mom is carrying a little of you and you're carrying a little of mom for the rest of your lives."

For the rest of our lives... and perhaps, just perhaps, beyond that. Maybe my friend's right - maybe he is part of me, and I am part of him, and we are all, in some sense, part of each other. And when we go on, however we go on, he will be me and I will be him, and we will be... we will be.

It might be. It just might.