Wallpaper

I put William's picture up as wallpaper on my computer screen.

For a week, I resisted, thinking it was too morbid, strange. It would be too painful, I told myself. I wouldn't be able to handle it. It would just make me sad.

But for some reason, I did it anyway. An impulse. Maybe even an instinct.

And I didn't know what a comfort it would be to see him when I opened my laptop every morning. THERE's my baby. My whole body relaxes. I don't understand it, I don't know why, but I can breathe again when I recognize his face. It's like a part of me going missing that I rediscover every day.

I don't know if it's part of the mourning process, or even just the hormones. I remember after the birth of my live babies, taking a shower afterwards, and feeling rushed and anxious. My baby was waiting. My baby needed me. I needed my baby. Being separated in those first days or weeks was excruciating, wrong. I couldn't wrap my head around it.

And I feel that way now. Even though he's dead, even though rationally, intellectually, I know he's gone. It doesn't matter. It's like my body hasn't caught up to my head yet. It still wants what it wants, and just seeing his face makes it better. It relaxes me almost instantly. It's surprising, even shocking to me, that I feel relief and calm instead of pain when I see him. But I do.

My mother-in-law asked me yesterday if we were going to "do this again." This. Have a baby. Again. I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind. I also can't say that I'm not terrified at the idea of being pregnant again.

Then she revealed the reason she asked, "Well, I just...I have some little outfits and things for him, but I can't return them, and I don't know what you want to do with them...sell them? Keep them? I don't know."

Me either. "I guess I'll take them...and decide later?"

"Well...I just don't want to give them to you if they're going to make you sad."

Ha. Now that made me want to laugh. As if. As if it could get any worse. Because right now, breathing makes me sad. There aren't any degrees. My life is so twisted, so strange, so surreal, so turned on its head upside-down, that looking into the face of my dead son is the most calming experience in the world to me right now.

If I could have his body still, I'd be holding it, decaying or not. I would. I understand how mother's minds snap, how they end up dressing up and carrying baby dolls and calling them by their dead child's name. I really get that, on a visceral level I never could have fathomed before William was gone.

That's how much I want him.