The Present

I'm bleeding.

It's been eleven weeks since William died, and my period has finally returned. I've been anxiously anticipating this event, almost since the moment we lost his heartbeat. Part of me kept whispering, hurry hurry hurry. The empty-arms part. The full and leaking breasts part. The raging hormonal mama-bear part. That part of me wanted a baby and wanted it now.

Of course, what I really wanted was William. William alive, in my arms, at my breast, the perfect antidote to the crazy-making hormonal soup pumping through my veins. I couldn't have that. Logically, I knew it. So the next logical step would be another baby. As fast as possible, thankyouverymuch.

And another part of me wanted to give a big, fat middle finger to the universe. Take my baby, will you? Fine! Like Bill Cosby - "I'll make another one just like you."

I know. I can hear the universe laughing, too.

Fat chance, lady. Not only can't I make another one just like the one I lost - even if the complex mystery of DNA didn't make it impossible, biology aside, the fact that we're all individual from that first spark is just undeniable. Not only that, but the universe decided I needed to wait eleven weeks to contemplate my fertility and the potential possibility of together creating another being that, while not William, might be like William, at the very least, in that he or she would be of both me and M.

Eleven weeks. Wondering. Waiting. Impatiently. Asking questions of myself: Why can't this part be over? Why won't it come? Am I pregant already maybe? Have I even ovulated? Are these stupid tests even accurate? Why don't I know what's going on in my own body? Why would I think I would know - my body killed my baby, and I didn't know that, did I? Why does it take so long? Why can't we skip this part and go straight to the end? Is there something wrong with me? Do I have some sort of cyst or fibroid? Do I have a disease? Maybe I have uterine cancer and that's what killed the baby?

Insane thoughts. They wouldn't stop, even when I tried to stop them. And everyone around me saying kind words - be gentle with yourself. Your body needs time to heal. Your psyche needs time, too. But my ego is not only strong-willed, it's vicious. It wants what it wants. And it doesn't care who it has to hurt - my/itself included. Gentle? What has been gentle about any of this? My baby fought for his life inside of me until he grew too tired to fight anymore and gave up, and I was oblivious. I'm supposed to forgive myself, be kind, gentle, go easy? Feh. Not likely.

I grew angrier at my body by the day. I spent time looking at my "Ovusoft" program, analyzing cycles past. And skipping over that long stretch of time between July 2008 and April 1, 2009. It showed in the software as "cycle 65." Like every moon cycle before, or any that would come after, William was now just another bit of my fertility history, a revolution on the wheel. Is that what he would forever be reduced to?

Finally, desperate for any hint or clue to my current stuckness, I clicked on that cycle. It froze the entire program. The screen went black and then flashed a bright yellow error message. "Cannot complete that function." Yeah, tell me about it. Apparently, I couldn't either. That cycle will forever be aborted, inaccessible, a symbolic representation of the dusty reality - whatever bits are left of my son in his urn.

The next day, I started bleeding, finally - with a vengeance. The thing is, I hardly bled at all after William was born - it was like the lightest of periods. I was actually offended by how little I bled after his birth, how quickly my body was rid of him and getting back to normal. At the same time, I wondered if it was my own longing for another chance at this pregnancy thing that made it so.

And then it took eleven weeks for anything to happen. But when it did, the floodgates opened and I was baptized in my own blood. It pooled between my thighs. It ran in rivulets down my legs. I left fat droplets on the bathroom floor on every trip. I cleaned it from my sheets, my pants, the seat of the car. I was afraid to get out of the shower, the only place it felt safe to be open, to let it flow and wash away the bright red residue of my pain.

This was, finally, the outward display of my inner state of being, something I'd been looking for all along and didn't even know it.

I'm now bleeding for my son both inside and out. And now that it's here, that I have started another cycle, number 66 according to the software, I'm not even thinking about starting over, making a new baby. This blood has brought me here, to this moment and the present weight of my grief instead of looking to some possible hopeful future.

The present is pain. The present is death. The present is blood. I am here, I am in it, I am it, and there is no other way out but through.

My body is very, very wise.