Phantom Pain

I know a bit about flesh-eating bacteria. M. had it, following an abscessed tooth. He spend two weeks in the hospital, half of it in the ICU. It's very scary stuff, and usually, it kills you. He was lucky.

So was this woman.

But there is some very, very small part of me that looks at that first paragraph: 

A Sanford mother says she will never be able to hold her newborn because an Orlando hospital performed a life-altering surgery and, she claims, the hospital refuses to explain why they left her as a multiple amputee.

And thinks... but her baby is alive.

Would I choose being a quadruple amputee over having birthed a dead baby? Yeah. I would. In a heartbeat. But we don't get to choose, do we? Life just hands us these things, here you go, this is yours now, like it or not.

Are we supposed to say "Thank you?" Are we supposed to "learn something" from these horrific experiences? Is this some sort of competition to see who can carry the most pain? Or does the person who experiences the least pain win?

I can't fathom a world that leaves one woman's arms aching for her missing baby, and another woman's missing arms unable to hold her live one.

They say you have phantom pain for years after you lose a limb. Can you imagine? A part of you severed, removed, taken, stolen away. Gone, but still, you can somehow feel it...your own secret torment, a torturous ghost reminding you every moment of what you've lost.

Honestly...I think I know exactly how she feels.

Six Months

William is still inside me, stuck, a lump in my throat I can't get past.

Today he feels unreal.

Did I really kiss the cooling forehead of my dead baby six months ago today? Did I really hand him back to a nurse? Did I give him to her, as if he were an empty plate and she a waitress clearing what was no longer needed from the restaurant table?

Here, we're done with this, you can have it now.

Was that me? Was that my son?

It couldn't be. If something so horrible, so heinous, so impossible had really happened to me, I'm sure I would never have given him away. I'm certain I would never have handed him over and gone home and watched American Idol and wondered why I couldn't breathe as I laid there in the dark and wished it all away.

If something so unbelievable had happened to me, I'm sure I would have died. I'm sure I couldn't have survived such a loss. I'm sure I would have slit my wrists or been locked in a padded room or been put on serious medication to keep myself from falling apart.

And if something like that, something so unthinkable, had happened to me once, and I managed somehow to make it through, I'm certain that another loss would truly crush me. Even the smallest potential of life, gone in an unexpected rush of blood and tissue, would surely bring me to my knees. I would spend days, weeks, months, completely incapacitated, unshowered, undone.

I did laundry today. I washed dishes. I wrote a poem. I washed one child's face and kissed another's boo-boo.  How is any of that possible?

You're so strong. A rock. I would have died. I couldn't have handled it. I don't know what I would have done.

No. No, you don't. You don't know what you'll do, when you look into the dark, gaping, bloody mouth of your dead son and see the abyss looking back at you. You think you'll go crazy. You think you'll die. You think you will come undone.

But the horror isn't the reality of death, no bigger than a sack of sugar in your arms... the horror is in the living. The horror comes six months later, when you realize you're living your life, still shopping and cooking and laughing and typing and breathing and trying. And failing.

I wish I'd died. Or I wish I had been utterly shaken and changed and transformed into some sort of selfless human tribute to the precious lost life of my sweet, perfect baby.

But I am, still, and that's all. I didn't shatter, I didn't collapse, I didn't rise from the ashes of my dead son like a glorious phoenix. Six months later, I'm just here, and nothing much has changed, aside from the gaping hole in my chest I feel every minute but no one else can see. 

Game Over

I took a pregnancy test again, just because I'm crazy and like to see that reassuring line getting darker. Besides, I have a million of the things, and I wouldn't need them anymore... right?

So I peed on a stick one more time and waited to see the magic-line...

But there was no line.

Not even the faint line I'd seen a few days before. No line at all.

Stark. White. Nothing.

I told myself it was a faulty test. I would take another one tomorrow and it would be fine, nice and dark, and all the crazy-talk in my head about losing this baby would go away.

But now I'm bleeding.

And there is no more baby.

M. is installing a new stove today. Well, a new-to-us stove, bought from Craig's List after a power surge last week fried the control board in ours. Unfortunately, it doesn't work. He came into the bathroom, all frustrated and sad, where I was staring at that snow-white test, and said to me, "I think I just lost us $175."

I looked at him and said, "I just lost us a baby. I win."

And we all lose.

Game over.

YES!

I imagined what it would be like.

I fantasized about it, frankly, like a dieter with my jaw wired shut, obsessing about mountains of rich, gooey chocolate. What would be it like?

I thought about it. I did. A lot.

But I didn't know it would feel like this.

YES!

There's not a hint of "NO!" in me. No hesitation, no turning away. Is there fear? Yes. Anxiety? Yes. But I'm still saying "YES!" I can't help it. I've smiled so much my face hurts. I smiled through tears all day yesterday, after taking two tests and reassuring M. that yes, it was a line, it didn't matter how faint. I couldn't stop smiling as I told the kids: "You're going to be a sister (or a brother) again!" and seeing their faces light up like it was Christmas morning.

I didn't wait. I didn't keep my secret longer than a few moments, suspended, like my breath, waiting to be let out. Because every single moment is precious. This little bundle of cells is the oak in the acorn already, burrowing into the soft, nurturing home where it will grow and (please, god) bloom and be birthed sometime at the end of May or beginning of June... But that time is a long way off. Three seasons to go, although it's growing autumn-cool even now.

All I have is this moment, right now, cradling the potential of life in my womb. How can I not honor that? I have so much love for this baby already. I can't hold back, I can't say "No, I won't love you, not yet, not until I know." Because if William taught me anything (and oh, my sweet baby boy, you've taught me so very much) it's that we can never, ever know. This moment is all we have, and time stands still in our hearts.

My heart's steady rhythm brings life in every moment, and its beat is saying nothing but "Yes. Yes. Yes!"

Variations on a Theme

The first dream I had about William wasn't too long after he died. I dreamed he was born alive, but then he died. In my arms, he breathed his last breath, and I sobbed and sobbed... and then, shockingly, he came back to life in my arms. He gasped and opened his eyes, and my heart burst with joy. Then he died again, just as suddenly as he had woke, he was gone. That was a heartbreaking dream.

The next dream I remember was a month or so later. In this one, he was born alive, warm and wiggling, crying and thrashing, he was placed in my arms, and then he died. His eyes went wide - eyes I never saw open, but I saw them clearly in my dream. He was in pain, something was being taken, and then he was, taken. Gone. Another heartbreaking dream.

The next dream I had about him was a few weeks ago. William was stillborn, they said, and they sent him to the morgue. But he wasn't dead. They discovered he was alive, and they gave him back to me. I carried him around, wrapped in his newborn blanket, and showed him to my sisters, my mother. "How is it possible?" they asked as they cooed over him. I don't know, I said. A miracle. Indeed. That was a miraculous dream. Until I woke up.

Just last night, I dreamed I was pregnant, very pregnant, hugely pregnant. My midwives were looking for a heartbeat and they couldn't find one. Finally, they gave up, shaking their heads. The baby was gone. Gone. This baby wasn't William, it was another baby, a different baby, my rainbow baby, and this baby, too, was gone. I sobbed and keened, wailed and writhed... and then, the baby moved. I stopped, holding completely still, holding my breath. It couldn't be. Could it? But there it was again... and again... and again! My baby was alive! My midwives felt my belly, frowning, sure it was my imagination, but there was a bottom, a foot pushing, clearly pushing outward... a miracle!

In those early dreams, the baby died. Even if he was alive for a moment, ultimately, he slipped away. In the latter two, at least, the danger is clear, but life prevails. My early dreams left me with feelings of loss, regret, guilt, sadness. My latter two dreams, though... I woke with a feeling of hope.

Hope.

It's something I haven't felt in long time. Something, I think, I haven't dared to feel. Especially consciously. I keep "Hope" at arms length when I'm awake. But when I'm sleeping...for some reason I can't consciously fathom...my subconscious is clearly making room for it. I don't know why, and I'm afraid to ask what role "hope" might play in my life, in my future.

Awake, I don't dare think. I don't dare hope.

But when I'm asleep...when I cross over into the place where thinking stops and images and feelings hold sway...things are changing. The landscape, once barren and burned black, has started to show small signs of spring.

Hope is a thing with feathers...  in my dreams, I think, I just might be learning to fly.

Superstitions and Coincidences

Yesterday, M. came in yelling, "I ran over a black cat!"

My first superstitious thought, "Oh great! How many years of bad luck is that!?" 

Sure enough, I ran out and there was a dead black cat in the driveway. But I think he'd been dead a while and the running over part hadn't pained him at all. Rigor mortis had set in. I'm pretty sure he'd crawled under our car to hide and died there. I don't know who he belonged to-he didn't wear a collar or a tag. And I don't know any neighbor with a black cat. Poor guy. In a way, I hope he was a stray, that there isn't someone out there looking for him, wondering what happened.

Then today, the kids brought home two new friends. New neighbors across the way with two boys who bookend our littles in age. Their names? The older one is Blake. That's strange enough, since that's the name of my oldest son. The littlest one though... his name is William. Ouch. 

Sometimes coincidences really suck. :x

Jet

I had a post. It was all about how we'd failed to get pregnant this month and how I was so devastated, depressed, discouraged... I thought of posting it yesterday, on the four month anniversary of William's death... but I couldn't look at my blog, at his face, couldn't face my own pain yesterday... I felt so lost and alone in it, so disconnected from it all.

And then something happened. Something to pull me up short, shake me to the core, make me realize it's so not all about me all the time. My own little world is nothing, nothing.

The suffering and pain and cruelness of this world goes on and it affects all of us, every minute, every bit of human pain anywhere, every person drawing their last breath, everything, all of it connected, one long human chain of suffering and love and heartache and joy. My world, my pain, it's yours, and yours mine. I am not alone; you are me and I am you. A butterfly flies on this side of the world, and a baby dies on the other. We are one aching, blood-red beating heart, one magnificent ocean, each wave beginning, cresting, being reabsorbed...

I am sitting here alone but feeling the hearts of every woman who has lost the potential of knowing her baby, every life taken, and oh not just the babies but the heartache and horror of those dying in tortured silence, those twisted remains of war, those taken too soon and those taken without warning... and the pain of those left behind to live with the empty space... the veil is thin but it is impenatrable.

I am remembering one life, one brief, beautiful life.

Jethro (Jet) Craig Wilhelm

I wrote this poem for you, little man, and for your mama and your daddy who miss and love you so very, very much. I spent the morning reading every single comment left on your mommy and daddy's blog - all the love, so much love, pouring out of the hearts of strangers - and yet we are not, none of us, strangers - at the tragedy of your passing from this world into the next.

I read and I sobbed and ached and I took the words from those comments, and I wrote this poem using only the words that had already been expressed by hearts cracked open by your going. Because there are no new words, little one - we are all floundering in our attempt to express our love, our pain, our sorrow.

My small tribute to a beautiful, brilliant light, gone out too soon. I wish I could do, give, more.

In memory of Jethro (Jet) Craig Wilhelm

August 29-September 1, 2009

Swirling love holding you, precious,
this birth defied the impossible loss
of Freya, Kees, two silent hearts
and then

another

tragic hush -
a son hijacked -
a heavy day, an outrage.

My heart is weeping.

My sister is broken open in
a gutted black hole of love.

How can she carry this
burning torment
shaking, stumbling,
life lost, children silent?

The force of love
can't unwind time
with magic words.

Jet flies free
over the streets,
the rooftops -
light passing light -
we cannot
touch the void.

But...
We remember.
We love.
Always.