Wishes

With every fallen eyelash, shooting star, four-leafed clover, truckload of hay, my wish (I feel I can share this now) was "Please let my baby be born healthy."

I realize now it should have been, "Please let my baby be born alive and healthy." Does that violate the rules of wishing--two adjectives? Because ostensibly, according to all the pathology and autopsy reports, she was perfectly healthy. She was dead, but healthy. I need to be more clever in my wishes and outsmart the universe. I thought alive was a given with healthy, but apparently not.

At times I am at peace with there being no reason for Lucy's death, and other times, it feels like I am still waiting for a reason. I used to imagine at death's door, all our questions got answered. Eventually, I came to this place where I realized that there was no question that would be important to know after I died. I wouldn't really care who shot JFK, or who stole my sticker book in the third grade. But, now, I have one. I want to know why Lucy died. I don't want to know on a metaphysical level (well, yeah, I do), but I mean, I want to know on a physical level. What was the mechanism that killed my daughter? Why did her heart stop? Why didn't she live longer than 38 weeks in my belly? What is the medical reason?

Without a definitive answer, I feel like Lucy has been kidnapped, rather than that Lucy is dead. I'm just waiting for her to come home, for the police to call and tell me they have a lead. I am in this endless anticipation of finding information out, because I cannot believe or accept that this is it. This is life now. I went to the hospital one day in December, and came home a day later without my baby and that's it. Her life erased. Her face gone. Her body ash in my secretary.

I wish...