Words of comfort

I keep receiving these little religious grief booklets in the mail from my mother-in-law. I think they are a way for her to communicate that she is thinking about us and our loss. She isn't exactly the most emotive person I have ever met, so I appreciate her thoughts however they come.

My husband throws them away, and I immediately fish them out of the garbage, wipe them down, and file them in the Lucia folder in our two story filing cabinet. I haven't exactly read them. I mean, not really. I page through them before filing them. I have the urge to perform dramatic readings from them in a little beatnik bar with a stand-up bass and a small hand rolled cigarette perched on my lips.

"You did the best that you could," the chapter title screams at me.

Snap, snap, snap. The audience nods in approval.

:::

Sometimes I find myself wandering around the house, picking things up, placing things down. I rearrange a room, move it back to the same arrangement. I file everything, put every last pair of shoes away somewhere, every bag laying around, and then can't find my purse two hours later. I then have to redistribute the chaos back into common spaces to find anything. And then, after I do that, I pick up the sixteenth plastic shit toy given to my daughter and I throw it against the wall, and fall on the floor and sob into my hands. I hate this life without her. I hate it.

"Grief is natural, normal, necessary," it says. "You may even feel angry when you are grieving."

I know sometimes that no one, not anyone, can do anything right for me. That even the most benign of messages makes me feel the wrath. I know it is unfair, but I don't give a shit. I got so angry today when reading another babylost mama's blog. She was talking about the "risks" of stillbirth--race, obesity, advanced maternal age. Can I just say fuck you? So, what, because I am a Latina with an extra roll of fat and having hit that magic horrible age of 35 I caused my baby's death? These are statistical correlations. They are not risks. She also wrote something to the effect of kick counts need to be performed at 28 weeks and beyond.

I understand that she wants to raise awareness. To change the world and make meaning from her loss. Hey, I did that too. I wrote letter to people who paid attention for a week and then went back to talking about anything else. It's not her, she is quoting from these people who want to give women this illusion of control when they are anxious. I just get so enraged when there is this insinuation that anything could have saved my baby's heart from stopping. If a woman just takes some notes, and counts kicks, she can control death. If you aren't brown or black, or fat, or old...you know, babies die. I fucking wish it were different. I honestly believe that if I had been counting kicks, I would have known twelve hours earlier that Lucy died. And well, wouldn't those extra twelve hours of torture have been great?

But the truth is, I didn't count kicks. Not regularly. Not with a pen. Sure, sometimes I sat there and paid attention, but mostly, I experienced my pregnancy as though she were always going to live. Her blog whispered, "But you didn't count kicks, Angie. That blogger thinks you killed your baby. Maybe you are just trying to justify your laziness. Maybe this whole blog is trying to justify your being. Maybe your brown skin and love of carbohydrates killed her too."

"Guilt is only supposed to be a temporary emotion--a warning signal that something is wrong and needs to be corrected."

:::

"If you find it embarrassing or difficult to cry, this chapter is especially for you. My advice is simple: Find a way to have a good cry. You'll quickly discover how soothing and healing your tears can be."

I can't think of her lips today. Or her birth, her slipping out of my belly limp. I almost did today, while we were driving to the trail for our morning walk. I started thinking about how that felt, and tears welled up. I looked into the back seat and saw Beatrice making monkey faces, and whispering OOO, EEE, to herself in the mirrored reflection of the window. Crying will ruin our morning.

We walked in the mud, and the verdant musty growth that encompass the entire spectrum of greens. I am grateful for the small escapes, those moments of clarity and presence when the refrain is simply, "Lucy is dead" and not something more sinister, or hateful, or angry.

You just never know when you are going to read that sentence that will change your perspective, that will change your way of being, your sadness, your grief. Sometimes that change has come to me for a few weeks, after reading something on someone's blog, and then I fall into the malaise again. I cope pretty well. It probably doesn't sound like it today, but I do. I meditate and love, and paint and cook, and laugh and tickle, I sob and throw things. But right now, I am hard-pressed to remember anything particularly life-changing I have read. I feel like my words have dried up, my memory shot, my experience too matchy-matchy. ("I went to the store, but I cried and was sad." "I had a date night, but I cried and was sad." "I visited the zoo, but I cried and was sad.") I think the premise in which these grief booklets are being mailed is the it-can't-hurt premise. I'm cool with that. It's better than the I-can't-be-bothered premise.

No, wait, that isn't right. I do remember one email I received. It is possibly the darkest thing I have ever read, and it was sent to me the day after Lucia died from someone who knows me just about better than anyone else (except my twin and my husband and my mother, you know.) That one email has stayed with me from the beginning, and I've revisited it here and there throughout the last six months, because it introduced me to the abyss. "Hello, Abyss, nice to meet you. Here are my friends."

When one is drawn into a Black Hole, it is said, one approaches a point called the Event Horizon; Essentially it is the point of no-return at which the gravitational pull of the collapsed star becomes greater than the potential escape velocity of any particular body. There is no escape.

My wife and I have been at that point before when we lost our three babies. Because of this, I will refrain from saying to you that I know how you feel, because I do not...

This is a kind of hell not unlike an event horizon; not even light itself can escape... There is only a darkness that pulls at you... And all you can do is fall in.

And, no matter who is there to offer solace, you fall in alone.

Because your tears will not be enough, we will be crying with you, as an extension of the pain we know you must be feeling.

People will offer advice, but none of it will help.

People will offer their love, solace and condolence, but these too will be drawn into the black hole...

Even though there is light and love in our lives, after an experience like this, that light fades a little. It is hard to ever be the same.

It is devastating. And it is appropriate to be devastated.

It is heartbreaking. And it is appropriate to be heartbroken.

Don't preoccupy yourself with bouncing back and healing.

Those things are also inevitable...

This is a journey through heartache and pain that is different for each of us.

This is a journey through a Black Hole...

My love and prayers are with you and your family.