Monday, August 30, 2010

How You Go.

Before they brought in the ultrasound machine, they moved the girl in the other bed.

I just remembered this the other day. After the nurse left our room, unable to find Lucy’s heartbeat with the Doppler, but before the ultrasound team came in, they moved the loud girl next to us. She had been speaking Spanish on a cell phone, complaining about being stuck in the hospital to be monitored. My husband always asks me if I know what people speaking Spanish are saying. Sometimes I just say yes and I completely make something up, and the punchline involves him. Sometimes I just say no when I really just think it is too complicated or rude to explain what they are actually saying. Most of the time, I am just not paying attention. It sounds like someone speaking another language to me too. I have to concentrate to understand, unlike English. But I knew this woman was complaining about being in the hospital, and she was asking her sister when she was picking her up.

What struck me about this weird little memory of my time in the PETU is that I realize now that everyone knew. They all knew Lucy was dead. They pretended not to know. They pretended she was going to be okay, until we were alone and we could see it for ourselves on a screen. The screen that showed my beautiful girl with nothing moving in her ribs. Fuck.

These flashbacks on those minutes come back to me like a montage…the girl talking on her cell phone watching shitty Sunday night television. Complaining. Her baby is fine. She can go home soon, says the nurse. Another nurse patting me, saying she is somehow deficient because she can’t find the heartbeat. The girl alone, waiting. She checks me out. Gives me the barrio nod. My husband and I hold hands. Our hearts beat wildly.  Though our curtain is closed, through a crack, I can see she doesn’t look in our direction when the nurse moves her. Feeling vaguely foolish for being in PETU, thinking that Lucy would be fine if I just wasn't here. Right now.

Did they tell her why they were moving her before or after she left our room? Did the shitty bitching lady next to me know Lucy was dead before I did? Did they say, “It is so sad.”? Maybe she told the story when she got home,  I was next to a lady whose baby died. I think she was Puerto Rican.

Why does this even matter? Why am I even thinking about who knew before me almost two years later? Maybe because I believed everyone when they said it was going to be okay. Or I at least believed that they believed it, like I did, and that when her heart was not beating everyone was as surprised as me.

There seems to be a common thread in the birth stories of the stillborn. One of those things is that the nurse looks for the heartbeat with the doppler, then says she will get the doctor. And then the ultrasound rolls in the room, and at that point, some people realize the baby is dead, and other times it takes seeing the still chest. I have set Faces of Loss on my reader, and they usually publish at night after I have gone to bed and am unable to sleep. And I read each one. I force myself to do it, just to meditate on the universality of child loss and daughter death. Just to bear witness, perhaps.  All these beautiful women from all over the country went through this same thing that I went through. They also felt like the only person in the world to lose their precious child. Sometimes I am rooting for their story to be different when they explain their joy at getting pregnant, and seeing the second pink line, but then I remember what and who I am reading. They know what it is to keen into a pillow. To imagine a thousand scenarios that may have changed the one sad fact that you cannot turn back time. To cruelly have to give birth and labor after being told your child will not be crying. Or maybe I read it just to remember the way it was back then. Grief was easy and immediate and unconfused. I felt no guilt over my screaming tortured way of being. I felt no self-doubt about whether this was healthy. My emotions were so demanding. I could do nothing but honor them.


I read blogs of the babylost. I write blogs of the babylost. And the words I use changed over time. There were words like healing and closure in the early life of my blog, or finding or making peace, and later I came to a sort of resignation that this shit does not get easier, you just get better at living this life.

Lately, I have found the quality and timbre of my life to be one beautiful and lonely chord. It is a magical ethereal moment without context. I search to figure out a way to capture and share and talk about the quiet beauty, but have realized that I have no adequate words and no one to show it to. And in the end, it is almost like a butterfly flying over the ashes of a house fire.The juxtaposition of it makes it haunting and beautiful and almost sacrilege to mention to anyone. You just watch it float away. I have lost my last real life friend. Maybe that isn't quite true, but it is almost true. It happened a month or so ago. It is both disconcerting and liberating to be in this place. I felt liberated because for the first time in this grief I felt like there was no one else to hurt by my sadness.No one else to think about when I write, I can just write. And this beautiful and lonely chord, it isn't because of Thor or Beezus, it isn't because of what is here, but maybe because of this way that Lucia's death has integrated into the other parts of me, and made me accountable to living authentically. I have found joy in her grief. It sounds terrible to say that. It is like saying I saw a beautiful yellow butterfly flying through the burnt remains of your parent's front porch. But in my moment to moment existence, her death and my grief have given me permission to create and pursue the life I always wanted to live.

When I saw the stillness of the ultrasound machine, I had no idea what the path looked like from that point. It was a moment that I cannot describe, but that forced me into a place of immediacy and Otherness. I could only keep thinking at the time that I would always be the woman with the dead baby. I remember laugh/crying because it was too much to take in and sometimes I laugh when I am absolutely nervous. I remember being aware that my marriage could fall apart and I remember promising Sam that that would never happen. I remember thinking that after telling my mother her granddaughter was dead that I couldn't ever talk on the phone again. But I didn't really know what Lucia's death would mean 20 months out. I didn't know who would be standing with us, or who would be gone. Hint: it is not who you think it is going to be. Thinking of it now it reminds me of the Fischli and Weiss film, The Way Things Go. I had no idea that the pregnant woman passing me in the PETU would spark off a fire of memory in me twenty months later that makes me remember that at some point I had hope for healing. Or to remember that there was a time when Lucy's death, my grief, my motherhood and my sense of community were all distinctly different beings.

Sometimes a moment is supposed to be savored rather than captured and reported. Maybe those moments that make up your life--the still ultrasound; the obnoxious PETU roommate; the sunset with coffee and a dog's head in your lap; the butterfly is the dark, smokey ash of a house fire; or watching a child roll over and giggle-- maybe those moments make you deeper simply by not being shared at all, but simply as being part of how you go.

24 comments:

  1. Oh Angie, I could relate to this post. Absolutely. That moment seeing the ultrasound screen and having time stop. Not being able to see any further than that damn screen in front of my face. Two years out doesn't look like what I once thought it might. Not even close. Not that I ever gave it much thought, I don't think. But I suppose I assumed some people always be around, and clearly I assumed wrong.
    Reading this makes me glad I was in room with a closed door when we got our awful news. It would have been awful to hear the innocents out there behind the curtains, even though when you walked in behind that curtain, you were one of them.
    Great post. All so very true. Sadly, so true.
    xo

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  2. This, to me, is the most helpful part of reading other parents' stories; the universal, overwhelming feeling of "what the fuck? huh? omigodomigodomigod . . . " when seeing, absorbing that ultrasound.

    At the time I felt like my story was unique, and how could I ever describe in words how I felt? Who would believe me? But all of you do.

    Gods, I am so sorry you, and I, and all of us have had to go through this. I am sorry for the weak friends who can't figure out that just listening, saying "I'm sorry" is most of what's necessary.

    I am not sorry for screaming and crying and sobbing without fear of judgement in that hospital room . . . but often wonder just how loud it was, and who was around to hear it.

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  3. I have weird flashbacks like this too. And the "I am not good at finding the heartbeat on the dopplar, let me get someone else", to which I was not worried. :(

    I like what you say about living authentically and doing what you want. In many ways, I have changed the drummer to which I march too.

    Wow, there's so much in this post, I can't even think straight to respond. It conveys the way that this grief is though.

    And I take it that Thor is rolling over? Beanie just started yesterday. The everyday joy that gets me through the day.

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  4. "and later I came to a sort of resignation that this shit does not get easier, you just get better at living this life."

    SO very true. The world expects this to be over soon. They expect us to wake up one day and just be fine. I struggle with this daily. I keep thinking maybe they are all right. Maybe I should be over it...but, you are right...it does not get easier...you just learn to live this new shitty life better.

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  5. "and later I came to a sort of resignation that this shit does not get easier, you just get better at living this life."

    SO very true. The world expects this to be over soon. They expect us to wake up one day and just be fine. I struggle with this daily. I keep thinking maybe they are all right. Maybe I should be over it...but, you are right...it does not get easier...you just learn to live this new shitty life better.

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  6. Now, Angie, this is what I call a BEAUTIFUL post. It blew me away. Thank you, thank you for your gift of words, heart and soul.

    I saw a similar video with the girls not too long ago, it's more rowdy:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qybUFnY7Y8w&feature=related

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  7. This post is so amazing, Angie. Thank you for writing it and putting it out there for all of us to read and relate to. As you put it, we all continue to live our life...even though the pain really doesn't ever go away or get easier. I remember things and comments made all the time. And there are people I have removed from my life 10 months later from the loss of my baby girl. I know that I am growing through this experience and that much of my growth is good for me, but it's still hard. And still not fair... Hugs to you, Angie. Always.

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  8. They all knew. Gosh your words take me back to that day they told me Jordan wasn't going to make it. They didn't give me the dignity of a room to myself. The doctor, surrounded by at least five underlings just dropped that bomb at her bedside. The room was full of other people and I have no memory of them. I remember that day though, before the docs came, and how the nurses were extra nice, extra accomadating... They knew too. They knew. And they let me sit there for hours without telling me because the scared ass doctors wanted one last test done on my little girl to prove they were right...

    Beautiful post Angie, as always.
    xx

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  9. Great post, Angie. You describe the moment of learning of your baby's death, and the immediate aftermath, so perfectly. I still have flashbacks of that day and it can still shatter my heart, 26 months later. And as for friends, you are correct - we lose those we thought would be there for us while gaining others who we couldn't have imagined would step up to the plate.

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  10. Well said Angie, you said it so completely too.

    Nothing is how I imagined it would be. We met so many families over our stay at the hospital, we were there for over 4 months. I imagined that people whose children had survived their illnesses and conditions to be more compassionate towards me. I wanted people whose children had also died to want to sort of huddle together with me, neither of those things happened in my life.

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  11. This was a(nother) great post, Angie. Funny the little details that become frozen in our memories at that traumatic moment. I have my own -- I think they are still so clear to me, because they were the last moments, the dividing line, before my life changed forever.

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  12. This post moved me so very much. You are a gifted writer & have expressed so much of how I feel that I could not find the words to explain. "... And in the end, it is almost like a butterfly flying over the ashes of a house fire..." I have thought this type of sentiment so many times but could never articulate it.

    "...I read blogs of the babylost. I write blogs of the babylost. And the words I use changed over time. There were words like healing and closure in the early life of my blog, or finding or making peace, and later I came to a sort of resignation that this shit does not get easier, you just get better at living this life..." A hard point on this path to approach & realize. Well put.

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  13. Beautiful post. So true in many ways.
    And these flashbacks. I wish I could delete that day from my life.

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  14. You write so beautifully, thank you for sharing it with all of us.

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  15. Yes. I never had that u/s moment because I birthed her and then found she was gone. My equivalent is the doctor coming from her to me and saying "I'm sorry". That's my frozen moment. Your meditation on the after is beautiful, hauntingly so.

    I found film really struck a chord too. Thanks for sharing it.

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  16. I've been thinking about this post all day. I even had a very confusing conversation with my mother about it where I tried to explain an element of it and tied myself up in knots. I think I should have just printed it out for her to read.

    'Lately, I have found the quality and timbre of my life to be one beautiful and lonely chord. It is a magical ethereal moment without context.' So beautiful.

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  17. Among the clearest memories I have of the day we lost Kai is asking the nurse to move either me or the very pregnant woman on the other side of the curtain who was being treated for a UTI and also wanted to go home. I knew she could hear all the sobbing and wailing from my side, just as I could hear the grumbling about having to sit still from hers. "Please", I said. "She's upsetting me and I'm scaring her. Please." Nobody got moved for another 5 hours.

    I am sorry about your friend. I am glad you are my friend. I miss you.

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  18. This so poignantly puts into words what I fail to verbalize. So sad, true, and lovely.

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  19. I had to bring my laptop to the family room so I could read this post and cry by myself. :( I think you're right, it doesn't get easier, you just better learn how to deal with the new life you got. I have a feeling this is going to be a very weepy week! Oh, and Angie, thank you for remembering Dresden this month!! :)

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  20. Well said, Angie, as usual. I don't really have anything to add as you've captured it all here. Beautiful, indeed.

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  21. a beautiful, poignant post angie.

    peace,
    slee

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  22. This post broke my heart when I read it at work the other day. I would have commented sooner, but I can't comment at work. Damn firewalls and all. It's weird how such images from that day are so vivid, yet I can't seem to remember anything that has happened to me before or since. I know we all experienced the same thing watching that still screen, but each time I read someone else's experience in seeing that screen, it makes me draw my breath in and hold it so I don't start sobbing. I am just so sorry you have had to experience this. I wish that every story I read is the last one, yet new people keep on popping up around here. I am so sorry for every single one of us.

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  23. You make my heart swell. I've been catching up after some time "away." I have missed my friends from this strange, sad place.

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