poetry in motion

subj: poetry in motion needs a trigger warning

from: leah
to: me

not really. but i did start crying when i saw this one today:

heaven

by patrick phillips

it will be the past

and we’ll live there together.

not as it was to live

but as it is remembered.

it will be the past.

we’ll all go back together.

everyone we ever loved, and lost,

and must remember.

it will be the past.

and it will live forever.

i think one of the reasons that it affected me so strongly is that it implicitly names part of what is so painful about losing laszlo, which is that there is so little past to go back to. as you have said so many times, there is no good time to lose a child, but i think that the imagined balm that any grieving person longs for – which is to go back into the past, to the time when they were with the person they lost – is precisely what is denied the parent of a baby that dies. there is no past to long for or to imagine returning to.

anyway, it really impacted me. just wanted to let you know in the event that it makes you feel that much less alone.

xoxo

---

subj: poetry in motion needs a trigger warning

from: me
to: leah

this was the exact topic of my last therapy session.  well, it was kind of the inverse actually (maybe?).  i was saying that i had thought that the reason you missed a person when they died was that you had all these memories that had created attachment, and that’s what you’re missing.  but what of a life that was only possibility and expectations, how do you measure that loss? how do you quantify or even acknowledge everything that might have been?  every birthday, every first day of school, every joke, every fight, every moment that you lost?  so my last therapy session, we walked through the things i can imagine i’ve lost.  his laugh.  his interests–would he have loved books?  would he have been sporty and totally puzzling to edgar and i?  would he have been like edgar or like me or like neither?  would he love music?  would he sing?  his face.  his eyes.  his hair.  his hands.  his wedding.  his own children.  everything from the monumental to the mundane.  it was hideous, actually.  all these things are too precious, too tender, to fragile, like bits of burnt paper that just disappear and drift away when you try to hold them.

i’m crying now and have work to do.  this is why i just need to take to my bed for 6 months.  there’s too much to do when i opt in to life with regular people.  i feel like there should be a world in which you say just like, no, not right now.  like when the waiter comes to refill your coffee and you put your hand over the top to say, “thanks, but i’m ok.”  that’s what i need to say to the world right now.  maybe later.  i’m sure i’ll rejoin you soon.  but right now, i need to tuck into the womb of my bed and just disappear.

on birthdays.

a year ago, i turned 30.  i wasn’t sure exactly how to celebrate that birthday, because i was so totally shell-shocked from laszlo’s death just 9 days earlier.  what was there to celebrate?  the anniversary of a life i didn’t want anymore?  a birth that i’d have traded to have my son’s go another way?

edgar and i went down to new york adorned, where we’ve gotten all of our tattoos, to get me one for my birthday, only to be told that they didn’t take walk-ins on weekdays (we had forgotten it wasn’t saturday.  frankly, that we even knew the date is shocking; our worlds were so horribly inverted).  i tried to explain to them that it was my birthday, that it was really important, that i was 30 today , but they weren’t hearing it.  so we went home, and i probably stared blankly at the wall for a while, and then leah made steaks.  that was my birthday last year.

but i remember saying at one point, i want to do something for my birthday, because i think i am happy to be alive.  i think i’m glad to be here.  i’m not 100% sure, but i think it’s possible that i prefer being alive to the alternative.  so we had steaks.

a year later, i still dangle at that precipice.  i’m pretty sure i’m glad to have survived.  i wouldn’t stake my life on it, which is ironic, because that’s exactly what i do everyday.  i stake my life on my desire to continue living.  i remember there was some graffiti on an elevator that went down to the subway on state street near the crow’s nest record store in chicago, and it said “i am slowing down and falling in love again.”  and over the last several weeks, as i don’t exactly fall back in love with my life, but accept it piece by piece, slowing down, leaning into it, befriending it, i’ve found myself repeating that phrase.

so here i am.  31.  aching.  bereft.  but resilient. and unbroken.  i am slowing down and falling in love again.

10 months

two days ago was the one year anniversary of when i started this job.  it was me and you together, me heavy with the weight of you, with the weight of expectations, with the weight of starting a job with seven months of you in my belly.  it was ten months ago today that you were born.  it’s possible i love you more today than i did that day ten months ago.

i hear you speak to me, in the warmth of the sun, in the words of songs, in my dreams.  i wonder about the man you would’ve become.  i think of what your voice would’ve sounded like, the things you might have said to me with it.  i don’t know if i believe in heaven, my baby, but i do feel you somewhere.  sometimes i’m still and quiet, sometimes i focus my energy on the only part of my body that feels calm, and i connect with more than the loss of you.  i feel you has more than hypothetical.  i find you somewhere.

your dad got me a necklace with an “L” on it for mother’s day, and i wear it proudly.  because this is what moms do, they wear little necklaces like badges of pride.  i have a baby, and this is his initial.  gradually i inhabit that space of being your mom.  it feels empty without you to fill it with me, because a mother and her son are like deixis in a sentence, indicating one another.  can i be a mother without a son?  everyone says yes.  somehow i look to you and ask, am i your mother?  can you love me, would you love me, do you love me, the way i love you?  did the enormity of death erase that?  or somehow in that awful second when i lost you, did your love transmute the boundaries of this frail and tenuous existence and become a part of the ether, that i can sense on days when it feels like july heat, when last you were here?

50.

“one day you will do things for me that you hate.  that is what it means to be family.”
-jonathan safran foer, everything is illuminated

i am daily in awe of the fierce and unflinching love my sister, leah, and brother-in-law, peter, have not only for me and edgar, but for laszlo.  i am honored to say that for me, leah, peter, jonah, edgar, laszlo, and i constitute our own sort of family, a group of people who have learned what catastrophic loss and unwavering love look like.  in the immediate aftermath of laszlo’s death, it was leah and peter who left the hospital each day to make an appointment for me with a grief therapist or a psychiatrist or whoever else was supposed to help put me back together again.  who let my co-workers know that my son had died.  who accepted the incomprehensible delivery of my son’s ashes.  when laszlo took his last breath, leah and peter were there.  in these moments of unthinkable tragedy, when my need seems infinite, when any of us cries out asking how much more we can bear, they have not blinked.

just one piece of that is the march of dimes “march for babies,” in which they are participating.  they will join others who are raising money to stop premature births, to improve the health of babies, and to ensure that what happened to laszlo does not happen to other children.  and most importantly, my brother and sister will walk to honor the extraordinary relationship they have with their nephew.  if you’d like to be involved, please go here.

 

9 months

and after the storm,
i run and run as the rains come
and i look up, i look up,
on my knees and out of luck,
i look up.

night has always pushed up day
you must know life to see decay
but i won’t rot, i won’t rot
not this mind and not this heart,
i won’t rot.

and i took you by the hand
and we stood tall,
and remembered our own land,
what we lived for.

and there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
get over your hill and see what you find there,
with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

and now i cling to what i knew
i saw exactly what was true
but oh no more.
that’s why i hold,
that’s why i hold with all i have.
that’s why i hold.

and i won’t die alone and be left there.
well i guess i’ll just go home,
oh God knows where.
because death is just so full and man so small.
well I’m scared of what’s behind and what’s before.

and there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
get over your hill and see what you find there,
with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

and there will come a time, you’ll see, with no more tears.
and love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears.
get over your hill and see what you find there,
with grace in your heart and flowers in your hair.

–mumford and sons, “after the storm.”

bearing witness

any answer will feel like a lie.

 

48.

edgar and i saw a new high-risk ob/gyn today and i gotta say, one man might have remedied all the bad that one troll of a doctor did.  he came and got us from the waiting room himself.  no nurse, no physicians assistant–the man himself appeared in the waiting room and said, “are you ms. hooper?”  not hopper, not cooper, hooper.

he was thorough, he was research-literate, he treated our loss as a real and traumatic thing that will color not only our future pregnancies but the rest of our lives.  as edgar said tonight, “i think we’ve found a new doctor.”

imagine this in contrast to the conversation i had earlier today with the staff at my old doctor’s office.  i needed to sign a release for not just my medical records but my surgical records, which of course include the c-section from when laszlo was born.  the person who works in the office, who knows me and exactly what happened called:

“you need to sign a release for dr. _____ who performed the c-section.”
“yep, got it.  can you fax it to xxx-xxx-xxxx.”
“you need to include the date of the c-section.”
“no problem.”
“so the date of the c-section was, let’s see here…”
“no, i know when it–”
“so it looks like it was seven-fifteen…”
“right, i know.”
“yeah, seven-fifteen-thirteen.”

let me pose a question to you, because i think it exemplifies way the pain of losing a child is amplified every single fucking day.  have you ever forgotten your child’s birthday?  would anyone even suggest that you had?  would any medical professional ever imagine for one fucking second that she knew when your son was born, and that you might need reminding?  it’s the most precious day of my fucking life–you think you need to recite it to me, like it’s some academic fact like goddamn fucking pearl harbor day and i might have forgotten?

i’ve said to edgar several times that i’d like to name our next child a word that means “peace” in some language, because it’s been my only desire for our whole family since the day laszlo died.  it’s what i pray for and meditate on.  i don’t have any grandiose desires for us–i just long for peace.

as we were leaving the new doctor’s office today i was asking edgar what he thought and he was just beaming with relief at how well the consultation had gone, how reassured he felt, the peace we were both experiencing after having been listened to and validated.  and i said to edgar, “you noticed the doctor’s name, right?”  and he said, “yeah it was uh…dr. pri-…pri something?”

dr. pri-paz, i said.

47.

yesterday i was with leah and jonah at anthropologie, and jonah and i were looking at a necklace, because she’s two and likes sparkly, girly things.  i was bending over to put it on her and didn’t notice a stealthy little toddler who was suddenly standing next to me.  i’ve always had an uncanny knack for gauging baby’s ages, a skill that’s come in particularly handy over the last 9 months.  i can see a 6-month-old and say, “nope, couldn’t be my son.”  of course, sometimes it doesn’t matter.  if i hear a baby cry, or say “mama,” it feels like i’m being flayed alive.  and it doesn’t matter if that baby is 3 months or 3 years or hispanic or white or asian or a girl or a boy.

this little boy was unsteady on his feet but walking, so immediately i thought, “one.”  he reached out to jonah and she shared her stuffed animal with him, and then he wanted the necklace, and she shared that too (jo, such a sharing boss).  at a point, he wanted to reach out and hold her hand, the way new walkers do, and because i always want to hold her hand and have since she was first born, or maybe because she’s two and just thinks this is how being friends with strangers works, she wanted me to hold his hand too.  and so i touched a baby for the first time in eight months and 22 days.

he was a boy.  he was biracial.  he had a white mom.  he was 3 months older than laszlo would be (his dad had confirmed the age i guessed).  every detail made it something that should have sent me running for cover in the fitting room.  and yet, warmth washed over me immediately.  it had been the thing that edgar and i had talked about endlessly, “that thing when they squeeze tight?  when they hold hands with your finger?  i love that.”  i think edgar and i have said that to each other at least 100 times in our lives, each time like it’s the first.  “funny thing you might not know about me: i love holding hands with babies.”  i remember snaking my finger into laszlo’s clenched fists in those short moments i held him.  i had to.

i think the loss is sometimes like a flame, and i stay far from it because, well, because being burned alive isn’t really on my emotional bucket list.  i block photos of babies on facebook, my house is purged of maternity clothes, i scope out self-seating restaurants for the area furthest from the highchair.  and yet, and forgive what may be an overwrought metaphor, there are times when i remember that fires can sometimes warm and not burn.  the soft sweetness of a baby’s hand doesn’t make me feel closer to my son, but that gentle lock around my finger does give me some relief, a moment of “ah, that’s it.  there it is.  i didn’t dream it.  there is the reason for all the longing in my heart.”  there’s that moment in miss saigon (again, forgive me) when she says, “was he a ghost?  was he a lie?  that made my body laugh and cry?  then by my side, the proof i see…”  there’s something i maybe can’t explain about how confirming the depth of the loss somehow makes it easier to bear.  well, i’m devastated, but at least i’m not insane.

 

what sara(h) said

and it came to me then that every plan
is a tiny prayer to father time
as i stared at my shoes
in the ICU
that reeked of piss and 409
and i rationed my breaths
as i said to myself
that i’d already taken too much today
as each descending peak
on the LCD
took you a little farther
away from me
away from me

amongst the vending machines
and year-old magazines
in a place where we only say goodbye
it stung like a violent wind
that our memories depend
on a faulty camera in our minds
but i knew that you were a truth
i would rather lose
than to have never lain beside at all
and i looked around
at all the eyes on the ground
as the tv entertained itself

’cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room
just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
and then the nurse comes round
and everyone will lift their heads
but i’m thinking of what sarah said:
“love is watching someone die”

-death cab for cutie, “what sarah said.”

350,400 minutes

i’ve been without you 8 months.  it hasn’t stopped hurting for one single minute.

i look at this picture and i think that i had had about 8 months with you at that time.  and you feel alive and loved and exciting.  you don’t feel imbued with everything that came after, because you weren’t only a loss, you were my son.  you are my son.  you were my beautiful child, who covered his face in sonograms when we needed to measure your nasal bone, and who crossed his legs in modesty when we wanted to know your sex.

i have lamented the desperate tragedy that i will never have a family picture.  to deny that such a mundane, everyday thing has been stolen from me and your dad would be to deny the enormity of everything you would have brought–and did bring–to our lives.  only such an extraordinary gift of such a child could have left this vortex of desolation in my heart.  but thank you for giving me the grace and courage to move through everything i feel, including the murkier and more complicated moments of thinking, this is maybe a family picture.  this is close.  this is all i have.  it’s not enough.  it will never be enough.  but i’m smiling, proud of your dad, proud of you, proud of the family we’re becoming.  all this time i’ve thought it ended before it began, and it didn’t really.  there were fleeting seconds where we constituted a family and we knew it.  and we smiled and held each other and your abuela snapped a photo.  and we were us.