I have to write this out. I have to. I have to write this out or it will eat through me as though I were nothing, and I have to leave it open to be read, give it to a symbolic someone else, before I can telephone that first name in the list of friends who've asked to be let it, who deserve more than breath to become part of our lives again, as soon as we find that doorway back.
I woke up this morning for the first time without crying. Alarms went off, we held each other as usual, maybe a little longer than usual. I watched the courage march across his face as he prepared to face his corporate universe, for a few short hours.
I lay in bed as promised, for two hours after he left. I made headway into a brilliant novel that I started reading last week when my belly was still full of surprising kicks. I answered a wayward phone call from Purolator, with my own voice, even. I had a terrible intestinal attack from the 12th stool softener that finally took me from my state of gibraltar into spasms of waste. The pain was so different I almost enjoyed it.
I lay in bed after the tylenol took effect, I considered sleep and instead began thinking of writing for the first time in days. After last night's hysteria, I wasn't sure I would ever be able to write again.
I lay in bed and finally decided I was strong enough to once again open the heartbreaking package they'd so carefully prepared for us in the hospital on Sunday morning.
The first thing I took out of the lace-edged fleece envelope was the diaper they'd put him in, after I'd finally let go. The diaper was too small to fit my fist and yet he was lost in it, his legs dangling from the holes.
Next came the crocheted cardigan with little teddybear buttons, cap and booties that they had dressed him in just before he died. (I'm not crying yet. Almost, but not yet.)
Next came the crocheted blanket that we had last seen him in, that they had laid him onto when he first came out of me. The visceral memory of holding him to my chest wrapped in that blanket hit me so hard I heard myself sobbing as though through a microphone, the sound heartbreaking yet somehow removed; third person.
Last, I opened the calligraphied envelope they'd put photos of him in, and read down the list carefully. It listed his "name" as "Baby Boy Pyke", his date and time of birth, height, weight, and lastly, very near to the bottom, the time of his death.
He lived just under two hours, born at 0416 Sunday morning, and inexorably gone at 0600. (I am still not crying yet, but at the time I was hit with a renewed storm.)
Finally I pulled out the photographs, one of all of him, close-up, dressed in sweater, cap, diaper and booties, lying on the blanket in the lap of one midwife while the other took the photograph over her shoulder.
I remembered the description they'd given me of the way the OB/GYN had so delicately drawn him from my body, and how carefully she had wrapped him in the blanket. I ran my fingers along the hat, trying to understand just how tiny it was, and how impossible it was that his arms had dangled from the sleeves of such a small sweater.
I went through the rest of the photos, of him wrapped in the blanket just the way that I had held him to my chest, warm with life, of him naked against it, of him just in the diaper, of him lying with his head fallen to the side -- that last one reminded me of how weak he had been in my hands, how his mouth had fallen open as though preparing to be filmed into a b-rated horror flick.
I remembered. I held the blanket so close to my face that I almost reacted with horror when I saw how many tears spilled onto it. I remembered holding him. I remembered holding him and never wanting to let go, I remember watching his heartbeat through his miniature ribcage, remember the sharpness of his chin, the incredible detail of his familiarly shaped fingers. I remember his long shiny femurs, and the detailed muscles of his legs. (I am crying now, but without sobs this time, just tears)
I remember holding him to my chest and hearing them ask and again if they could take him. Apparently it was twenty five whole minutes (longer than expected) before I finally drew a hard breath and said that I was ready.
They took him away and I listened to people speak, fighting sleep for mere seconds. I was unconscious so fast I hardly remember anything. I remember the doctors leaving, remember noticing that the unbearable contractions hadn't returned, remember not minding my mother's kiss on my forehead and remember the slide into sleep more welcome than it has ever been.
I woke up to find Dave asleep in the cot they had put at the foot of my bed, and cried because I still felt the exact touch of his hands on my shoulders, of his arm around me as I held our son, of his head in my shoulder as it suddenly hit him too.
I woke up to the nurse returning to take my blood pressure and temperature, vaguely understood that it was about 6:30 and that I'd slept for two hours, filled out the birth and death certificates with Dave's place and date of birth, my own, signed it, filled out the same on the second sheet and gently woke him to sign it as well.
I remember the midwives returning then, remember their tears and contorted faces, heard someone tell me that they'd stayed with our son until he died -- and that's when I realized:
He'd died without me. I had let him go. He had lived for an entire hour while I slept, completely unaware of his life, and that all his moments, and the last ones, were lost to me forever.
That one piece has woken me up in tears every morning since except this one, after promising Dave last night that I would write it down somewhere, email it to Marc or Stacy or invite Dan and Nicole over, or Stacy, or all three, and allow myself to cry in front of them, for the first time in my life, and tell them that one piece. That I realized that I had let go of my son while he was still alive, and let him die without me.
After so many days of retrospect, I realize that nothing else could have helped, happened, that the nightmare of my one afternoon nap could never be true -- at 21 weeks not even my own warmth and voice could have kept him breathing longer than he'd had.
But it took until today to realize that. It took until today to forgive myself for being powerless. It took last night's hormone storm of self-accusations, to realize that no -- I couldn't have stopped whatever the infection was that put me into pre-term labour. No, it couldn't have been the strain of the intense seminar I spent last week in, no it couldn't have been that one time I indulged in sushi, not there was nothing I could have done to save him or stop him or make his only moments any different.
I still don't know how to thank the midwives, in words or actions, for staying with him until he died, when I didn't, couldn't, didn't know I could. I can't thank them for the photos, for the catharsis of this morning's tears, or how they enabled me to find a way to write this letter.
I put everything back in the package, lovingly, carefully, neatly in a way I didn't know how before I became a mother. I stroked the birthing stain on the blanket before folding it with the sweater, hat and booties, and slid it all neatly with the folder of photos into the fleece envelope. I tied it with a perfect bow in the white satin ribbon, and promised myself one foray out of bed today, slowly, carefully, into the basement. I pulled our best large tupperware from the cooking cupboard and the package fit it perfectly. I sealed it all and carried it, slowly, watching my healing uterus and any pang I might feel on the way down.
I put it in an unfinished wooden box on a shelf, to tell Dave about later, and perhaps one day decide how to deal with the ghost no longer haunting me from my dresser; but from the basement. Will we be able to keep it, or what will we do? I don't feel right to bury or burn it, cannot throw it away, but must find some sort of ceremony of letting go, or it will come between our next pregnancy, and hopefully first healthy child, and the ghosts of our memories.
I am using more honesty here than I ever knew I had courage to do.
The last few days have been unbearable. My mother staying with us, ostensibly to help but instead weighing on our nerves. We had some good moments on Monday, bonding, discussing why she never left my father and some of the hardships and guilt she felt of what she couldn't prevent from my life. She kept out of the way, some, busied herself in the kitchen, going for groceries, cooking borscht, making sure I didn't need to leave the couch to have enough water to drink.
By Tuesday morning she was despondent, though, broken, understandably scarred and suffering. I was terrified when I noticed my own stress habits in her behaviour, as she needled me while I tried to sit and read my awakeness away. She needed to talk, all the time, needed response from me -- the way I needed it from Dave when my hormones crescendoed during PMS or occasionally in pregnancy.
She nagged about the house, until I told her that perfecting our little remaining clutter wasn't important.
She nagged about the house again, moments later. She suggested furniture, improvements, made continuous unceasing suggestions until even I was unhappy with the state of our beloved dining room. I kept reminding her that it wasn't that important, that learning to rest was more important than being unceasingly productive. I reminded her that her constant manic state was not just bad for her health, but bad for mine -- and that it had taken two years for Dave to even scratch at the surface of my need to outdo my mother, and taught me to sleep in every fourth weekend, whilst pregnant.
Next time, I'm going to sleep all I want and let the house get messy even, because I learned even more from watching her destructive perfectionism.
And she wouldn't leave. Oh, how difficult to rest, heal, plan my healing and eventual return to work, when I was spending all my time avoiding her constant stare. She'd watch me sleep, sit, read, watch Dave and I hold each other while trying to lose ourselves in the Muppet Show.
On Sunday she'd told me, in polish, to let her know when we needed to be alone. I'd told her that by Tuesday I would need time. She wheedled "Thursday, wait until Thursday" and I let it drop because she wasn't listening.
On interminable Monday morning, she wheedled again to let her know when we needed time, and I told her that I couldn't cry and let go until I was alone, that unfortunately for so many reasons, I am a lone creature and that now isn't the time to heal that scar, not until I've healed the current one.
She said just wait until Thursday morning, and I began to despair because THursday was so far and I couldn't cry or heal or do anything with her watching us. She'd gone from gracious and caring to a nervous lump on the couch, and my heart went out to her so hard, but I didn't have the strength to carry her grief when I hadn't even touched mine.
Dave was beginning to show wear as well, and I didn't know what to do.
Finally, after hours of listless channel-surfing, Dave got up to reheat lasagna for dinner and I told my mom again that I wouldn't be able to heal until I could be alone. I had meant to ask her to go into the garden without me (she had been begging me to go sit on the deck and instruct her in where to weed) but she flipped and turned martyr and stormed from the house, suitcase in hand, despite Dave's remarkably kind intervention.
She started the six hour drive to Montreal at 6pm yesterday, and I wanted to call her back but couldn't -- I was hugging my husband for the first time, alone, since our son died on Sunday.
We held each other, and all the post-partum hormones came crashing down and I broke, with guilt, at my wretched father's pain, the knowledge that even a purely worthless human could feel such pain and be so alone, at my mother's misery, locked into a life with him with no joy, no escape, no return on investment or ability to share her pain with me. I couldn't bear the knowledge of her state of mind as she face a six hour drive alone, and even now I am desperate to know that she got home safe, survived, that she is finding solace finally away from the strained discomfort that we had fallen into.
But I can't call her. I am furious. I am furious enough to finally be willing to forget that I have parents, despite the hormonal and emotional urge to have a grandmother for our children. I can't speak to her. Not after she emotionally manipulated me for three days to believe her a helpful saint, pretending to do everything she could to help me whilst manipulating me instead.
I have to heal. I have so much to heal right now. I have to take the memory of holding our son in my arms, his perfect fingers and face and chin, and put it in my heart where it warms me, and cut all the unhealthy filaments of angst and despair that cling to the birthing stain on the blanket in the basement.
I have to cry enough that I can face my coworkers and return to life, I have to cry enough that when I walk into the office I am whole and full of monstrous fury.
I have to cry enough that I can cry in front of friends, and get over the incredible urge to shut every other human out of my life forever, and hole up on the couch until my body ages and the seasons stop changing.
I have to cry enough that I can remember other things to think about.
And I have to get back into bed so that I can stop bleeding and contracting and and so that my uterus heals well enough that it will be able to carry another child.
I have a lot to do today and tomorrow, telephone HR to figure out if I have any leave or if I'm just not getting paid next week, email files to my ex-boss so that he can carry the project without letting the only other thing I have put this much effort into fall apart, I have to email the professor of the seminar last week to thank him for the course and get extra study materials, and decide if I have the strength to take the certification exam on the 9th, and if my company will still pay for it if I'm on leave.
We have a burial to organize, our son is still frozen at the hospital waiting for a funeral home to pick him up and return him to the ground. We have doctors to call and appointments to arrange to make sure that my uterus will keep working, there is one in four weeks for a checkup and in six weeks I will telephone the OB/GYN who did the delivery to see if she has received results from the autopsy and analysis of the "perfect-looking" placenta.
In the meantime the midwives are completing their post-partum visits, six weeks of regular visits to take my temperature and palpate my abdomen to make sure everything is in the right place. Their presence is a blessing we hadn't expected.
I have a todo list on paper, of numbers and email addresses, and a todo list in my head consisting of my emotional healing plan. The first item, writing this missive, is completed better than I had been able to foresee when detailing it last night.
Thank you for listening. You've helped me on the path to learning and growth.
And if you haven't heard from me in some days, please telephone and make sure that I am not still sitting on the couch, afraid of answering the 'phone.
I will work hard not to be.
I discovered a whole new level of love in the past days, and in my heart Ford is right -- I am a good mother. And I have felt more closeness in Dave's arms than ever in my life before.
We will be alright, together. We will. If we can hold each other like that, we will.