I mentioned in an earlier blog that I have been having dreams lately. Lousy ones that chances are I'll always have this time of year. I have another blog dedicated to the subject matter of these dreams, one specifically just for myself that I don't publicize and hasn't been written in since 2006. Chances are I'll never write in it again, but I thought I'd poison this blog with some explanation of why I haven't been around lately. Why I haven't written a post in a couple weeks. I wrote my thoughts out earlier, and without edit or prettying up, here they are... An explanation of sorts.
Several years ago I lost a child to stillbirth at full term. It’s not a secret. I don’t hide it, and I will talk about it. I don’t clam up at the mention of that night, or go stiff at the mention of her name. I couldn’t because in my belief, she’s as much here as the child I have who still lives. She’s just perpetually a baby who never took a breath and is buried in a casket smaller than a cushion on my sofa. I named her Jaime which according to the baby name book means “I love you” because I did and always will love her just as I will always, always dream of her around holidays and during the summers.
The dreams are something I'll probably have for the rest of my life. Normally I don't have them, but this time of year I'll have them almost continually. It's difficult and often confuses and puts people I mention them to in an awkward position as they didn’t know her, but it's my little cross to bear. They stink because a mother should never have to bury a child, and it drags it all back and makes the grief there fresh again and to a point makes me look at Alice, my oldest niece, and wonder what might have been if Jaime had made it. Would they get along? Would they play Barbie or trucks when they were together? It's just difficult. As I explained to my mother after it happened and she asked how I was, it's like jumping off a cliff and knowing you're going to make it, but knowing it's going to hurt like hell when you hit bottom, and knowing that every season change is going to be a reminder. This season, summer would be her birthday. August 6th. She'd be going into first grade at the end of August and losing her first teeth and the world would be opening up to her for her to explore. Summers would no longer be about just her birthday but they'd be about freedom from school and the explorations of a soon to be six year old.
I often wonder what this child of mine would look like now. Would she look like me still? Would she look like her brother and be tall and leggy with big green eyes? Would she be like me and prefer her hair short to keep it out of her way, or would she love having long hair and imagine she was a princess as I sat and brushed it out in the evenings after her bath? That’s also difficult. Watching other children run, and play, and grow gives my heart a yank, always because I wonder if she’d have done the same or if she’d have been content to sit and color and play with her Barbie’s or paint. Would she dream about princes and white knights or would she be the perpetual tom-boy and dream of battles fought and won in our back yard with her trusty dog by her side and dragging the cat along to be the evil space monster?
As a mother, as her mother I mourn the fact that I didn’t get to see her first breath, her first tooth, her first steps, and all the other firsts that go with a new baby. I mourn on this end of the school year because my little girl never got to take those steps to accept her kindergarten diploma or learn the steps to a silly dance with the rest of her class. There will be no graduation from kindergarten, no gapped tooth smiles, no candy scented clothing, no skinned knees, no heartbreaks or crushes, no high school or college graduations, and no learning to drive. I mourn for her, always. I mourn that her brother never got to know her, or be annoyed by her, or fight with her. I mourn that her father never got to threaten a date, or give her away at her wedding, or play pony for her. There are so many things that none of us ever got to do with her.
She’s forever a memory and the only things I have of her are an ultrasound video of when she still moved, memories of acid reflux and achy ribs from her kicking, a few pictures my mother took after she was born, a pair of tiny shoes she never wore that match the outfit I buried her in, hand and foot prints in a book the hospital was kind enough to provide, a few stretch marks she caused, and a certificate of stillbirth the state only recently started providing for a fee of $12. I still have some of the clothing I bought for her, and a blanket but I gave her furniture and most of her clothing to my sister who was also pregnant at the time with Alice. In my grief I gave away everything but a few mementos my mother insisted I keep.
In six years the grief has lessened, but it never fully goes away and like any other grief process you have good days and bad. You’ll be laughing and enjoying a mocha with a friend one day and the next you’re so consumed with grief that you stagger through your day barely remembering to function let alone thrive. One of these days I’ll be able to see those pictures and ache only a little. One of these days I’ll be able to see those tiny shoes as more than a reminder that she never wore them and the fact that the funeral director sent them home with me instead of putting them on her feet to be buried because they were miles too big and see them as merely shoes that a beautiful baby would have worn eventually had she lived. One of these days I won’t resent the fact that other people can pop babies they don’t want out repeatedly but I can’t or rather can’t risk the health issues involved in the baby process. One of these days I’ll stop crying like a baby every time a baby in our family is born healthy and howling. One of these days I’ll stop crying on her birthday. One of these days I won’t dream about her during the summers.
But for now…. I’ll relive that night over and over again in my head and in my sleep because that grief, that ache are the only memories I have of her outside my womb and in some way, I need that.
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