What Is: After Andrew

What Is…

The sound of one heart cracking?

Not a break, like something that can be glued.

Not a hiss like a balloon deflating.

Not a crash like a crumpled fender that a little body-work could set straight.

The sound of one heart cracking is subtle. Internal. An imploding soft thud. The once sturdy walls caving in on the center, as if protecting the core of one’s being from unbearable anguish.

Anguish. Squish. Squish.

Make a wish: Take me instead or too.

When a child dies, you remember your own pregnancy and the first time you heard the detectable heart beat. The midwife let you listen to it on her doppler. You remember your eyes widening, your smile being unstoppable and how, though you knew because the flow would not come, you knew because your breasts were so tender, you knew  because your face was glowing so that even the woman at the bank asked, “are you in love?,” that you were totally alive in that moment of awe-filled hearing of the truth! And you were in love. And in love with the idea that Life had chosen you to carry itself deep within your own dark and quiet. The astonishment of hearing that heart sound out-loud in the midwife’s office made it irrevocable. Real.

Joy infused every cell, made you swell in secret pride. This tremendous gift of LIFE bestowed. You opened to let life flow through you and here it was.

Now, you cared about what you ate for the first time in your whole selfish life. You put this Belly Person ahead of any wanton want for babka, booze or bread; put new life to work to clean up your diet. Brewer’s yeast for brain development. Leafy greens for skin and bones. Protein Protein Protein. You felt like a howling meowling mama cat: Meooow, give me meat! Meowwww, give me kidney! Meooooooooowww, give me sweetbreads! And you ate and ate your fill until it was time to sleep for two and you woke to eat for two again and drank carrot juice and ate sauerkraut and kimchi so the child would have culture.

And you watched as your navel and spine parted company and waved across the span between them and around a miraculous astronaut floating - upside down - in your dark and formerly quiet. S/he got hiccups. Often. Your whole belly thump-jumping with each brief spasm of her/his tiny diaphragm. 

What will this baby be? Who will she or he become? 

Doubt-bouts began, doubling in size at night. The dark thoughts about giving birth to a ten pound turkey, a monster, a freak. Don’t read or listen to other people’s horror stories. It might be contagious.  You remember worrying about having attended a friend’s home birth when you were only four months along, and how that turned out to be a hospital Caesarean birth because the baby boy’s head was too large to fit through your friend’s opening. Sixteen centimeter head. Ten centimeter opening. A NO GO situation. Houston, we’ve got a problem! You remember wondering: Is it catchy? Remember worrying could this too happen to you?

When  a child dies, you remember that as you got near time to deliver, that you were an equal mix of worry and certainty that all would be well. And that, even though there were many days when you felt like a beached whale, and that no clothes fit except for your husband’s old 42 inch waist pants with suspenders to hold them up and XXL T-shirts, you worried and wondered if you were truly ready to meet this belly person face to face.

Labor began. And it was such a rush! You began writing in your journal at midnight when your water broke and the earthy scent of sweet amniotic fluid surged from you unlike any scent you’d yet been privileged to sense on this wide wonderful world. You woke your beloved when contractions were three minutes apart. You had him call the midwife and two friends who wanted to be there. Every one seemed to arrive at once and at transition - the last few centimeters of opening that allow for the child’s head to emerge. You remember wanting your night gown OFF, no, ON, socks OFF, no, ON and all off again, and nothing was right and you remember telling your beloved to warn your friends that this was transition, the hardest part, and that after this it would be easier. And it was. The pushing stage was orgasmic. The baby’s head pressing through you like one continuous giant orgasm. Who knew giving birth could be ecstatic? And the midwife held the mirror and let you feel the dark curls on your baby’s head about to emerge. And you remember tears of joy at the imminence of the dream fulfilled - of meeting face to face this magical person who had peeped over the edge of baby heaven and graciously determined that YOUR womb was the one s/he chose to grow in. You could hardly wait. But you had to pant blow the last few contractions so as not to push too fast and cause harm to yourself from too swift an exit of that dear head. Too fast can tear tender tissues. So you panted, despite the URGE to PUSH with all your might. 

And the baby slipped out of your dark and quiet, head first into the light of an eight o’clock morning and the birds were singing outside the window and the dog was under the table the midwife set up for the birth and your beloved was holding you and the baby at the same time as she - yes SHE was put to breast and all of you were beaming in the light of new life so fresh from the other side and the miracle bonded all of you in that moment such that when a child dies, you cannot fathom the possibility or breach the divide between life and death. Nothing about the death of a child is ok. NOTHING prepares you for this anti-flow-of-how-life-should-be event. Nothing.

When baby Andrew died, the thoughts of my own births welled up and the empathy I felt for Andrew’s mother and father was extreme. I understood something of what they lost. I sobbed. I raged at the unfairness of death’s whim to take this child, any child. I understood when their marriage also died. I understood that the death of a child is the hardest of all deaths to make sense of, to come to terms with, and to go on living past that watershed moment. Period. 

Andrew became my teacher that one and only day I met him. I went home and appreciated afresh my own living daughters.  I thank his spirit often for the graciousness to teach me more about the Great Mystery whose capriciousness we can love, hate, be baffled and befuddled by, and perhaps ultimately accept as What Is.