Echoing

There was another world that I lived in, a while ago. Suddenly, on December 2, 2007, I was bundled into a plane, destination unknown. I didn't get a chance to pack. I wouldn't have known what to pack. What do you bring when the destination is terror and chaos? What do you bring when the medical world is screaming at you to get on the plane and do your seat belt up and be quiet? I can tell you what you do. You get on the plane, and you do up your seat belt, and you stop asking questions, if only because you know that you don't want the answers.

On December 10, 2007, our plane landed. And we joined a new world. This world called dead baby land. This world where we didn't speak the language. We had no home, no clothes, no nothing. We landed in an airport in the dead of winter, with no idea of where we were. There was no tourist bureau, no maps, no destination signs, no place to catch a taxi cab, no place to rest our weary bodies and broken souls.

And I have lived in this place for the last 10 months. 10 months and 2 days to be accurate. And this place has become more familiar, more recognizable. I know my way around. I can find the essentials, the grocery store for Kleenex, the clothing store for more mourning garments. I can speak the language: fetal demise, perinatal loss, Doppler's with no heart beats, screaming, sobbing. I can speak the language of memory loss and pain and sorrow. I have found fellow immigrants here. You can always recognize them - the lost and broken look around the eyes. The hands that are never still, always waiting to hold a baby that isn't. The heart that is in a million pieces, and the mind that has spoken of never coming round.

But, slowly, I have learned to cope in this world. To accept this as my home. Not my home for now, but my forever home. A place that is far from perfect, a place that is not where I want to be. But it is where I am. And I have made what peace I can. What I once described as an anguish so deep and wide that there are no words, has slowly faded. It is merely anguish. The ever present reminder that I am here, and Gabriel is not. That Mr. Spit and I are two, not three. We are a stronger two, and we are more thankful than ever for each other, but we are aware of the child who is within us, not with us.

Every so often though, there are echo's. Echo's from another world. Echo's that remind me I wasn't always here, I didn't always live and breath and move in pain and sorrow. Echo's that remind me I believed in the essential fairness of the world once, I did not know of the terrible power that evil has to destroy our lives. Echo's that remind me I was once whole and strong and brave.

I am cleaning out what would have been the nursery. Turning it for now, into a craft room, and eventually, perhaps, if God smiles upon me, into a nursery again. I have pulled out the detritus of the last 10 months. I have pulled out the things hastily shoved in that room, as if removing them from our sight could so easily mend the rips and tears in our hearts. I have come across the hidden away things. Tonight it was the books we read to Gabriel. Robert Munch. I'll Love You Forever. Mortimer. Wait and See.

And it was that terrible nexus of what was and what could have been and what is. That terrible place where you are left gasping, breathless by yet another round of pain. And while I can and will tell you that they come less frequently, and they do not last as long, they are no less bewildering and perplexing and painful when they do happen. Hurriedly thrown in a dresser that was mine as a child and should have been Gabriel's, was a reminder of the world I used to live in.

Tonight my baby, you sleep with Jesus.
You don't need my stories.
But I'll read you a story still.
My heart wants to remember.

I'll love you forever.
I'll like you for always.
As long as I'm living,
My baby you'll be.