It is not

It is not the sheer physicality of another miscarriage that's distressing me. It's not all this damn blood and the wincing pain and the hormone induced emotional crash. I cry, but tears of frustration and rage as much as sorrow. Probably, if I am honest, more frustration and rage. All of this is but a nuisance. It's not pleasant and I could do without it, but that's not the thing of it, at least for me.

Perhaps another way.

There were many deaths in Gabriel's death. There was the death of the child we called Gabriel. There was a little boy with ten fingers and ten toes, a head full of hair, and the crooked Pearce ring finger on his left hand, he was here, on this earth, with us, and then he was gone. And that was sudden and shocking and horrible.

And there was the death of children, which came all at once and slowly. It came all at once with the diagnosis of pre-eclampsia and all of those wretched stats, and it has come slowly, as we have had failed cycle after failed cycle. As we have been pregnant enough to know, but never pregnant for long enough to tell anyone. Death as the inevitable comes screeching into present day. Another dead baby. Five if you were counting.

On Sunday I was vomiting in the Safeway parking lot, pleased as punch, because this is normal for me. I was, excited, happy, hopeful. And now, I am angry and embarrassed. Furious with myself, that I allowed my hopes to be raised, frustrated that I came up with a stupid little plan to tell people I was pregnant, and now I am only slightly crazy, wondering if my body deceived me. I was so sure, had such a sense that this was going to go well, and now, it was all for naught. I have caught myself, since waking up in the puddle of blood, telling myself that I am not pregnant anymore. I was, and I am not. In the same way that Auden told us to stop all the clocks, I cancel appointment plans, waving that nothing came to anything anymore.

It is not, for a moment that the rug was pulled out from me. This is more fundamental than that. It is questions of what I can trust, what I can believe. What is real and true. Was there ever a rug?

It seems to me it is perhaps this: Gabriel's death was a knife buried in our back. It was a sudden, horrific accident. Pain like that is fast and rare. Another miscarriage is another slice in my arm, a fourth gash in a year and a half. It drips blood to be sure, but slowly. It's easily bandaged up. It is a wholly different thing than a traumatic accident. I bleed, I get over it. It is not a large thing, and I tell people that I am fine, except.

Eventually, you lose the same amount of blood, either way.