The Risk

I wonder to myself, Would you risk it all again?  Derek’s arms had been around me, my head pressed into the depth of his neck, and resting on his shoulder, our faces were turned toward the doctor sitting on my bed.  The others were behind her. They knew before we did.  I wonder what they thought.  The one on the bed was holding the wand pressed to my belly.  She moved it around.  She knew already, I am sure.  Perhaps she was trying to think of how to tell me.  Perhaps she was wondering what to say.  I asked the question.  Her answer, “No, I’m sorry.”  And then came the pain.  And tears.  And, “No. No. no. no.”  He held me so close, pulled me tight, bowed his head.  I sobbed. “No.”  sob. Sob. Sob.  “This happens this late?” He asked.  Astonished. Appalled. Off guard.  Tears. 

That was just the beginning.  Then home.  And to tell Sky that her sister would not be coming home.  Then the Funeral. 

That was the lowest I think.  Before there were visitors, or maybe not, I knelt before her urn.  I knelt before her bear, and her picture and her tiny, tiny jammies.  I knelt in my fear for her and for me, and my hurt and tears and my questions and doubts. I knelt and I broke.  I don’t know how long I stayed emanating sorrow.  But I sobbed great heaving sobs and they fell out of me like glass ripping away the pain and the sadness.  And I hurt.  I wish I had a sign that she isn’t just gone, that someday I might hold her and show her to her sisters.  How do you walk away from that?  And to see all the pain and sorrow in others, was humbling, as they honored what she should have been, and embraced us in our sadness. 

Then there was the pain of getting out of bed.  It wasn’t just physical.  I hurt in my soul to get up and move about my day.  I wanted to stay in bed, inside myself and hold onto the pain because to let go of the pain meant I’d have to move on from her.  I didn’t want to move on.  She is my baby.  To move on would mean (at least in my head at the time) that I was moving on and leaving my tiny baby behind. 

Some might think that writing down this pain is rubbing salt into an open wound.  It isn’t though.  It’s releasing it to fall around me like photographs.  Someday maybe I can pick up these thoughts like pictures and remember the pain and see where it has driven me.  I am not writing this down to be a masochist, to keep it in would be like returning to a nightmare over and over. 

All that pain and no one tells you that it could even be.  No one warns you that even if you make it 20 weeks or whatever it is, that you could still lose that precious baby you have lovingly carried and nurtured and dreamt about.  I had the tests and the sonograms, and the heartbeat monitors.  She was healthy and now she’s gone and no one tells you it may be so.  I’m supposed to call the doctor for birth control soon, I will get it now because it is best to heal more I think, 6 months at least according to the doctor.  Eventually I will have to decide, but the question stills stands.  Is all this pain worth gambling again that I may or may not catch the only wrong card on the river, or catch the right one and win the pot?  The prize is more valuable than any I can imagine, and the pain of losing is vast, deep, and dark.  I say I want another but maybe it’s His way of telling me I’m done?  Or maybe it was indeed just an accident.  My arms are still minus one.  And I hold my girls tighter.