Читать книгу Still - Emma Hansen - Страница 12

5

THE FIRST DEATH I remember was when a close friend of my parents, Miranda, passed away from breast cancer when I was fourteen. She worked for my father and was often around our home—she even nearly married my uncle Mike, once upon a time. She was alluring, with her slim frame and hair as dark as midnight. She was quite possibly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. More than that, she had a calm presence that was only enhanced by her soothing voice—I still remember the sound of it all these years later.

I don’t really remember much from when she was sick, just one time when I went out for a fancy lunch with her and my mom and she talked about all the fun wigs she got to wear. What I remember most about that lunch was the way she spoke about snowboarding. She talked about how much she loved it, and her eyes lit up when she did, and then she turned to me and told me she wanted to teach me someday. But we never got that chance. She died shortly after, and instead of my first snowboarding lesson I went to my first funeral.

Only it wasn’t really a funeral. I asked my mom why everyone was in bright colors, smiling and crying and telling stories about her—it wasn’t anything like what I’d seen in movies. She told me that Miranda wanted a celebration of life; she wanted those who knew her to remember and celebrate her for how she lived, not grieve for how she died. That stuck with me. At Miranda’s party I decided I didn’t want a funeral either when I died, though I didn’t even know what a traditional funeral was like. And it’s why we decide not to have one for Reid. I want to have a chance to celebrate him too.

Over the following week, I pour all my time and energy into working on Reid’s baby album. I started it a month ago, figuring I wouldn’t have time to add all the details from the pregnancy after he was born. I couldn’t have known then that his firsts would also be his lasts: his first photo, first outfit, first diaper, first bath. His first cuddles with Mom and Dad. I change the wording throughout the book, making firsts into lasts or onlys, and fill the empty pages with pictures and writing. When it is finally done, I am devastated: the summary of his life fits into a single book, completed in only a few days.

I also include the story of his birth, which I have written and printed out. I started to write it the day after it happened, just to process exactly what it was that had happened, to get the facts down on paper, keep the timeline straight. But as I kept writing, all the feelings came back to me, again and again and again. The words became expression, the expression became a story, and through that story I felt the very beginnings of something I wouldn’t dare yet call healing.

On the second Sunday after Reid’s death, our family comes over to our apartment for the celebration of his life. Our home seems like the only appropriate place to have it. It is where his soul entered this world, and where it left it. These walls framed the span of his existence.

Everyone who has been a major part of Reid’s life is here: our parents, our siblings and their significant others, a few friends, and my maternal grandparents. Aaron’s brothers, Derek and Levi, flew in earlier in the week. Derek, who is just shy of two years younger than Aaron, has grown his beard long and pierced his ears through with wooden spikes while he was away. I notice that he has also taken to wearing baggy linen clothes. These are all things I would usually tease him about, but I don’t have the heart to today. Or maybe my heart toward these things has softened—it seems cruel to judge anything so personal. Levi, Aaron’s youngest brother, is the same age as Rebecca, who is five years younger than me. A few years back we entertained the idea of setting them up together, encouraging them to exchange school photos with little messages on the back. Now Levi attends school in Ontario, studying mathematics at the same small Christian university Derek had attended.

We gather in our living room and pass around the baby album. I watch our family as they look through the photos, reliving all the memories with him, and, finally, reading what I’ve written of his birth. I see them leaning in and out of their own pain as they read the story, just as I did while writing it. They have every right to mourn, each of them being intimately connected to our loss, but maybe they needed this to give them permission.

After everyone has a chance to go through the album we reminisce about the pregnancy, about all the memories created during those nine months. There is talk about the first time we heard his glorious heartbeat at twelve weeks. About how I felt his kicks early, at sixteen weeks, and how even Aaron was able to feel them soon after.

As the conversation moves to the details of parties held for Reid and trips with family and the dreams they had of a future with him, I mostly remain quiet. I fear that if I open my mouth, it won’t be words that come out but instead the awful, torturous sounds of grief. So I stay in one spot and drink peppermint tea and take in this community act of remembering. And I silently reflect on the wiggly companion who kept me company every hour of every day, who rolled when I ate sour foods and kicked his feet into my ribs as I walked. It was all so good, and all so short.

Then everyone writes down the questions that are in their hearts about Reid’s passing, all the hows and whys. Or, if they feel called to, a letter for him instead. We seal them all in an envelope, which we will later take to the funeral home to be placed with Reid inside his casket. It was Aaron’s idea. One more thing he can do for his son.

At the end of the day, Aaron speaks. “Nine months ago our lives changed,” he begins, pausing to clear his throat. No parent should have to talk like this about their child. “I still remember the day I found out that Emma was pregnant. I was enjoying the sun in the lineup at the ferry terminal when my phone began to ring. This question was hanging over our heads so I was expecting the call, but when I saw her name my stomach began to do flips all the same.”

The room is full of smiles as each person remembers the time we recounted this story to them. Aaron smiles too, and then continues. “Our nerves were soon replaced by excitement as we dreamed up questions and thought of all the plans we needed to make. That was truly the start of the lives that Emma and I felt we were meant to live.”

I think of how true that is, of how quickly our motivation for everything became to create the best life we could for Reid. I reach for his hand and give it a little squeeze, and he squeezes back.

“Reid was intent on making himself known. He was energetic and mischievous. As he grew into his home, he learned how to hiccup regularly, preparing his lungs for the outside world. He discovered that when he had a little extra energy to burn, there was a lovely rib-shaped leg press that would provide him with the necessary resistance. He also loved to interact with the outside world, pushing back at me when I tickled his heels. As he grew, he was able to share more of himself with us, and I hope that he was able to learn about us in return.”

I start to cry now. Because this is all we can talk about, this is all we’ll ever know of him. And I want it all back. It is enough and he is our child and I want more of him.

“It feels like an injustice that we should learn so much about him, but never truly get the chance to meet him, to look into his eyes.” He says what I am feeling, and I exhale in relief that he is feeling these things too. “What questions we had about our future together have been replaced with darker ones; our joy has turned to pain. We are grateful for the time that we were able to spend with him, but we wish we had more. More time to love him, more time to know him, like—” he falters now, struggling to make it through.

“What color were his eyes? What would his voice sound like? Would he be tall? What would he love to do? Was he shy or outgoing?” I look around the room and take in the wet faces and nodding heads, the evident grief of the group of family and friends who knew Reid best.

“These questions are tough ones to ask, but they are important. For though we will never find the answers, they will help us to remember him.” He turns to me now, and his expression seems to tell me that this is a promise. “Remembering will keep him alive in our hearts.”

A cry escapes my ninety-year-old grandfather, Reid’s namesake. I’ve never seen him cry before, and seeing his tears—well, I think it says everything I cannot.

I WAKE THE next morning and change another pad, let the reminder that blood on bleached cotton brings sink in. I am a mother recovering from birth as much as I am a mother grieving the death of her child, and I often forget this. As I wash my hands, I let myself look up, slowly arriving to meet my gaze in the mirror for the first time since Reid died. My face appears both sunken from sorrow and swollen from a combination of tears and shifting hormones. My eyes seem to say they’ve seen too much sadness, and will now permanently rest in this pained state. My lips are neutral, and it’s as if they’re letting me know they’re willing to continue on if I am.

I notice that despite the agony my physical body is in, emotionally I feel lighter today. Something in the marking of Reid’s life, and the ritual of celebrating it, has released a bit of the burden I’ve been carrying. I decide to publish Reid’s birth story on my blog. I documented and shared most other aspects of my pregnancy with my readers, and I don’t see why I shouldn’t share this too. I want others to know of Reid, and I want his life—and our grief—to be acknowledged. I want to be honest. And maybe my words can help one other person feel a little less alone.

I enter the title into the template, Born Still but Still Born, and take a deep breath. I have never written anything so personal before. Or so painful. But as I tell my story, creating some order out of the chaos in my mind, I begin to feel different—better, almost. The words can’t change my reality—though I want them to—but they help me transform the unimaginable into something I can see. What I’ve written is a birth story, because Reid was still born. And I know it’s a story I need to share.

I hit “publish” and wait, clutching my phone in my hand.

Within minutes, the comments start to roll in. Heartfelt condolences, which I expected, but they are still so powerful. I read their words:

Reid will live on because you gave him life. Thank you for being so brave…

I am so sorry Reid is not here, where he belongs…

I am truly sorry for your loss. May your memories of holding your boy in your arms sustain you in your grief.

And then the stories start coming. Within the first few hours, tens, then hundreds. Eventually there will be thousands of stories from those who have lost children. Their names proudly written out, next to a date, on my blog. So many of them stillborn, more than I ever anticipated. They write:

My first son was stillborn at full term on August 8, 2008…

I felt as if you were telling my story as I read this. Instead of juice, I was eating watermelon and cupcakes trying to will my baby to move inside of me. Instead of watching Friends, we came home from the hospital and had a campfire in the back yard…

My heart breaks for you both. A good friend of mine recently delivered her sleeping baby.

A few days later Aaron wakes me up to say that Reid’s story has gone viral. Earlier, we had watched Google Analytics as the number of readers on my site had climbed from ten at a time to fifty. When I look at it now, the number is in the thousands. Over the next days our story is shared on American political pages with millions of followers, usually pro-life conservative groups. It appears in all of our local newspapers. Requests for media appearances and in-person interviews flood my inbox. The story spreads across the country. Soon after, it reaches countries all over the world.

At first, I’m hit with anxiety. I wrote about our personal experience because the words needed to come out. I didn’t expect publicity. And I didn’t want our story, or Reid’s life, to be politicized. But because he died before his birth, he was suddenly being used as part of a narrative of pro-life versus pro-choice. I read harsh comments such as It’s a fetus, this mother should get over it, next to imploring messages like I wish every mother about to abort her child could read this. In sharing what happened to me, I had no interest in taking sides in that debate—I don’t think that it’s either-or, all the time, no matter what. I am only pro-supporting-people-in-their-own-unique-situations, given their unique beliefs and circumstances. I wanted to tell our story, as it applies to us, with no intention of implying that everyone’s feelings and views in similar experiences should be the same. I hope that this specific kind of attention will fade quickly.

At the same time, as I watch more and more people come to my blog to find Reid’s story, a strange sense of peace spreads over me. All of these people are learning about our son. When a baby dies before they have a chance to create their own story, I think one of the biggest fears parents have is that they will disappear, be forgotten. It’s up to those who knew them to spread their legacy, should that be something that’s in their hearts to do. It strikes me that these people might never have heard Reid’s name had he not died.

A few weeks before, when Reid passed away, I didn’t know of a single person who had experienced a late-term stillbirth. All I could think of were the stories I’d come across in books or television. I think of the book The Light Between Oceans by M.L. Stedman, set in the 1920s, where the main characters experience two miscarriages and one stillbirth. I think of how a live baby washed up in a boat on that lone island they lived on, so soon after the stillbirth, how the wife, Isabel, took that baby to her breast, nursed her. I think of how her whole body would have been aching for the experience: the letdown, the relief from engorgement, the suckling child before her.

I think of the show Call the Midwife, set in the 1950s in East London, that I watched while I was pregnant; how I fast-forwarded though any scenes where the baby died because I believed those were problems of the past.

A part of me knew all along that there must be real-life stories that inspired these accounts, must be other people out there who have had losses like mine, who also felt isolated and unsure about what to do. I just had no idea how many there were. I wasn’t prepared for my story to resonate with so many. I wasn’t prepared for millions of people to read it, and then have many of them actually respond.

As I read each message that reaches me, devour their condolences and stories, I feel, somehow, that I am being validated. I left the hospital thinking that I must be the only person in the world this had happened to, that I’d done something terrible to invite it, that I couldn’t grieve this loss—didn’t know how. But here from my living room couch—handwritten cards piled high beside me and my computer screen open to the latest email—I see that none of that is true. It is a great privilege to receive their stories, and they are a gift to me. These words tell me that I am not alone, they assure me that I did not cause this, and they provide a road map to the kind of grief that once seemed so invisible.

I start to wonder if we can experience healing through our stories. We all have a story to tell, after all, and we all learn from other people’s stories too. Even though these stories can’t make our losses okay, is it possible they can bring meaning to our suffering? I am not the first person to have lost their child. And sadly, I will not be the last. Finding healing after such a thing, I think, shouldn’t have to be lonely.

WE DECIDE TO have Reid’s body cremated. The conversation is short, as both options seem awful. With a burial, I picture his body all alone and decaying below us with myself safe and warm at home, thinking only of the child lying in the cold, hard ground miles away. Or I imagine us moving one day, abandoning him in his grave. I do not want us to be separated.

So then it has to be cremation. Doesn’t it? I see an image of him entering a tomb of flames, reduced to dust in an instant. It is horrible too, but it is the awful that we feel most at peace with. We can keep his ashes with us wherever life takes us next.

Later, I’ll speak to a cremator about the cremation process. I will enter a sizeable room lit from above by florescent panels, its air filled with a steady, low hum. On the far-left side sits the machine, a large brick oven, that generates this noise. Directly in front of it, a broken fluorescent panel exposes two long naked bulbs.

I will see the casket, fashioned from particle board with words from loved ones scribbled in permanent marker all over the outside. It rests on top of a large metal platform, on a bed of metal rods that spin when one end of it is raised to help the casket glide into the kiln.

I will walk over to Gale, the cremator, and try to calculate if I can ask him what’s been on my mind. I will look him in the eye and ask if the process for babies is any different than what I am witnessing. I will ask because I can’t get the sound of the casket thudding into the base of the furnace chamber out of my mind. I can’t imagine a casket a fraction of the size making it off that conveyor.

Gale will not falter. He will be calm and return my gaze before asking, “Approximately what size?”

“An infant,” I will start to cry. “Around eight pounds.”

I will be surprised to see Gale start to cry too, silent tears hitting his cheeks. He will respond with this: “I place babies in by hand. And instead of heating up the chamber first, I keep it cool. I think it’s gentler that way. Most people in my profession do this too, and I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ve learned that we all have the utmost respect for the soul and its journey.” He will lift his glasses slightly to wipe underneath his eyes and adjust them back in place. “I like to go longer for babies too. So that I know for sure that it’s done all at once.”

I will thank him, because this is information I would rather know about than wonder.

The first weekend we were home from the hospital, I made a list of questions to ask the funeral home:

Where will he be cremated?

How long until we can get him back?

Will he be cremated on his own or with other babies?

I wrote down the last one after someone mentioned it on an online forum I found. She said that some funeral homes cremated babies together to make sure there were “enough” ashes to give the family. Apparently some babies are so small, she wrote, that there was practically nothing left of them.

When we walk through the doors of the funeral home, the middle-aged receptionist looks up. I notice her blouse has a snag in it near the neckline. I appreciate that; it seems almost a kind gesture to meet the grieving slightly unkempt.

“Hello,” she says, pushing her glasses back up to the top of her nose. “Are you Reid’s parents?”

We nod. She offers her condolences and leads us to a large conference room down the hall. I keep pressing the tip of my nail into the belly of my palm, focusing on the pain it causes. I will use this trick many times over the years that follow to keep tears at bay.

She tells us that our caseworker will be in shortly and gently places a binder on the table in front of the chair across from us. Before she stands up to go, she meets my gaze and pauses.

“I’m not supposed to show emotion or talk about anything personal with our families, but I can’t not say anything. How can you not cry when something this awful happens? I read your blog, and I just need to say how sorry I am.” Tears are pooling in the corners of her eyes and her mouth begins to tremble. She looks from me to Aaron and back to me again. I thank her for saying something, and her hands fiddle at her center for a short while before she finally rests a palm on top of my own. She strokes it once and gives it a pat and then she excuses herself and leaves us alone.

A few minutes later, the type of man you’d expect to work at a funeral home enters the room. His dark hair is gelled into a perfect comb-over and his suit is immaculately pressed, its gray fabric registering not a speck of lint.

“I am so sorry for your loss,” he begins.

He sits down across from us and goes through the binder. Discussions of the crematorium and ceremonies are had, presumably—I don’t register any of them. I do pay attention when he leads us into the room that holds all the urns. Countless vases and boxes and vials line the walls. And then, at the back, the single shelf that holds the ones small enough for infants.

After it all, we end up back at reception. The receptionist with the kind face prints out an invoice and reads it over before saying, “That will be $183.75.” Tears begin to fill her eyes again.

I hand her my Visa. Not even two hundred dollars to reduce our son’s body to ash. I don’t know why, but I want it to be more.