Words and Fire

Getting out bed for the past three weeks has been a challenge. I wake up and in those first brief moments, when my brain is flopping around trying to find its bearings, everything is okay. But of course reality slides in pretty quickly and the ache in my chest always reappears.


Miserable doesn’t begin to cover it.

I spent two days in the hospital with my wife delivering a child we knew was going to be dead at its birth. It was the worst experience I have ever gone through. It was like some kind of awful mirror universe parody of the birth of our first child. There was none of the giddiness or excitement, none of the anticipation and joy. It was just a hideous mockery of that first event. Every aspect of those two days was steeped in dread and misery, every milestone clouded by the awful truth of what awaited us.

I’d seen pictures of babies born as early as ours was and I thought that I was as emotionally prepared as I could be for something like this. But when you hold something that small and tiny in your hands I don’t think it’s really possible to be prepared for the emotions and thoughts that flood through you.

Worst of all, the hits just kept on coming. Every time I thought I’d gotten control of my emotions, locked down what I was feeling, something else would happen and I’d be reduced to a mess all over again. The body grew cold, we took pictures, they took her away. Every step was just more salt poured in the wounds.

It was a girl. We named her, Helen Christina. A name from each of our own. A way of giving her a piece of ourselves.

I cried like a baby. Uncontrollably. Which was incredibly uncomfortable experience, almost shameful, for me because I don’t like outward displays of emotion. Reserved and controlled is pretty much my bailiwick.

I’d never come from an overly macho household. My parents were fairly open and accepting of any emotional response. But I’ve never seen my father cry. Not once. Despite the knocks and bumps that all of us take in life I’ve seen my father keep it together each and every time.

Maybe behind closed doors he lets it all out, just like the rest of us, but if anyone else was present he was always tough and in control. I envy his strength.

When we got home we were done. Emotionally, physically, mentally. By any measurement of the human condition you care to examine, we were just gone.

In a sense our two year old has been a blessing and a curse. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. Oh, she can tell something is different, but she still wants to go to the park, or play in her wading pool. And, she still needs to eat, have her teeth brushed and take a bath every night. Which means we still need to behave like fully functioning adults and provide all those things for her. Her very presence forces us to keep on keeping on.

But it also means there’s no time, to grieve, to cope, to process.

We’re putting everything we have into our daughter and nothing into ourselves. We just carry our hurt around with us like luggage and every so often something will poke at it, a reference on a TV show or a song, and pop, the clasp springs open and all our emotions come rushing out.