Miscarriage.

Nothing and no one can begin to prepare you for a miscarriage nor for the permanence and absolution that comes with the loss. At 5 1/2 weeks pregnant, there is very little to honor the tiny existence that represented a lifetime of hopes and dreams inside of me. All I have are the tears and the blood that I shed as the windows that looked out into my family's future shatter before my eyes in little pieces, leaving behind the realization and the painful reminder that so much of this life is completely out of my control. 

This baby was a she in my mind. She was due on April 1st. She would have been a springtime baby, sharing a birth month with my husband and learning how to smile right around my 40th birthday. My son Jude was going to have a hard time watching me nurse another child and we would have to work through that. Jude would be about ready for a regular bed and we would pass his crib on to her. Her name would have been Esme. I knew all of this from the beginning, that's how much blind confidence I had in this pregnancy, and I feel foolish and ashamed at times to have been so cocky, to have believed I was immune to losing her.

On my way home from my doctor's office, I played over in my head the heart-wrenching ultrasound and the conversation that followed, "it doesn't look good," she told me, softly and kindly, "that is not a 5 1/2 week old baby, it appears as if it's going away, but you're smart, you'll know, only time can really tell." 

I walked through a Whole Foods with a mask on my face and bloodshot eyes, trying to track down a box of sanitary napkins as I felt my baby slowly come out of me in little pieces. When I passed by the flower section, I stopped and stared at the orchids. It quickly dawned on me how badly I needed something living, something besides my tears and my pain, to honor my child. I could've taken the pristine white one, but, hidden within its shadow, stood a smaller version of it, in muted shades of purple and yellow; one that appeared as if the colors were fighting to come out but never truly would. 

At night, I laid in bed, crying and holding that stupid fucking plant, wanting my baby back and knowing there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. This is miscarriage. Loss. Powerlessness. Silent mourning beneath the covers, gripping onto our pain. Trying to breathe beneath the flood of whens and whys; the flashes of moments in the weeks leading up to it that might have caused our bodies to betray us like this; wondering what we might have done, where we went wrong. Wating as the dream of the child inside of us slowly falls out in clots and cramps and bright, red agony. It is vacant, empty, diminishing symptoms and fading visions that brought so many smiles to our faces in the weeks leading up to it. It is unfair. It is ambiguous and confusing. There is no over-the-counter urine test you can buy that indicates a miscarriage. We don't get to know so much as we get to be reminded of its presence with every trip to the toilet and every sharp pain in our abdomen. 

This is a mother's burden; our love is equal to our pain, we can't have one without the other. We absorb the flaws of nature as our own, we blame ourselves no matter how often we're told not to. We bury our sorrow, our shame, and sometimes our own children with it...and then we move on, and the world around us is none the wiser. My heart aches for myself, my husband, and for every mother in this world who had to say goodbye to a tiny little dream and who had to silently carry with them all of the sadness, shame, and anger that comes with such a loss. 

This morning, I officially passed my little girl. I dug her out of the toilet and examined her remains, holding in the palm of my hand the placenta and the collapsed amniotic sac, knowing somewhere inside of all of that, was the tiny little seed that would have one day become my baby. When we're ready, my husband and I will bury her and our dreams of the life we would have shared together under a tree near the lake, where I imagined we would have family picnics, and we'll say our goodbyes. I'll go back to selling real estate and Paul will return to his electrical work and I'll look at our son, Jude, and our two basset hounds and be reminded of our blessings and the aching in my heart will slowly subside. Because that too is miscarriage, it's moving forward, it's gratitude and acceptance, it's the reality of how beautiful and harsh this life truly is. 

For this moment though, I will mourn and I will dedicate this piece to my sweet Esme, the life that never got to be, but will remain in my heart until I can one day be reunited with you again.