I have a bout of severe depression on a Saturday. I am inconsolable. At ten weeks the nausea has finally let up a bit so I can eat more easily, that’s good, but I am not into life right now.
We are scheduled to play two songs for our church’s Zoom service tomorrow. Mother’s Day. I’m realizing that it was a cute gesture to volunteer on Mother’s Day, but it turns out what I want is to not have to execute any tactical logistics on that particular day. Staying in bed would be nice.
Staying in bed is not a thing.
And then I catch up on the Ahmaud Arbery news, and I can’t stop crying because tomorrow is Mother’s Day and his mother Wanda has to face it without him. Like countless other Black moms. She’s actually had several months to grieve, which is even worse – it took so long for his death to come to national attention, to penetrate my comfortable white consciousness.
Church is somber the next day. We try and sing Down To The River with both boys, they love this song, but neither wants to participate. I start the first pitch too high so the harmonies are difficult. Then I play and sing Be Still My Soul, just me and the baby grand piano, dedicated to Ahmaud and Antwon’s mothers. George Floyd is still alive on this particular Sunday. I haven’t heard about Breonna Taylor’s death yet, but her mother is grieving too.
Be still, my soul, The Lord is on thy side
Bear patiently, the cross of grief or pain…
Thy hope, thy confidence, let nothing shake
All now mysterious shall be bright at last…
When disappointment, grief, and fear are gone,
Sorrow forgot, love’s purest joys restored.
The song goes better than I expect, some tiny hint of the supernatural carrying my stiff fingers through unpracticed chord changes. My voice is strong. We cut out of the church call early to attend to the children.
An hour later, in the bathroom, there is too much blood.
I don’t really have any tears left after the emotional upheaval of the weekend, but I stand in the bathroom closet and yell “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?” with a fist shaken in the direction of the folded sheets on the top shelf. I become a little mentally confused – for part of this pregnancy I wasn’t sure if I was pregnant, even though the expired test said yes and I knew from experience the obvious symptoms. Now I’m not certain I’m having a miscarriage, even though I recognize these clear and obvious symptoms. It doesn’t occur to me to rest. The day is finally warm and sunny, such a rarity for early May, so we go on a family bike ride – a 7 mile ride – to celebrate a Mother’s Day I should now definitely be spending in bed. I fill water bottles and pack snacks for the kids in a fog. When we are far away from our house, it occurs to me that I have no idea how quickly anything will happen and it is probably unwise for me to be out on the street during a pandemic with The Hubs and two small kids and not enough sanitary supplies. I just keep pedaling.
When we get home I prepare for a night of the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I assume I will camp out on the bathroom floor, trying to muffle my screams. I realize I have no pads beyond a pair of giant disposable underpants you’re sent home with after giving birth. I have no painkillers except the ones you aren’t supposed to use in this situation, though for the love of God, no one on the entire internet can tell me why. It’s now 11pm and no stores are open due to Covid hours, so I finally suit up with one of my son’s cloth diapers. I am prepared for gore, and chaos, and I also note wryly that somehow even this miscarriage will meet my wildly idealistic zero waste standards.
I sleep quietly in bed the whole night through.
In the early morning, our favorite chick lays in my hands, wheezing, struggling to breathe, her five week old body made of air and fluff and egg dreams. Please don’t die, I whisper to her.
The heating pad that is supposed to bring relief to my cramping abdomen now maintains a crucial 95 degree temperature in a quarantine box, separate from the brooder and the warm squeaking pile-up of narcoleptic sisters. Brownie has been deemed a lost cause by the online forum harbingers of doom and “totally fine, just put a fan in the room” from the farmer who sold her to us but is quick to remind me on the phone that he is not a vet. Life and death seem so hard to sort out these days.
I am able to be sad about the chick. I flail about all morning, snapping at the children, and feel I must do something. We can’t let another thing die! As if I’m really in charge of this. There’s not anything left to do, so I call my sister.
The boys have a white plastic bowl in the bathroom – instinctively I grab it. I want to see what is happening. For each of their births I didn’t feel particularly grounded, the pain and confusion lofted me like a helium balloon, and immediately afterward there were things to do and a tiny baby to feed. But for this, I am very present, and my mind, undeterred by the grotesque, wants to know what a grape sized human looks like, if I can find it.
I can’t find it, but the vibrancy of the red living tissue is breathtaking.
Do you want to see the big clump? I ask The Hubs later. He doesn’t think so. But science and curiosity motivate him, eventually. We look into the white plastic bowl together. I tell him Frida Kahlo kept her miscarried son’s body in formaldehyde on her desk. He looks at me with wide, uncertain eyes. She was much further along, I say. And also she didn’t have any children. He relaxes a little.
I place the pieces of myself, the wall decor of a once hospitable womb, in a bag inside another bag in the basement deep freezer.
My sister comes over a few hours later. I stand, six feet away, in the doorway with the boys in states of half dress behind me. I want to hug her but I can only clutch the proffered cans of flavored seltzer water to my chest. She has also brought a sympathy card and pads, huge ones, just in case. They are of course crucial; this is the sort of helpful logistic my sister knows how to tackle. Her eyes, above her mask, tell me she wants to do more. I understand.
I set down the cans and reflexively wash my hands as I watch her walk shivering to the parking spot.
