CHAPTER 25
November 11
Today I am quiet, have been in tears a lot. I feel the familiar turning-in energy of winter, like I’m crawling deep into myself and hunkering down for a while. I think the return of winter is bringing up a lot of last year, and I’m bracing for what feels like a plummet into deep, dark grief.
* * *
My mom calls, chattering away about Thanksgiving plans. My brother is coming with Paula and their three-month-old baby girl. “I’m trying to find a crib for Maggie to sleep in while she’s here,” Mom says, “and a car seat for her to use. Do you have anything?”
I feel like I’ve been kicked hard in the chest. “Um, I don’t know,” I stammer. “I’ll look in the barn.”
Later, I tell Dicken about it. “I don’t know why it was so hard to hear her ask that.”
“It doesn’t seem very sensitive to me,” he says.
“No, you’re right, it wasn’t. And you know what? I’m not going to Thanksgiving this year. Forget it. It’s such a setup.”
“That’s fine with me,” Dicken says. “I don’t really want to go either.”
“Mom won’t stand for that,” I say. “She’s counting on you to cook.”
“You’re right, I should probably go. And Jasper will want to be there, he loves Thanksgiving. Kevin too.”
“Yeah, you three should go. But I don’t need to be there.”
I’ve given myself a year of permission to do exactly what I need to take care of myself. I tell myself I’ve been through such a hard loss, I deserve to support myself even if there’s fallout, which there will be if I don’t show up at Thanksgiving.
* * *
I wish I could sleep through the winter, through Thanksgiving and Christmas and Theo’s birthday and all the feelings that will arise. But that doesn’t feel right, because I’d wake up in spring. And spring seems ridiculous to me. It felt like a mockery last year when it came, and this dark weather resonates more, makes me feel understood on some primal level. So really, I have a yes for going into this season, even though it’s not comfortable.
November 13
In the night, I wake up thinking of Theo and feeling alone, starkly so. Everyone I love is out of reach. So much anger comes up. I want to stop time, but I am impotent. The sky is about to fall on top of me and there’s nothing I can do about it. And every year winter will come, with the holidays and Theo’s birthday, and I am only now recognizing that I’m alone with this. No one gets it completely, and I’m never going to finish this, whatever “finish” means. It will just keep cycling through.
In the morning, I get a sweet e-mail from Gabriella, saying she woke thinking of me and Theo. Then, just as I’m trying to come up with a soothing person to call, the phone rings, and it’s Cecily. I tell her about my immersion in dark grief, and she says I should stop fighting myself. “Don’t you realize that this process is really sacred, maybe the biggest work of your life?”
Could this really be “my work,” whatever that means? This up-and-down, all-over-the-place, crazy-making existence I’m living? This thing I’m trying to get over as fast as I can? What would it be like to stop fighting it, stop fighting myself?
* * *
I lie in bed with my eyes closed, and suddenly I’m thinking about how I got pregnant around the time of our wedding. I remember the abortion. I feel the familiar shame and remorse begin to bury me, the voices demanding, How could you, you idiot? Then the fierce protector intervenes: You will not talk to Theo’s mother this way! I won’t have it. She’s been through enough, can’t you see that?
In the peaceful white space that has spread before me, I imagine meeting the me from all those years ago, the one who is pregnant, sick, and terrified. I take her soft hands in mine. I talk to her gently, and I give her a chance to voice her feelings. I listen to her fear, can feel the memory of it in my body as I lie there. I realize that all these years later, I am in a way no different—still scared to have a baby, to bring another river of life into the world, scared of what it will demand of me. I decide to stop blaming her and ask instead how the me now can reach out to and comfort the me then, and vice versa. I don’t hear a clear answer, but I know my openness to connecting these distant parts of myself is a start.
November 17
Gabriella calls me and says, “Listen to this: In Venezuela, when someone dies, families take two full years to mourn. They put up black curtains, don’t socialize, don’t leave the house unless necessary.”
“Wow, that sounds so right to me,” I say.
I spend the rest of the afternoon thinking about Venezuela, and how it feels so much more appropriate to have quiet days in the safety and familiarity of our house. Going anywhere almost invariably makes me feel unsupported. I’m amazed—partly appalled, partly impressed—that I’ve been out and about so much this year, starting my town days again only three weeks after Theo died.
November 24
Dicken has taken the Venezuela thing to heart. Now, whenever he runs into someone who says, “How’s Lucinda? I haven’t seen her in ages and she doesn’t return my phone calls,” he says, “Oh don’t worry, she’s doing fine, and her isolating has nothing to do with her feelings about you. Have you heard about grieving in Venezuela?”
November 27–28
I meet my niece Maggie, three months old, who is at Mom’s for a week-long visit. I look at her tiny features, her sweet bald head, and think of how she was born just hours after Giles died. My brother and his wife don’t offer her to me, and I don’t ask to hold her. But I stare, fascinated by her and the feelings she evokes in me. I feel curious, excited, and numb.
Later, when I hear her crying, I can feel something in my breasts, like letdown. I watch Paula settle Maggie down to sleep. Lying on her belly, Maggie lifts her head one way, then the other, her eyes gently closing. Her back rises and falls with her even breaths, like a soothing wave.
I wake the next morning feeling like a mass of lead that has fallen to the dark ocean floor. Why didn’t I get to lavish attention on Theo the way Ben and Paula get to with Maggie? There’s nothing I love more than that.
Today, thinking about Maggie, and Theo, and whether or not to try again, I notice that letdown feeling again in my breasts, and I am able to squeeze out a drop or two of milk. Sweet. A physical reminder of Theo, that he was real, like finding money from the tooth fairy under my pillow.
December 15
“Can you believe it’s been eleven months?” I ask Dicken.
“No, not really. It still seems like it all happened yesterday. Every day I wake up thinking about it, telling myself, yes, it really did happen. And he’s still gone.”
“Do you have any ideas about what to do on his birthday?”
Dicken shakes his head.
“Well, I guess I can finally stop buying all those heavy Mexican candles,” I say. We’ve kept a memorial candle burning in the bathroom window nook, where his changing table was once set up and waiting for him, ever since we returned from the hospital. The tall, rounded glass-encased candles, which come decorated with images of Mother Mary and Catholic saints, last about three days, longer than any others we’ve found, and cost only a dollar each. Every time I go to the store, I pick out a few to bring home. I’m proud that we haven’t let the light lapse; it’s been a continual vigil.
“What do you mean?” Dicken asks, his face creased with concern.
“We talked about letting the candle ritual go after a year.” I pause, noticing the sadness in him, adding, “But if you want to keep it going, that’s great with me.”
“Maybe we should keep it going until you’re pregnant again.”
Until? I’m stunned. I don’t know what to say.
December 24
Dunwich, England. At a lovely carol service, I cry through every hymn. All the words about beautiful babes bringing light remind me of Theo, plus the church is filled with babies. I think of how big I was last year at this time, Theo lying on my right side, a constant companion. I also think of Giles. What a year it’s been. A very long year.
I stay up late into the night, stuffing stockings and having a wonderful conversation with Charles, Giles’s father, who has joined us for Christmas. Charles, a vicar, is explaining his spiritual philosophy: “We’re all on a path of gradual correction, on our way to perfection, some of us slower than others.” His eyes twinkle, and it is hard to imagine how he can be so positive after losing his beloved son just four months ago. He amazes me—so wise and articulate and generous in spirit. I can see how Giles got to be the way he was: his ease, his sense of a benevolent universe.
It takes me a long time to fall asleep. When I finally do, Giles comes to me in a dream. He floats down, and I reach out and touch him, feeling his clothes and his flesh. I say, “If I can still touch you and know you are here, why should I fear death at all?” I wake up before he answers.
December 25
I tell Charles about my dream.
“That’s marvelous,” he beams. “You know, Giles reported a very similar dream about his mother not long after she died, that she came to him and told him not to worry because she was fine and happy.”
Christmas Day is hectic and messy. By evening, I’m tired and have a faint headache. I try on the one present I got, a sweater from Caroline, and it doesn’t fit me. Dix got me nothing (our agreement, but still disappointing); neither did the boys. I feel teary now, maybe sorry for myself.
I read the card Mom sent me. She tells me to remember that she thinks of me all the time, in case I am up with fear in the night.
December 28
Ardmore, Northern Ireland. I see Sheelagh, our Irish cousin-in-law, today. She is heavily pregnant with twins, and her belly looks like a torpedo. Her babies are arriving tomorrow by induction—or should be, if all goes according to plan.
It’s very relaxing here. We take a long walk along the river with Dad and Caroline. It’s rainy and gray when we set off, but soon the sun comes out and it is spring-like. Lots of hot chocolate, cozy meals in the kitchen, reading; the boys happy, playing hide-and-seek and football. They play soccer on the lawn in a crushing downpour, then shriek through the house and into the bath together. Full of energy, plans, some bickering, mostly camaraderie. I’m amazed at how they get on with almost any other kids, their many cousins in England and now here in Ireland. The feeling of not relating to them or wanting to be a mother has shifted entirely, just like Irish weather.
December 30
The twins arrived yesterday afternoon—Iona and Rose, lovely names. Dicken and the boys are over there now at a shoot. I join Dad for a walk on a mountainside, then take a trip into Limavady to shop and drink coffee at Hunters bakery, then head home for lunch and a bath. I’m really enjoying Dad, so engaged and optimistic and energetic and charming. Also smart and hardworking, generous, funny. Not bad for a dad, lucky me! I used to struggle with him sometimes, feeling unappreciated and not listened to. Maybe he’s changed somewhat, but I think it’s more that I’ve changed. I’m no longer as closed off as I used to be. I also know without a doubt that Dad loves me, and that I know this now is largely because of Theo.
I’m glad I’ve enjoyed my day away from Dix. It reminds me that I’m independent. So much of this year, I’ve felt like a tiny, needy child, clinging to him for dear life.
* * *
The rooks, crow-like birds that nest in the tree in the lane, the ones I’ve always loved to hear cawing at daybreak and see darkening the skies with their swarms, haven’t been here this year. I knew something was amiss but couldn’t put my finger on it at first. I am worried that they’re gone for good after all these generations.
“What’s happened to the rooks?” I ask Faye, our caretaker.
“Oh, they disappear for a month every December. They should be back any day now.”
I feel relieved. I don’t want anything to change.
* * *
I love the limited daylight. It’s a good motivator: every morning I push for a walk “while it’s still light.” And it’s so cozy coming home as the sun fades in the early afternoon, hunkering down by the fire or the kitchen cookstove, drinking cocoa, relaxing for hours that stretch on and on.
* * *
“Are you envious of Sheelagh?” Dicken asks me.
I shake my head. “I have no illusions that raising children is anything other than a lot of struggle . . . along with a lot of magic and love, of course.”
“That surprises me a little,” Dicken says. “You just seem to love kids so much.”
“Oh, I do. I love mine, you know that. I also love other people’s children; I notice I pay more attention to them since Theo died. I guess I appreciate their preciousness more than I would have otherwise, and plenty of them could use the extra attention. And I yearn for the baby magic, the merging, the closeness to the mystery. But the gritty everyday reality, the meal-making, the decisions—all that is part of the package.”
“Except with Theo it wasn’t,” Dicken says.
“Maybe I wished too hard for an easy-to-raise baby.” I pause, recalling the invocation I wrote in my journal the night he was conceived. “He didn’t require much raising at all other than nine long months in utero. Oh, I do miss him. Last night I ached for him.”
“I did too,” Dicken says.
December 31
I can’t sleep all night. The chiming of the grandfather clock is a curse: a startling reminder of how late it is, making me panic that I only have an hour to get to sleep before I hear the next ominous gonging. I put in my earplugs; then I can hear the sound of my ticking heart, rising in intensity as the fear of insomnia grows. I try to find my book light to read, but it is nowhere to be seen. Lamp on. Dix moans. Lamp off. I break down in tears. The bravery of the last few days is gone, the dam breaks.
“I miss Theo so much,” I say to Dicken. “Why does Sheelagh get two?”
“I know, it’s not fair,” he says, his voice sleepy and soft. “It’s a mystery.”
The end of the year is bittersweet: an end to a very sad, long year, but also the end of the year of Theo’s birth, the year we knew him, the only year we got to be with him. Time is separating us—an illusion, I suppose, but it feels so real. I’m a good sport a lot of the time, but sometimes I’m overcome by the heartbreak. Our little boy, gone. Can’t hold him, can’t see him. Can’t watch him grow, share this side of life with him. I feel it for Dix. He rolls closer to me and says, “I miss him too.” I reach out and feel his hands in the dark, feel how his little boy, his beloved baby, is gone for him. Lost in the night.
I watch these other babies arrive and feel cut off, like I’m separated in an entirely different reality, watching something alien unfold. Part of me feels left out, trapped between a lost path we’d set out on when we thought we’d be raising a third child, and the unknown future. Not a strong enough yes to pull us into another try for a baby. But nowhere near ready to admit we’re done trying. So where are we? Derailed. No energy for a certain path ahead, a definite wanting. No object to pour our present energy into—just the remains of our previous life, so changed now.
* * *
In the morning, the rooks have returned; I look out the window and see the trees laden with them, and I can hear their familiar cries.
January 5, 2007
We visit the newborn twins. They are tiny and perfect, but I don’t feel broody. It doesn’t break my heart to think we’re done, the way it did the first six months. I think of how I’m already weary from mothering the boys. I can’t see us doing this into our sixties.
On the other hand, Jasper is half-grown—nine years old this month. In another nine years, he’ll be eighteen. Such a paradox, wanting him to grow up and not wanting him to outgrow us and move on. I look at the package of parenting—the years and years and all the diapers and meals and early mornings and carpools and birthday parties and chaos and sleepless nights. Yet what else is there? What else has as much meaning, fun, laughter? What else can open the heart so wide?
January 6
Dicken is teaching a seminar in London, and I get to be his assistant. The boys are staying with Caroline for the weekend.
After a night in a small hotel on Bond Street, we wake early and walk through the gray streets to a coffee shop.
“What would you like?” Dicken asks me.
“I’ll have a pain au chocolat and a decaf Americano with whipped cream, please.”
Dicken orders and we settle into armchairs in a corner.
“Chocolate for breakfast?” Dicken says. “You never used to get sweets before protein.”
I shrug. “We’re all gonna die. Might as well have what we want while we can.”
“You might want to listen carefully to the lecture on blood sugar dysregulation this morning,” Dicken says, smiling.
I laugh.
“I actually think it’s great that you’re so much more relaxed about food,” Dicken says.
“Yeah, my relationship with food has really changed.”
“I’ve noticed you don’t carry healthy snacks with you anymore, or water.”
“My self-preservation energy is much less activated. I don’t think about protein. I can skip meals, though I don’t like to. I leave food on my plate—very new for me. I like to taste a bit of everything but don’t usually eat a huge amount of anything.”
“You look healthy too.”
“What do you think it is? Has my stomach shrunk? Did something happen to me physiologically after the surgery? Or did a mental-emotional shift happen as a result of Theo?”
“Gosh, I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I have a hunch it’s the latter.” I sit, musing on all of this. I realize that I’ve experienced a big change: I no longer see the fight against death as the point of life. I see life as an expression of love, a journey, a chance to create something. Death is inevitable, a mystery we will encounter—not something to avoid or try to outrace, not something to put off as long as possible by eating perfectly at every meal. I used to see all death as wrong, an injustice that threatened to make everything else pointless.
Dicken is looking at me, his eyes quizzical. The coffee and pain au chocolat arrive, and I can’t get over how delicious the first bite of my pastry is.
January 14–15
Back home. It’s almost Theo’s birthday, and I watch myself functioning and feeling fairly cheerful for the most part.
But all of a sudden, I am leveled. It’s as if my body has turned to lead. I’m lying in bed with a huge weight on my chest, pinning me down. I manage to get up but cannot walk without great effort. It is very odd, though not disturbing at first, because my emotions seem to be frozen too. I stay in bed for twenty-four hours, and as the day wears on, I start to feel more and more. It’s like my cells are reawakening, and as they do, my mind starts to flash back to last year, reliving each moment of the hours leading up to the birth. I can’t sleep; I can’t stop the memories, the images, the sense that it’s all happening again.
* * *
In the morning, Maud and her kids come in. Friends begin to appear, some bringing flowers, cards. The heaviness gradually lifts. I bake some bread with the sourdough culture I started last February. We drive to Gabriella’s house for a birthday party the kids have organized.
Cards and cake and presents. I share the bread.
“I made the culture with a tiny bit of breast milk,” I say as Andrew puts the bread to his lips. He makes a face and pretends to gag, and I laugh.
“It’s delicious,” he concedes after swallowing a bite.
Maud gathers us all together. Little Rosie stands close to me, holding the Theo doll. “We have a little surprise for you,” Maud says, addressing me and Dicken. “It was Cecily’s idea, and I have her on the phone here . . .” Her voice breaks a little. “I’m going to try not to get choked up. Okay, close your eyes.”
When we open our eyes, Courtney is standing in front of us holding up a large colorful quilt. As the quilt comes into focus, I see it has an image of me and Theo embroidered onto one of the patches. It also has an elephant, a black panther, a snake, a tree, and roses. It is stunningly beautiful, and both Dicken and I start to cry.
“Where . . . where did you get this?” I stammer.
“We made it!” a bunch of them say in unison.
“Actually, Courtney and Eva did most of it,” Maud says.
They turn it around so we can see that the back is stitched with the names of everyone who worked on it: my mom, sisters, Grace, and my closest girlfriends.
Later, as the children play, a circle of us adults sit and remember last year and talk about Theo. It is amazing to recall all of this together.
“I never held him,” Andrew shares. “I guess I didn’t feel worthy somehow.”
“The sadness of losing him was blown away by the beauty he brought,” Courtney begins, “but with time passing, it’s easy to fall back into the human tragedy and forget the gifts. Let’s always remind each other to remember the gifts, and integrate more beauty into the loss.”
Maud cries the most; she was more excited than anyone about me having another baby, even more than me. I can understand, because being a live-in aunt is such a wonderful experience—so much of the joy of having a little one with few of the responsibilities.
I tell the group, “I still feel him in my cells, in my heart, and I know I could never really lose him. He’s changed everything, so I see the world through a lens that he’s part of. But of course I do miss his body, the unfoldment of the babyhood and childhood we were anticipating. It’s complex, this loss, this gain. No words can sum it up.”