by Daya Clay Moss
When Elijah, the eldest of Daya’s then two sons, was just six and a half years old, he fell into a diabetic coma and died.
Daya chronicles her journey of deciding to birth again, after the tragic loss ofher young son. The story ofher third birth is framed between two poems dedicated to Elijah.
A glimpse into Daya’s world ofpain, grief struggle, hope, and healing follows.
These are the Things I Can Tell You
A poem written for Elijah Moss Cheney before his birth
Birds talk and waves are exciting.
The full moon is a story that continues. The rocks are sharp and sing in salty edges of cool flavor.
Your body rocks in mine and mine in the Earth, rocking and sliding.
Humans and machines are a part of this silver-edged story—do not despise nor worship them. They are like the clear water and they have made music and created visions to tell about love, which is life itself and not the meaning of life.
You can take something from anything and make something new, giving it back.
Build your bones strong from shells and calcium and rock and blood but put your softness on the outside so people can touch it.
Everything around you tells the supreme story of itself— beauty, survival, struggle and existence—the holiness of creation—
which you, yourself understand.
Walk well within your mind, upon this planet.
And a Third Birth for Daya . . .
The Last Trimester
July
He’s going to be some kind of monster, I worry as I hold my swollen baby belly—some kind of dark depressed soul. How could he not be? He’s felt nothing but sadness, grief and resignation his whole unborn existence. And guilt. Don’t forget the guilt . . .
It is summer and all around me people are enjoying the flowers and fresh air, strolling with their kids in the park, pushing them on swings . . . but I can barely make it outside some days—like today. I sit in my little basement apartment all day after rushing my four-and-a-half-year-old boy off to day care (more guilt). I sit in one spot and alternate between crying and staring blankly at my ugly red couch until the tears return again. In a few months it will be one year since my biggest boy, Elijah, died. He was only six and a half. By the time this baby is born, it will be more than a year since I have touched his freckled face or listened to his contagious, rolling laughter. This baby, his brother, will never get to meet him.
I knew right away that I wanted to have another. The empty spot was just too big our family awkward and lopsided. My partner was hesitant. Though he had parented my two boys with me for the last few years, we had never seriously discussed having our own—and the circumstances were hardly ideal. Everyone—doctors, counselors, all the “experts, ” told us not to do it, to wait and see.
But for me there was no option. Our relationship seemed to crumble under the weight of grief, both of us attending to our own in opposite and incomprehensible ways—he delving into busyness, work, and quiet unreachable distance; me sleeping too much, weeping uncontrollably, alternating between emotional anxiety attacks and a zombified stupor.
Two of my best fiends gave birth a month after Elijah died and the jealousy (for lack ofa stronger, more encompassing word) was so complete that I could not make myself call and give my blessings. I couldn't pretend to find their joy within the pool ofmy loss.
My desire became a need and then an ultimatum: get me pregnant or go your own way—there is nothing else to hold it together.
August
We are moving to the new house—a real house with a big yard. I am huge and yet I carry with me a gaping emptiness. The fullness and the emptiness rest side by side within me, rub up against one another. I can sense the excitement of a new beginning stirring and yet it is as if I perceive it from behind a thick sheet of plexiglass, separated from the actual feeling—an outside observer.
September
This pregnancy has not brought us together. We still alternate and circle around one another’s needs, our biorhythms out of synch. If my sexuality has reawakened, his has become reserved, overly cautious of the being between us.
This month is the anniversary. My now eldest son picks out a tree and we plant it over some of Elijah’s ashes that are left. I tell him stories about how Elijah gave him a special made-up name and talked to him when it was his turn to ride around in my belly. He wonders aloud whether Elijah met this new baby in passing.
In just over a year, he has gone from being my baby to my only child and now to my oldest. I worry about him too—so much for a little spirit to hold.
October
The nights have grown long and dark. All the apples have fallen from the trees. Each night my boy takes his place at our dinner table dressed in his costume of the grim reaper—long dark robe, plastic scythe in hand—he is ready.
And finally, it is time. Three days before Halloween, we are up late bickering when my water breaks. I am scared. How can I do this again? Am I ready? Is he? Did I force this to happen? I’m not ready . . . What ifsomething goes wrong? What is something is wrong with the baby . . . ?
He is so fast, this third boy—there is no stopping him. It is not one of those starry-eyed blissful births. I am tense and it is one long transition. The midwife calls and asks would we be willing to come to the hospital—there are two other women in labor there and the other midwife is away. We tell her we are not moving anywhere. She arrives minutes before he is crowning. The whole event is over within an hour and the midwife rushes off to the two other women still laboring in the hospital.
I am so happy that it’s a boy. I needed this boy. I look at him in his father’s arms, both of them asleep in the big armchair beside the bed. His round face. His light fuzzy halo of hair. There is nothing dark or depressing about him. There is nothing wrong with him at all. He is perfect.
There is no way I could ever replace my eldest son. He is gone and his absence forever holds a place inside my family. And yet, somehow, this other boy came to stand beside that place and together with his big brother, give it shape and define it. He took darkness and turned it inside out, shooting back a gentle compassion that has gone miles toward healing what all the doctors and experts couldn't touch.