the pain from my memory. But I can’t figure out how to keep Reid alive in my heart without the ache. Will it always be like this? I have to believe it will get better. But then, do I want it to? Because when it gets better, what will be lost in the process? Already, I know that it will come at a price.
Aaron and I binge-watch Mad Men. We sit on the couch for hours, only rising to make tea and refill our bowls with cereal—our fridge is full of homemade meals, but we can’t stomach any of them. We think TV will be safe because babies never die there. But we quickly learn that nothing is safe anymore.
In one episode, Don Draper and his creative team are about to pitch a major idea to land the advertising for American Airlines. But on Good Friday, of all days, they get the news that their contact at the airline has been fired. Don is exasperated; the team is in a panic. Then someone asks what it means for them and Don says, “Now we have to deliver a stillborn baby.”
We press pause instantly and stare at the screen.
“Did you just hear that?” Aaron asks.
“Did that really just happen?” I can’t believe it. We rewind and watch it again to be sure we aren’t losing our minds. Before Reid died, I’d never thought about stillbirth—it wasn’t a word I could ever recall hearing. Suddenly, it seems to be everywhere.
But that particular line of Don’s sticks with me, and I think a lot about what the writers meant to say with it. The idea was still beautiful, that much was clear. Fully formed, perfect. But it would never live on as intended. Regardless, they had to go through the motions, as they would with any other pitch. And, I think, as a mother would with any other baby. My milk appears on the Tuesday. My breasts are hot and engorged, vessels full of liquid gold with nowhere to go. One of the first things I asked about after Reid was born was whether or not my milk would still come in. I thought that my body would understand there wasn’t a baby to feed, so I was surprised, and devastated, to learn that the answer was yes. I was told how to help it dry up, and my hand was held as I cried about needing that advice.
I am hit with a fresh wave of grief when my milk does come in. Knowing that it will disappear without being used is overwhelming. Later I will find out—and wish that I knew earlier—that I could have donated Reid’s milk to a baby in need, given purpose to my days. For a little while at least, I think I might have liked that milk to nourish a life, instead of slowly drying up and taking the last physical connection I had to my son with it.
I sit on the couch with frozen cabbage leaves on my breasts, with holes cut out in the center of them for the nipples. Soon, everything I own reeks of cabbage. My bras, my shirts, my sheets. Even my body—it seems to be seeping out of my pores. The smell is worse than the pain, somehow, so I get rid of the cabbage. Instead, I drink gallons of peppermint and sage tea. I make cold compresses from facecloths drenched in ice water with peppermint oil sprinkled on top and soak in baths scented with the essential oils. Sometimes globs of the oil pool together and land undiluted on my skin, burning red patches into my flesh, and I relish the feeling. Some other, separate pain I can pour my own into.
Really, I just miss him. That’s it. That’s the whole problem. I miss him every single second. My body cries for him. In tears, blood, and milk it wails deep into the burden of the night. And there is nothing that can soothe me dry.
IT’S FRIDAY, APRIL 10, one week after, the first of what I assume will be many terrible anniversaries. I wake up often during the night, unable to sleep knowing that one week earlier, in those very hours, Reid had passed away inside of me. I had slept through it. But the date has another significance, too. I know that today, one of my closest friends will be having her baby.
Amy lives in Ottawa, but we’d become friends at university years earlier, when she was the resident assistant of my dorm. We bonded instantly over our love of books and organization and handwritten cards. She had a single room and we would often end up there, staying up late as we talked into the night, sipping hot tea from the cafeteria, me lying on the floor and her propped up on her side in her bed. After I told her I was pregnant with Reid, she’d FaceTimed me—just to congratulate me, I’d thought at first. She had inquired about what fruit size Reid was at the time. A peach, I’d said, thinking her question was odd. But then she asked, “Do you think your peach might like to play with our blueberry?” and held her own ultrasound image up to the screen.
When Amy was twenty weeks pregnant, she was diagnosed with vasa previa, a rare condition where the connection of the umbilical cord to the placenta crosses over the opening of the cervix. Her waters breaking suddenly would mean a very real risk of both Amy and her child dying. At thirty-two weeks, she was moved into the hospital and put on bed rest. At thirty-six weeks, she was scheduled to have a cesarean.
I wake up braced for news about her delivery. It embarrasses me to admit it, but I was never really worried about her or her baby before Reid’s passing. Whenever she called me from the hospital during those last weeks of pregnancy, fearing what might happen, I hardly listened. I simply promised her that everything would be okay. It wasn’t that I knew the outcome; it was that I resisted the possibility of a different one. Because bad things didn’t happen to people I knew. And they didn’t happen to me. Now, all I expect is bad news.
Instead, when I grab my phone, there is a text from Brittany announcing that her daughter, Charlotte, has been born safely. She tells me she is experiencing all the expected emotions: happiness, relief, and love. She also feels deep sorrow, grief, and heartbreak. Joy because her daughter is here, but anguish because I didn’t get that same moment. After we shared everything during our pregnancies, including near-identical due dates, she can’t believe that we aren’t sharing the same outcome. I am grateful for her honesty and happy for her, and also so incredibly broken.
Amy’s announcement comes later that morning. They’d been waiting to find out the sex, and she tells me they have a daughter, Grace. The delivery went well. Grace is in the NICU to help with her breathing, but Amy assures me she will be okay. Amy will be okay too.
Although I know better than to make assumptions based on the sex of a baby, that both Amy and Brittany had daughters is a consolation to me, one that could lead to a gentler kind of grief as they grow and Reid doesn’t. I imagine their homes filling with the things little girls sometimes like, and it might be a little less obvious exactly what I’m missing.
Finally, I fall into my first deep sleep that afternoon, collapsing on the couch out of relief and pure exhaustion. I’ve survived the first anniversary. I’ve survived the births of my friends’ babies. Now to survive the rest.
5
THE FIRST DEATH I remember was when a close friend of my parents, Miranda, passed away from breast cancer when I was fourteen. She worked for my father and was often around our home—she even nearly married my uncle Mike, once upon a time. She was alluring, with her slim frame and hair as dark as midnight. She was quite possibly one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. More than that, she had a calm presence that was only enhanced by her soothing voice—I still remember the sound of it all these years later.
I don’t really remember much from when she was sick, just one time when I went out for a fancy lunch with her and my mom and she talked about all the fun wigs she got to wear. What I remember most about that lunch was the way she spoke about snowboarding. She talked about how much she loved it, and her eyes lit up when she did, and then she turned to me and told me she wanted to teach me someday. But we never got that chance. She died shortly after, and instead of my first snowboarding lesson I went to my first funeral.
Only it
