playing with fire
/Lu had a miscarriage recently. We were shocked and amazed that she was pregnant, but the glow didn't last. Within days of seeing that second line it became clear this pregnancy would not be continuing.
I don't know how much more heartache this family can take.
We are trying for life and siblings and family. We are striving against time, against history, against death, against memory. I want Zeph to have a brother, but he already didn't have one before he was born. I want our family to be a crew, but we are missing our Silas and we don't know if we will ever have more.
I love my two brothers and I loved growing up in our family of five. It was crazy, beautiful, loving chaos. It was always an event, every single day. Somehow my parents spread their deep and abiding love all over our tiny, growing souls. Despite illness and anger and sadness for my mother's MS, they imparted a profound love for laughter, for friendship, for family and for fun. I always envisioned having a two or three kids, but that is looking less and less likely and I'm not sure how much harder we should push. We have Zeph and he is amazing.
Zeph is my pure joy. Despite poops and crazy baby toddler behaviors and utter two-year-old defiance, I can only see and think and feel how lucky I am that this being is in our life. He should have an older brother. I wish he had a younger sibling of any kind at all. I want all of that, but I am terrified to try. We are old. The odds are not in our favor. We barely handled a miscarriage at 7 weeks. What happens at 20, at 30, at 40? We have traveled the dark path of death and I can never go back. I want to have everything for my son, but I know too much to have any illusions about what can happen.
And lastly, of course, are the 'positive outlook' people that would call me out for not thinking positively and not hoping for the best. But I just don't give a fuck about any of that anymore. Haven't for a while. What I think, what I hope for, what I want, it has absolutely no bearing on what biologically happens in my wife's uterus. Some may believe otherwise, and if it helps them that's fantastic but it just doesn't work for me.
I can't go back to the vortex ever again. I can't touch that deep dark deathness where Silas went. And yet I will. We all will. The only path forward is to try everything and to know that only nothing awaits. My parents will die. People I know and love will die. But I can't lose another child, not ever again. So to keep trying is to play with fire, and I know I can't handle the pain if we fail.
The spring is sneaking into the afternoon sun. The daylight has been saved. We get to collect a little more of that light late in the day when it's time to walk off work's sour funk and I wandered slowly with my son to the park today. I didn't hear Silas then. I didn't think about what Zeph is missing, who should have been leading the way. I was so fully engaged in the beautiful moments of his experience that I didn't imagine anything else.
Yet, when we check every month to see if he'll have a sibling I am suddenly pulled back into that terrible world of hope that resolves into failure. The deep well of sadness that always lives in my heart flows again, to all my limbs and heart and mind, drowning me anew.
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Have you suffered subsequent losses after losing your child? How difficult or easy was it to try to have more children after your loss? Did both partners share the same outlook or was one more or less adamant, hopeful, afraid, etc? How does your family compare to the one you grew up in?