This is how much she loves her daughter, enough to rend apart cells from deep within her chest, under layers of flesh and bone, without even lifting a finger. It may look as though she’s just sitting and staring at the wall, but inside, this bloody, violent, spectacle is unfolding.
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this cursed body of mine, a walking grave,
a shallow coffin,
now scarred by an indescribable kind
of maternal violence
that i shudder to absorb
Us mortals, we like to fathom. Make sense. Calculate. Depend on. Plan. We accept that being derailed is part of the journey, and getting back on track reinforces the predictability, the reliability of life. But when life just becomes one derailment after another, do you create a different path?
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This is where my memory begins to fade. Wanting, what I now believe was the protection of my sanity, my mind started uprooting entire events and details of Raahi's hospital stay, as I could not bear to remember the nuances, grief sweeping through me like a forceful mudslide. My memory wanted to forget death, and with it, it had to forget life too.
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I remember exactly how we were sitting on the hospital bed. I remember the color of light coming through the hospital window. I remember A and I looking at each other, our pause of disbelief, and looking back at this idiotic woman who hadn’t gotten the memo. Then saying what I suddenly know I’ll be saying over and over and over: “The baby died.”
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I do not look at myself with those old eyes of mine. Instead, I now look at myself with my new eyes. Raahi’s eyes. I see her Ma, her newly stylish and still nerdy Ma. We both like how she looks. How has your appearance evolved/changed since your loss(es)? Does making an effort to look "put together" matter anymore to you? What connection, if any, do you now make between how you look and how it makes you feel?
Read MoreBereaved parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion, and the other side of getting through this mess called grief.
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Parents of lost babies and potential of all kinds: come here to share the technicolour, the vividness, the despair, the heart-broken-open, the compassion we learn for others, having been through this mess — and see it reflected back at you, acknowledged and understood.
Thanks to photographer Xin Li and to artist Stephanie Sicore for their respective illustrations and photos.
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: not ttc | infertility after loss
: parenting after loss
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: how to help a friend through babyloss
: how to plan a baby's funeral
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