Thought for the Day:
My daughter died on a warm day in July. I'm not sure exactly which day,
or even that "she" was a "she" at all, if you want to be
really specific. At nine and a half weeks, the organs that determined these
things weren't fully formed, much less detectable by sonogram. And even though
I had seen pictures on the Internet of nine-and-a-half-week-old fetuses, the
doctor refused to speak in any concrete terms. We did not say the word baby.
Instead, she referred to the painful night of bleeding, cramps, and tears as the
"passing of cells and tissues.”
I suppose these words, cells and tissues, were what made it easier for
people to say things like "You can have more" and "Things happen
for a reason.” They did not know that in
my imagination she had dark hair and porcelain skin dotted with freckles like
her dad. We made up silly songs together, and she danced around the house in
pink tutus and patent leather shoes. She drew pictures of bright yellow suns
and green grass that I had already hung up on my fridge. She would fall asleep
on the giant paws of my Saint Bernard, her guardian who lovingly endured all
manner of bows and barrettes fastened to his reddish brown fur. She was an
athlete; she was an artist; she was my first child. She had yet to draw her
first breath in this world, but she was very much alive. She even had a name.
There was no funeral, no memorial marking, a gravesite, because there
was no burial. Barely anyone acknowledged that she was even gone. It felt
strange mourning for someone whom no one else seemed to know existed, much less
felt their absence when they were gone. Someone who changed the direction of
my life so profoundly without ever uttering a single word had left this world
as unremarkably as she had entered it.
I often wonder the purpose of a life that lived for only nine weeks,
just long enough to make me sick at the smell of chicken and want to lie on the
couch all day. I grapple daily with the notion that all things have a purpose
in a divine plan, when things feel anything but carefully designed. But I do
know that this baby made me a mom for the first time, if only briefly. And no amount of time will change that.
—
Sarah Schaffner is a freelance writer and
editor living in Baltimore.
