How did you want to handle the burial the nurse
asked……burial. I hadn’t even realized I
needed to think of that. At not quite
three months along, dealing with the grief of losing a baby was enough, not to
mention the surgery needed to remove the fetus.
Now a burial? Shell shocked, she
just moved me along through the process, asking if I understood what was going
to happen. Yeah, lady, I just lost a
kid. She died. My baby girl.
I bled out. On a cruise
ship. Just a couple of days after I lost
my dad to death. On the same cruise
ship. Stuck in the ocean. Yeah, I kinda understand this death
thing. I just went through it before
being thrust into it again.
On the day of departure, already vacated from the room on
the cruise ship, I felt a sizeable gush.
I knew it wasn’t right. Rushing
to the bathroom in the magnificent ship’s lobby, there was blood. Lots of blood. With nothing but my carry on luggage (the
cruise ship takes care of the large bags for you, and meets you with it on the
dock after departure) I did the only thing I knew how – I wiped and wrapped up
with toilet paper and rushed out to my then husband. I was given a listless pat on the back, and a
graceless ‘it’ll be fine’ line. We’ll
just call the doctor once we get home.
With that, he leaves me to my carry on bags as well as to Christian and
his bags. The man just walked away. Luckily, my brother in law at the time
overheard the conversation, and saw me struggling to pull two bags as well as
hold Christian’s small hand. He comes up,
whispers that I shouldn’t be doing all this with the situation, and grabs my
two bags, attempting to haul them out along with his. He doesn’t say much, but his eyes convey that
he knows what I know. I just lost my
baby, only days after losing my dad, and the douche of an ex husband just
walked away empty handed in more ways than one.
The doctor’s visit was a slow, extended, painful process to
confirm what I already knew. When the
ultrasound girl only looks but doesn’t say anything, when she leaves the room
to get the doctor, when the doctor just looks and sighs and asks me to meet him
in his office. As he sits behind his
massive desk his glasses come off. He
rubs his eyes, looks up. What else can
he say…..I already knew. I asked
why. A million reasons was his
response. A million different
complications, maybe even a combination.
But I want to KNOW. I want to
know why……there isn’t a good reason why.
This happens many, many times I am told.
I am walked through the process, how I have to have surgery
to remove the baby, that more than likely I’ll have kids again without a
problem. But that isn’t the end of
it. You just don’t remove “it” and move
on…..years later I still keep track of how old she’d be, and wonder what she’d
be like. I did have another perfect kiddo,
with no adverse affect from the miscarriage.
Christian has told people before that he has two siblings. A brother AND a sister. But that his sister is already in
Heaven. He states it very matter of
fact. Even though she does not exist
here in the physical realm any more, she does exist. She’d be eight this August. I still cry.
And wonder. And in many ways, I
still bleed out, but this time it’s my heart that just pains and bleeds for the
baby I knew, and loved, and held, but never got to truly meet.
