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Five Hours

Page 14

by Lucinda Weatherby


  Between bouts of tears, we rest in the silence together and watch the sky gradually grow light. It becomes a gorgeous sunny morning after a night of light snow, the first day the sun has truly come out in ages. It has been raining, snowing, flooding for weeks and weeks. I remember how a few days earlier, in honor of all the precipitation, we’d considered the name Noah, which I will later learn, like Theodore, means “gift from God.”

  *

  In the early morning, Dicken calls his mother, who is at a conference in Arizona. She knows nothing of what has happened, and is planning to fly to us later that day, expecting to be with us for the birth. When Dicken reaches her at her hotel, she is awake, getting packed and ready for her flight. Dicken tells her the news, breaking down between words. “Mum, I held him for a long time and we looked into each other’s eyes that whole time. He was so beautiful.”

  Later, she will tell us that as soon as she heard, she noticed an enormous light filling the room she was in. She couldn’t get over it, and still describes the light as huge and undeniably real. When she saw that light, she says, she knew the baby was an astonishing being. She will also tell us that she’d been crying on and off for the past couple of days without knowing why. At the exact time of Theo’s death, she’d gone into the bathroom of her shared hotel room (not wanting to wake her roommate) and cried her eyes out. She wondered if it was some unresolved grief but couldn’t identify anything specific. “I just howled and howled,” she will tell us. “It was very odd.”

  *

  The nurse says they will need to take the baby for a short time to measure him and photograph his body for their records. They ask us if it’s okay to bathe him, and we say yes. I miss him dreadfully while he is gone and hold tightly to Dicken.

  The nurses bring him back dressed in a shiny white outfit with lace trim and a tiny lavender flower. They tell us he weighs five pounds, fourteen ounces. They give us a pretty white box with a stuffed bear, a necklace set with a small ceramic heart that fits into a larger one, a birth certificate and a death certificate, both with Theo’s footprints in ink, and materials on grief and on trisomy 13, which they suggest we read later, when we feel stronger. They tell us there are Polaroid photographs of Theo’s unwrapped body in the box. One of the nurses has run home to borrow her husband’s digital camera so we can take our own pictures of Theo. Later, she will print them up for us at home and bring us copies.

  *

  Maud comes back early in the morning, her eyes red, her face puffy and tired-looking. She brings me a brush, and she and Grace help get the tangles out of my hair.

  Visitors stream in and out all day, bringing flowers and cards. Almost all of them, especially the children, want to hold Theo. His body is cool but still soft. Several people comment that he looks just like a sleeping baby.

  The phone in our room rings. Dicken answers it, listens, whispers for a moment, then puts his hand over the receiver and tells me it’s my brother, Ben. I nod and he hands me the phone.

  At first all I can hear is Ben sobbing, then choking out, “I’m so sorry, Cinda.” More sobbing. Then, “When Cec called me, she was crying so hard she couldn’t tell me what happened. All she said was, It’s Cinda.” He breaks down again. “I thought it was you, that you had …” He cries some more, and I cry too. Then he composes himself and asks if they’re giving me any drugs.

  “I think there’s a painkiller in my drip,” I tell him. “And they’re offering me something strong, morphine maybe, but I’m too numb to need anything.”

  “Well, save some of the good stuff for me,” he says, and I find myself laughing.

  *

  Ralph visits. “Theo was so lucky,” he says. “He had the ideal life, held in his mother’s arms the whole time. What more could anyone ask for?”

  Ralph sits by our bed and reads us the words of his guru, Paramahansa Yogananda: “Though the ordinary man looks upon death with dread and sadness, those who have gone before know it as a wondrous experience of peace and freedom.” This washes through me without starting any analysis or evaluation in my mind. I’ve read and heard Yogananda for years, and for the first time in my life, I know these words as truth, rather than just hearing the ideas and hoping they’re true.

  Time seems to stop and expand into a huge white space. I have very little mental activity. It is like sitting in a vast nothingness. I can’t even begin to consider reading, listening to music, or thinking of anything past or future. For days this will be the case. I can only be with people, talking and listening, even laughing occasionally, or sit blankly, or cry. I have very little interest in food, and it takes severe hunger pains to remind me to eat.

  I’ve found myself in a state that is weightless, as if I’ve dropped every ounce, surrendered everything I’ve been carrying, even things I didn’t realize had weight, like unarticulated worries, attention on others, memories, thoughts. Being in this nothingness, this all-ness, is effortless, peaceful. A paradox of emptiness and fullness. And now that I’m here, I see how much energy I’ve wasted in my life, worrying that I didn’t have this in me, that it would take more discipline and effort than I was capable of to see truth so purely. I woke up when I had to, when I knew Theo would die, and then everything in me became love.

  I hope I don’t go back to sleep, but I know it’s okay if I do. When I need to, I will awake again. None of our life is truly wasted. We will always land here in the end.

  *

  Paul sits with us and says, “You’re both profoundly changed forever.” His wife, Patty, a former nurse-midwife, can’t get over what a beautiful baby Theo is. She says, “If you’d had an amnio, you’d never have had this incredible experience of change.”

  Dr. Moreno comes in to check on me. She holds my hand and asks how I’m doing. Through choked tears, I tell her how grateful I am that she recommended the C-section, that she got our baby out in time for us to meet him and be with him for those irreplaceable hours. She nods solemnly, her eyes blinking open and shut with emphasis, making me wonder if she is uncomfortable.

  Just then, Sam bursts into the room. “Tia! The nurses gave me a quacka!”

  Dr. Moreno smiles and tells me, “My nieces and nephews call me Tia.” I wonder if she has her own children but don’t ask.

  Jennifer, the pregnant family doctor, comes in and tells me how sorry she is that she reassured me before the surgery that the baby would be okay. “I’ve never delivered a trisomy baby,” she says.

  I tell her I understand and that her words helped calm me down, even though they didn’t turn out to be true. I ask when she’s due. “Next week,” she says. I smile, feeling nothing but sweetness for this kind doctor and her soon-to-be-born baby.

  Kathy, the anesthesiologist, comes in and can’t speak at first because she is crying. I show her Theo, introduce her to him. I thank her for being so warm, and tell her she made all the difference.

  “You can have another one, right?” she asks, her voice thick with emotion.

  Without thinking about it, I shake my head. Then I say, “Well, who knows. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

  *

  I cry my eyes out all that day but never lose touch with how graced I feel. Looking at Theo’s angelic, peaceful face makes me weep, mostly with a sense of awe and gratitude. I’m also aware of a new force pushing up from the depths of me. Gradually, I am starting to feel the longing for what I know I can never have back.

  A friend arrives with cups of coffee from Dutch Brothers, and they smell good. My first thought is, Too bad I can’t have any, because I’m thinking I need to keep my breast milk pure for the baby. When I realize my error, I sob. I don’t want the coffee after all.

  *

  These two days in the hospital, I almost always burst into tears at the sight of anyone I haven’t seen yet. I cry on the phone to my father, my brother, friends. I cry when I see what we have been through reflected in their eyes, their voices. But I’m not just crying from sadness. I am moved by everyone, their lo
ve for us, their every gesture. It’s like I’m seeing them without any filters, and their beauty is astonishing.

  *

  Dicken’s mother Caroline arrives. I feel a strange sense of pride as I show her Theo and watch her tenderly take him into her arms. She looks at him, smiling and wiping tears from her face. Then she comments on the light in the room. “The angel of birth is here, and so is the angel of death. No wonder this place feels so heavenly.”

  We discuss Theo’s features, noting the family traits he seems to have inherited. “He’s got the Edgecumb hook nose,” Caroline says. “A big nose for such a little face.” I remember that she said the same thing about Jasper when he was born, and again feel slightly defensive about my baby’s looks, even though I know that in Theo’s case the size of his nose will not shape his future. It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. But it does. This is my baby and he is perfect.

  *

  Karen, who years ago lost her own baby boy to trisomy 18, leads a beautiful blessing ceremony that afternoon. Midwives, friends, nurses, and family crowd into the small room. All the family members dip flannel pieces into rose water and lavender oil and anoint Theo’s body.

  Grace tries to sing “The Rabbit Song” and keeps bursting into tears. We wait each time and she finally gets the words out in her sweet voice:

  Oh the racing of the moon and the rising of the sun

  These flowers green and tall must go the way of all

  And winter comes too soon …

  Oh the sparrows in the sky and the dragons in the sea

  In mad or merry weather we’ll take a rest together

  Under the apple tree …

  Later, Karen sits with us and tells us the story of her son Juniper, who was born with trisomy 18 and lived for a number of days. “What a blessing he was,” she says, eyes shining. I can’t help but note the strange fact that both Karen and Rhione, whose son Jared died three years before, have lost their third child, like me. What are the odds? Did everything line up this way so that our birth team could support us through this experience with the most powerful form of compassion?

  *

  Kevin looks at Theo and says, “It’s such a shame he didn’t stay around longer.” Jasper clings to Dicken.

  Several members of the Threshold Choir come by. You are loved, they sing, and I sob. It feels very odd to be on the receiving side of the choir’s offerings.

  The Megaritys, very close family friends, arrive at some point. Shannon, Dicken’s fishing buddy, is carrying a huge platter of halibut he’s cooked. His face is so intense that it touches me, makes me want to reassure him. Angie is wiping away tears. I show her Theo, and she smiles. She takes him and we gaze at him together. Shannon gently cradles Theo in his big arms, looking down at him. Their kids and Courtney’s are eager to hold Theo. I’m amazed at their lack of fear.

  Throughout our days at the hospital, the handful of children coming in and out flit between crying, laughing, playing, holding Theo, asking the nurses for sweets, and testing various medical devices. Sometimes they fight over whose turn it is to hold Theo. Grace and Rosie agree that he smells like cookies and cream. I think it’s the lavender oil we used to anoint him during Karen’s ceremony.

  *

  Whenever I break down, Dicken rushes to hold me. I feel utterly dependent on him. When he leaves the room to talk to someone on his cell phone, I get agitated and panicky, and wheel my IV machine into the hall to find him.

  Holding Theo is bittersweet. I love being able to hold him tight, to feel his comforting weight in my arms, to gaze at his features, which were a mystery for so long. He smells delicious. We dress him in the purple sweater Maud has been knitting for the last month. Some of the time I feel almost normal, as if I’m holding a live baby I’ve just given birth to, one who will wake up any moment and need to be nursed. But then reality grabs me, and knowing we will have to let him go, watching his lips begin to dry up—it all rips at my heart, and another wave of sobbing begins.

  One of the nurses brings us a container of lip salve for Theo, and I put it on his cool, crackly lips. I repeat this every so often. I like being able to take care of him this way. It is one of the only tangible acts of mothering I will get to do.

  I don’t notice anything about my body or the recovery from surgery. As the nurses come to check my vitals every few hours, look at my incision, ask about pain levels, put my feet in a strange pulsing machine to increase circulation at night, and so on, I keep thinking they’re making an unnecessary fuss. All of my attention is on Theo. The rest of life, even my physical survival, seems completely irrelevant. My pain level is always below five on a scale of one to ten. I get off the opiates the first day, then stop the ibuprofen. Everyone keeps telling me to “keep on top of the pain,” meaning I should take a painkiller before things get bad, but I prefer to get off all medication as soon as possible. I want to be pure and clearheaded through all of this. I feel crushed yet at the same time invincible.

  And through it all, I am aware of a deep feeling of gratitude to the doctors and nurses for their training and knowledge, to modern medicine for how this birth has unfolded, and to each person for their sensitivity and kindness. It’s as if I am above everything, looking down at the thousandfold actions and paths that have led these people here, from their youthful aspirations to become medical professionals to the classes they had to take, to the years of training and licensing requirements, job placement and scheduling, all the way to the moment I checked into the birth center, and then through the surgery and its physical aftermath, all smooth and relatively painless. I am aware of medical progress over decades, research and practice and honing that have led to low-risk surgeries like mine. I know it is a miracle and a luxury that I don’t have to suffer physically, that my loved ones don’t have to see me in pain or worry about my survival. I know that in many parts of the world today this C-section wouldn’t have been possible, and that in other places right now and almost anywhere in relatively recent times, childbirth itself was and is a gamble; in another time or place, I could easily have contracted an infection and died.

  Because of my good fortune—not only the modern expertise available to me but also the empathic skills, the presence of these openhearted medical people—we can forget the physical and pay full attention to Theo, to love, to the cataclysmic events of the heart.

  CHAPTER 15

  January 16

  Theo was born early Sunday morning. By Monday evening, Dr. Moreno says I am medically stable enough to go home the next day. I don’t want to go. I want to stay in this beautiful place with Dicken and our beloved son forever. I can’t imagine life anywhere else. I do not know what awaits me beyond here. I don’t want to know. I don’t care.

  Dr. Moreno asks me if we’ve decided what we are going to do with Theo’s body. I sense some pressure, maybe even judgment from her, as if there is something strange about us having Theo’s body for so long. I feel rushed. She is urging me to move on, and I don’t feel ready.

  Someone, Mom I think, makes arrangements with a funeral home to have Theo cremated on Tuesday. Monday night, I don’t sleep at all. I just hold Theo and look at him and cry until I’m exhausted. The nurses bring me ice packs to hold over my eyes, which are almost swollen shut. In the morning I will look in the mirror for the first time and hardly recognize myself. I will see red blotches all over a pale face, grossly puffy eyes, and a pair of irises rimmed by rainbow blue-green-gold kaleidoscopes like windows that go on forever, empty and weightless, haunting.

  January 17

  As the sky grows light Tuesday morning, dread spreads through me. I cry and tell Dicken I can’t bear to let Theo’s body go. Can’t we wait another day? His lips are drying up, but other than that his body doesn’t seem to be in bad shape at all. Lots of people, nurses included, comment on how amazing it is that he isn’t visibly decomposing. His cheeks are still pink, his skin still cool and soft. I kiss him so much my own lips begin to dry up. It seems unbearable to leave the
hospital and go straight to the crematorium.

  Dicken consults with Mom and tells me it is fine to keep him at her house for one night, then cremate him on Wednesday. That feels right to me. Big relief.

  As we get ready to leave the hospital, I put the maternity clothes I’d worn there back on. The pants are loose now. Maud, who has come to help us, our friend Amy, Dicken, and I hold hands in a circle and close our eyes as Dicken says a prayer of gratitude. He asks for strength as we go forward. We gather our things, mostly cards, flowers, and the box the nurses gave us. I carry Theo bundled in blankets; closest to his body is the white one he has worn since the moment I first held him. Before leaving the ward, I walk down the hall to look into the operating room, now empty.

  “That’s where you were born,” I tell Theo, tears welling.

  I say goodbye to the nurses and we head down the hall. Holding my bundle just like any new mother would hold a baby, I hope no well-wishing stranger will come up and want a glimpse of him. No one does.

  Halfway down the hallway, Sage, the sweet nurse who checked us in that first night, comes running up behind us. “I just heard you were leaving, and I want to walk you out!”

  On the curb, as we wait for Dicken to bring the car around, Sage takes my hands in hers and looks into my eyes. She tells me that her mother died when she was twelve. “I never saw her body, and no one helped me mourn,” she says, her eyes filling with tears. “It was amazing to watch you and your family with Theo. It’s helped me more than I can say.”

  Dicken has moved the car seat from the middle seat, where it was strapped in, waiting for the baby, to the rear, where it now lies on its side. We get to Mom’s. I climb into bed while Dicken unpacks our things and makes an altar of flowers, candles, cards. I hold Theo’s body close to me constantly. I keep looking at his sweet hands, the tiny extra fingers I’ve grown to adore. I run my fingers over and over the tufts of fine blond hair on his head. I put my face next to his and memorize the feel of his cool cheeks.

 

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