But there have been a lot of tears. This process is a lot like a refining fire, and I’m still trying to find my rhythm. There’s 90 minutes of dialogue to memorize. We’re also expected to learn their 26 Sanskrit titles. Try to make “Dandayamana-Bibhaktapada-Paschimotthanasana” roll off the tongue and you’ll have some sense of what we’re going through. The first posture, Half Moon Pose (Ardha Chandrasana), is the only posture in the series done in front of Bikram himself (and all 350+ of us). I completely crashed and burned on my first attempt. I’m not exaggerating. I thought I knew it (famous last words), but I completely fell apart. Bikram eventually had someone pass me the written dialogue and had me read from it. Yes, I was pleasant and cracked a few jokes that absolutely killed, but I’m really fighting to let it go by telling myself all the usual clichés and mantras. I just wish it had gone better.
Pressing on,
Measha
The greater the hurdle, the sweeter the victory. With each stumble, with each fall, I get back up stronger than I was before. I don’t focus on how many times it happens—I focus on how quickly I can see what I’m meant to be learning. To say it another way, what I think is important about the discomfort of burning off the things I don’t need to move forward is my reaction to the fire.
I know that’s not how we’re supposed to think. I know the pervasive belief and overwhelming trend is to run at the very whiff of discomfort. Why force it? It shouldn’t be that hard, we say. It just wasn’t meant to be. If it doesn’t bring immediate pleasure—or reap fast rewards—then it must be the wrong path. We misinterpret hardship as a signpost directing us to a wider, more populated path instead of this rocky, narrow one. I believe that there are plenty of times where walking away or not staying the course (especially when it gets hard) is a sign you didn’t really want it—or that you weren’t willing to sacrifice the sweat, hours, tears, money, pride, research, endurance and sacrifice to get it.
There are Christians who believe your hardships are brought on by your sin, and therefore you deserve everything you get. Well, I’m not that kind of Christian and I would argue that that isn’t actually how God works. He tells us to consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. (James 1:2–3) Meaning, Hold on! I’m using whatever and whoever to show you something about yourself that you need to fix so that you can properly handle the blessing I have for you. Don’t give up!
There are things we need to know about how to get through this deluge of manure so that when things do work out (and they will), we’ll know how to move forward. Your capacity to deal with pain and pressure determines your level of responsibility. When God says, Be strong and courageous! I will never leave you, nor forsake you (Deuteronomy 31:6), He’s saying to trust Him—there are blessings He can’t give you unless He tests you first. Nothing happens to you without His knowledge (He’s omniscient!), but there are some things you can’t see unless you’re at the bottom. We can be destined to run out of everything just so that He can give it to us better than before and we’ll know where it came from. Nothing we do can separate us from Him, and in the same way you wouldn’t leave a baby naked outside in a snowstorm, God won’t leave us to fend for ourselves.
What I find hugely comforting is that He isn’t telling me that if I’m good in this life, He’ll reveal himself to me in the next. (If that were the case, we’d never get to spend any time together!) God is with me now, engaging with me in the morning, noon and night. At the helm, steering the ship.
I’ve said repeatedly that my life can be incredibly isolating. My work and study can only be accomplished alone and no one can do it for me. I’ve come to realize that that creates a sense of loneliness that, if not balanced with community, can lead to some pretty self-destructive mischief.
The wonderful thing about the Christian God is that He wants me more than I want Him. Warts and all. I mean, He’s literally waiting. For me! Revelation 3:20 says, Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in, and we will share a meal together as friends. As friends. What a comforting sentiment. When life inevitably runs me aground—and it has more times than I can count—there has to be somewhere for me to look to and know the answers will come. And if I don’t have the wherewithal—or the will—to find them, I choose to look up.
The first time I got pregnant was in the spring of 2011 while my husband and I were “practising to try.” I had become a Bikram yoga teacher in June 2010, so my body was still humming from all the yoga it had been doing. I had expected to be fertile, but we hadn’t expected to get pregnant so quickly, and there hadn’t been time to seek out any medical advice. I was thrilled—and terrified because I wasn’t mentally prepared.
Our terror was echoed by the medical profession, but not our joy:
With your dissected aorta and hypertension, we wouldn’t advise this.
Are you sure you want to continue?
Maybe we should consider all our options here.
Do you know what you’re doing?
Remembering this still makes my blood boil. First of all, the medical profession had never seen a dissected aorta present itself in a patient so young, so they had no idea what my follow-up care should be or what “options” were available to me. (I was even turned into a case study based on the rarity of my condition and survival.) I wasn’t going to live my life under a microscope, tiptoeing around stress or denying myself the things I wanted out of my life, no matter how truncated that life might end up being.
I informed my obstetrician that the train had already left the station and she was to get on board or find someone who would, because this pregnancy was happening. So, despite my medical history and all the red flags it waved, a team of physicians was called in to oversee my care, because mine was such a high-risk pregnancy. I felt like I was having these babies in spite of my support team, instead of with them. They didn’t even consider the glass to be half full. And yes, I mean babies, because, you’ll remember, I was pregnant with twins.
I was also in the middle of rehearsals for Opera Atelier’s new production of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito in Toronto. I would be singing the lead of Vitellia, daughter of deposed Emperor Vitellio. I worried that my corsets might hurt my babies and that my costumes wouldn’t fit by the end of the production.
Because of my high-risk medical status, ultrasound tests were initiated well before the usual ten to fourteen weeks—that was how I had learned the wonderful news that I was carrying twins. Then at the next ultrasound, at ten weeks, we learned we had lost our first baby. As soon as I saw the technician’s sombre expression and heard her silence, I knew something was off. She had the worst poker face. She told us, “There’s only one heartbeat. The other has stopped. I’m really sorry.”
As I’ve said, I hate to cry in public. I don’t care how shocking the news or emotional the situation. I do not like to cry with strangers around. I wanted to shout, Okay, now leave! You’ve done your job. We’re not your friends. This intimate moment doesn’t involve you.
I wasn’t going to cry in front of a stranger, despite how broken open I felt. I know I was focused on the wrong thing. But if I thought about what was actually happening, I wouldn’t have been able to keep it together. My pride helped me retain my dignity, in some small way. When she finally did disappear, I pulled the sheet up over my face, then buried my head in my husband’s chest and wept. The kind of weeping with no sound. Where you hold your breath and squeeze out the tears until you have no choice but to take a breath and start over again. I cried and I cried, while stealing glances at that blank ultrasound screen, hoping to see that second heartbeat, praying for a miracle.
This is the process that would teach me that I am consoled by information. The more you can tell me about my dead baby and her journey (because I’ve always thought of her as a girl), the more I can join myself to her. I learned that the body of our dead baby would be absorbed into th
e wall of my uterus. I was told, “You won’t feel a thing.” Which was ridiculous, because of course I felt everything. Perhaps the pain couldn’t be seen or measured physically, but I was so devastated I didn’t know if I’d even be able to walk out of the room.
We remained thankful that we still had the other baby, and he seemed to be doing well, but before I was to leave to sing in Norway later that summer, my checkup at the hospital revealed that the left chamber of our second baby’s heart was thickening. That meant it was working too hard to support the other side, which wasn’t developing properly, but that it might self-correct. I learned this was a side effect of my blood pressure medication, taken prior to my pregnancy. While in Norway, halfway through my second trimester, I went for another ultrasound. The test revealed that though our baby’s medical situation hadn’t improved, it hadn’t deteriorated, either. I was hoping for the best, trying to prepare for any possibility, yet not wanting negative thoughts to affect the outcome. I wanted to believe that through the power of positivity, I would will my baby’s heart to grow and function properly.
When I got back to Toronto at twenty-one weeks, my first desire was to have another ultrasound. As Markus and I anxiously watched the monitor at Toronto SickKids Hospital, we could see that our baby’s heart was slowing down. By now we knew he was a boy. We watched his tiny heart as it struggled to beat.
The word sad doesn’t begin to describe how we felt, but I can tell you, sad as it was, it was also helpful for us to be a part of this fleeting moment. Since a mother can’t possibly feel the heartbeat of a baby at this stage, not even slightly, we were booked, as well, for a fetal cardiac ultrasound the next day. When I relive the memory of that time, I think I knew what we would see.
My husband and I were staying at the home of our dear friends Joan and Jerry Lozinski. As I was lying in bed, I knew our baby was gone. I told my husband, “His heart isn’t beating anymore.” The fetal ultrasound the next day confirmed what I already instinctively knew: On August 22, 2011, we lost our August David at twenty-one-and-a-half weeks.
The nurse at SickKids told me I was to head over to a different hospital. When I asked why, I was told it was to induce labour and give birth to my baby.
I was stunned and horrified. I’m not ready. You can’t make me give birth until I’ve processed what’s happening. I won’t let the death and birth of my child just happen to me. You can’t dictate that! He’s not going anywhere. I’ll call when I’m ready and schedule the delivery. It might be later today. It might be tomorrow or the next day. You can’t prematurely force me into this.
If there are any couples out there who find themselves in the same, unenviable position, I would encourage you to insist on following your own instincts and emotional needs by shutting out as many voices as possible. There’s no right way to grieve. You have to take in the information, decide what it means to you, then come to your own decision.
We went back to the Lozinskis’ and called our parents. My parents had attended all the major events in my life, including the medical ones. In 2006, my mother had stayed by my side for a week during my gastric bypass. In 2009, both my parents were at my bedside when I came out of emergency heart surgery. Now I wanted them present for the birth of August David.
They arrived in Toronto the next day and we went to the hospital together. Because of the stent in my aorta and my chronically high blood pressure, a cardiac nurse was present. She told me that I would be kept pain-free so as not to raise my blood pressure. This would be achieved through an epidural, which would deliver continuous pain relief to my lower body while I remained fully conscious.
That didn’t happen. I was a critical patient, in a state of deep grief about giving birth to a dead baby, and yet it was some resident sent to administer the epidural. Apparently it was hard to find the place of insertion between my vertebrae while I sat hugging my knees. He tried twice, which felt like being slapped in the back with a mace—twice. I told him, “You have one more chance, and if you fail, go find your teacher, because I can’t take this anymore.”
On the third try, the needle went in. I wouldn’t know until much later that the epidural didn’t work and I would end up feeling everything.
My labour was long. The contractions and the physical pain were excruciating, while the emotional pain clenching my heart was immeasurable. I was pranayama deep breathing to save my life, and I was confused about why I was in so much pain. When I look back, I see the sad irony in the whole process: This was the only time I would give birth naturally, without surgical intervention, and my baby would be dead.
My mother and my husband were with me in the room when August David arrived at 2:40 a.m. on August 23. I was able to hold him, and he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. He had super tiny eyes with membrane-thin lids that would never open. He fit into the palm of my hand. His little fingers weren’t quite separated yet and his skin was purplish and translucent, but he already had a brush of hair. His head was proportionately big the way babies’ heads are supposed to be at that stage. I could already see his Gosman nose and his Bruegger lips, and where his eyebrows would have been. He was my son.
I was still in physical pain and my blood pressure was so high. Thankfully, I was already in the intensive care cardiac unit and they ushered August David away while they brought my blood pressure down. The memory of the nurse leaving with my stillborn baby in her arms, still warm from my womb, is one that is burned into my mind forever.
Then the fatigue of the prior seventy-two hours set in and I slept. Hard. The next day, my husband, my parents and I met in a counselling room, where August David was brought to us, dressed up in a white outfit knit by angel volunteers. We took turns holding him, and we were given literature—“So You’ve Lost a Child”— to help us move forward in our grief.
We named August David after the founder of the Roman Empire and constitutional democracy and the biblical figure who also lost his first-born son, respectively. That our August David had been twenty-one-and-a-half weeks at birth was essential to our grieving process. At twenty-one weeks, a baby is entitled to a birth certificate and a record of having existed. I knew my baby long before twenty-one weeks, but I was grateful my pregnancy progressed far enough for us to fall under these customs that helped my entire family to grieve.
With a stillborn birth, the reality of seeing and holding that little body takes on a powerful place in memory and recovery. Until August was born, I was the only one who could feel him. But the loss wasn’t just mine alone. Daddy, Nanny and Papa, Oma and Opa in Switzerland, with whom we’d kept in touch by Skype, also had their own loss to grieve, along with August David’s cousins, aunts, uncles and our family friends. By having the privilege of giving birth to him, he became more than a blurry image on an ultrasound screen. He was Markus’s and my first-born, and a grandson and a nephew and a cousin.
I sanctioned an autopsy because we wanted to know if there were any genetic reasons that had caused August David’s death, some congenital heart problem that might afflict another child of ours. For this, we had to submit his body for three days of tests. A chromosome count would also be done to confirm what we already knew about his gender.
This meant three days of waiting until we could bury August David. My parents joined my husband and me in Chatham, Ontario, where we were living at the time while he completed his paramedics course.
This is where my grieving began in earnest. It was unfamiliar territory, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to unfold or how long it would last. I wanted it to be exhaustive. I knew there were stages I had to go through, and that if I missed any or tried to rush, I’d have to go back and repeat them. I knew I would be doing a lot of crying. I knew I would be doing a lot of staring off into space, wishing things had turned out differently or wondering if there was anything I could have done.
All four of us busied ourselves, and since we had recently moved into the top-floor apartment of a big old Victorian home and I hadn’t quite unpa
cked, we had plenty of projects to tackle. I was raised by a doer, so my mother and I mobilized. We organized shelves. We went to the Salvation Army, found a bunch of old chairs, stripped them and repainted them. We unpacked boxes and purged doubles of things we’d brought out of storage. When I wasn’t doing, I was suffocating from grief, crying in the bathtub, crying in the bedroom, clinging to the banister while I climbed the stairs, collapsing on the occasional step to let my sadness pour out. When the cloud would lift, I would get back to work.
This would prove to be some of the most meaningful time that I would get to spend with my mother. We had always been close, but we had almost skipped the maternal relationship because from very early on, we’d rallied ourselves around my career. There is no occasion more intimate than sharing the loss of a child. For her, it would have been the birth of her youngest baby’s first baby. To watch her child grieve and to try to find a way to be supportive must have agonized her, but she and my dad were exactly what I needed. In the middle of painting a chair, I would burst into tears, paintbrush in hand, and she would put the brush back in the can and then sit and cry with me.
My father, as a pastor of visitation, was used to visiting shut-ins, the sick and the grieving. He was so strong in his silent presence while undergoing his own loss. Sometimes you can have people around you who are mystified and grief-stricken by the event and you end up spending your time and energy bringing them to terms with your loss. My father’s not like that. I was blessed by his invested stoicism. My husband and my father share that characteristic. They were both present to share and to help. My husband grieved in his way and I grieved in mine. Though he was also so sad, I was happy to have him around. We were all trying to move forward while not wanting to rush it. Grief will not be coaxed or tricked into leaving. It has to go on its own, and never all at once.
Something Is Always on Fire Page 18