Small Talk

I'm thinking about Laurel today.

Who am I kidding?  I think about Laurel every day.  I don't cry every day.  I don't despair every day.  But I think about Laurel every single day. That's what it is to love somebody.  Loving Laurel means holding her close even when she is not there.

The last picture of me with Laurel, who had passed.

  It is so complicated, losing her the way we did.  A full-term baby lost before she's born isn't a miscarriage and she isn't the baby who died in her mother's arms.  My pain is the grief of a mother who has lost her baby, and yet it is inextricably linked to the relief of a mother whose child was spared great suffering.  It is so messy.  It does not fit neatly into boxes.

"So it makes for poor small talk."  I told my therapist.  She liked that, the definition of small talk as topics that fit neatly into boxes.

I make a lot of small-talk these days.  That's the way it is when you enter a new community.  You start with small-talk, and you grow organically deeper.  My new community is Elsie's preschool.  I can't move past the small-talk because there is no natural growth to be had.  The one thing that is always on my mind is so big and unpleasant and deeply personal that it makes me the grim reaper of convivial conversation.  If I venture into personal territory, I sweep down communication in one violent, crazy swoop.

Try it some time.  Try talking about dead babies.  "Dead babies!  Dead babies, dead babies, dead babies." 

So I stick to small-talk.

Some days, I'm happy for this separation.  Sometimes, it feels good to play it like I'm back to normal.

Other days, I want to grab the person I'm talking to and shake them and say, "Do you have any idea what I have been through?"  Sometimes, I want them to understand. 

No matter how I feel at any given moment, the topic comes up.  It comes up in the most mundane of places.  Today, someone (the only mom who knows about my loss) was asking me if I had a big party for my birthday this year.  Such an innocent question!  She was clearly playing it safe.  But -- oh no!  Not safe today!

"Actually, it was a pretty bad time.  That was back in June when we lost our baby." 

Predictably, the room fell silent, and everyone murmured their condolences.  There's this impulse to soothe and smooth over the uncomfortable social rift.  One mom ventured,

"I'm so sorry.  The same thing happened to my cousin, and it was so hard.  But now she's pregnant!"

I'm pretty sure the same thing did not happen to her cousin.

No no.  You don't understand.  I've had pregnancy losses.  Three of them.  Yeah, that sucked.  But this time, we didn't lose an embryo, we lost a baby.  Term.  5 lbs, 13 oz.  Her name is Laurel.  We lost Elsie's sister.  And it hurts, and I miss her, and I am still very much in grief, and it sucks about as much as you would expect.  And maybe I'll get pregnant again someday like your cousin, but it's not going to be happy for me.  You see, it's going to be terrifying. The entire time, it is going to be terrifying.  And that is my journey.  It's like I tell Elsie sometimes, some sads are just big sads, and they're not so easy to cheer up.  I've got a big sad.

But I don't say this.  I don't say anything.  I just choke on my tears and I nod and I wish that I was sociable and easy to talk to the way I used to be, and I try to accept what she's giving me -- even though it's not what she thinks.  She is trying to make it better for me, but she can't.  All she can do is hold onto hope for me.  That matters, so I'll take it.  I'll let her hold the hope, because I'm all out.