Fighting

Bruno and I have been fighting a lot, and at some outrageously inopportune moments. It's mostly me: I'm super emotional and hormonal right now. But I have to guess that for both of us, the end of the month is making us more and more uncomfortable. I don't know how we are going to get through that day. I really don't.

As we approach the one year memorial, I am struck by the fact that we didn't have a funeral. At the time, it seemed utterly impossible. The idea of transporting the bodies of our sons from Oregon to CA, of picking a plot, organizing a ceremony, asking everyone to fly in from all over the world on no notice. But the truly impossible thing to imagine was being at that ceremony, being at some grave site attempting to say anything or listen to the comforting words of others. We just couldn't. But now, a year later, I am sorry that I denied our friends and family the opportunity to come and stand and express their grief and love for us and our family. I'm sorry I didn't give Pedro and Archer's grandparents or aunts and uncles a chance to get some closure.

As you might imagine, I've been thinking of Archer and Pedro more and more these days. A year later, I still can't believe they are gone. I think back on the blissful ignorance of my pregnancy, of how happy I was parading around NYC in my maternity clothes, writing my next one woman show in acting class all about the trials and tribulations of pregnancy. I want so much to be pregnant again, to be raising a child, to be walking out of this chapter of our lives and bustling our way through the next. Our loss and our unfullfilled need are mixing together, much to our discomfort. And every day on Facebook I see that someone else is displaying a belly photo, and even my own family has already had one more grandchild and is heading toward another, due the same time as Pedro and Archer.

I feel time stretching and contracting in the most painful combinations. This year since Pedro and Archer's birth and death has flown by far too quickly: it angers me that so much time has passed, that the world has gone on and at such a bawdy pace. At the same time, an infinite amount of time has passed and I am still not holding a baby in my arms, not even pregnant yet. And each month, after facing failure, the days creep by at an unbearably slow pace until we can try again. The calendar is not my friend.

And I am left to conclude that there is nothing to do but stop fighting. Surrender. I cannot push, pull or otherwise manipulate time. I can't bring my sons back. I can't undo what has happened. I can't make myself any younger. Here I stand, in the middle of this story, not the end mind you but the middle, and as my beloved cousin suggests, there is nothing to do except find an oxygen mask, put it on, and keep marching.

Guess I'd better stop fighting with my oxygen mask, eh?