The term for my baby’s condition was Acrania, a neural tube defect, a failure of the bony components of the skeletal system to develop properly and fuse. A condition that was not compatible with life.
Pat pulls me aside and whispers. “If your husband were here he’d buy it for you in a heartbeat. Don’t you think you deserve it?” She gives me a long knowing look. For nearly forty years we’ve shared each other’s histories, heartbreaks and happiness. I feel an outpouring of love, for her, these women, this week. She is my oldest, dearest friend, who knows everything about me yet manages to love me anyway.
Modern day motherhood is a strange balance of perfection and not giving a fuck. In the same breath we are told that we can’t have it all (pick two: clean house, happy kids, self care) and yet, we are bombarded with how to raise these little humans in a world that feels like it is about to implode on itself.
I eat to pass out because I don’t want to feel. I eat to punish myself for not dealing with the pain, with school, with feelings of hatred and not wanting to live.
My procedure itself went OK. The worst thing afterwards was the cramps. They told me to take a couple days off work so I had it done on a Friday morning. I didn't tell anyone, especially not Claire. She would have known exactly how it had happened and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction.
“This kid’s not crashing on me. Let’s get this done, people.” The emergency room doctor ordered Adenosine and explained that it would re-set my son’s heart; take it from 266 beats per minute back down to a normal 100. He did not explain how that would happen.
It was Dad’s second wife that taught me the power of my own voice. She was the one to whom I confessed my sordid little secrets. She was the one who took me to my first political rally. She was the first adult who made it a priority to listen to me instead of imploring me to be quiet. She helped me begin to see my own worth as something that came from inside me rather than something that was determined by other people.
I remember this. The insecurity. The deep pain of feeling like I was doing it all wrong. Watching kids who knew what to do and say, kids who were cool. I wasn’t one of those kids, I was shy and quiet. I would get invited to some of the parties the popular kids threw but I would rarely go, because the anxiety was simply too much for me. If I went, who would I talk to?
The ache intensified with every new photograph or video of victims fleeing the horror of the scene, every interview with family members who learned their loved ones were among the dead, every narrative of a beautiful life taken, every media brief on the ongoing investigation that solidified the gunman’s motives of terror and hate.
You’d think my grief would have subsided by now, but it hadn’t. Rather, it had accumulated over the years and settled into parts of my body wearing me like a second skin. Grief pins you down.
