You May Ask Yourself, My God, What Have I Done?

Three days after we buried Cathleen, Josie was born.

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that was quite a week. A guy I used to work with came up to me and said that he didn’t know if he should offer condolences or congratulations.

“Both are appropriate,” I said. “It’s nice being twice as right as normal.”

What this means is that Josie never knew her older sister (at least on this plane of existence). Although I’ve been a parent for five years, and have had two daughters, I have only had one daughter at a time. (Again, at least on this plane.)

As the grief at Cathleen’s death began to abate – although it did not disappear – and as Josie got older, Kari began to talk to me about having another baby. I claimed that I was ambivalent about it, but my words tended to be a great deal more forceful.

“Josie needs a sibling,” Kari said to me.
“Josie HAS a sibling,” I said, forcefully enough to end the conversation.

Of course, Josie didn’t have a sibling that she could actually play with, fight with, or otherwise hang out with. There was a definite pang when we would go to the playground, and Josie would be running around trying to play with the other kids, most of who had a brother or sister in tow. I would begin to wonder what part of my adamancy was grief and what part was merely a stubbornness that was masquerading as grief.

Not that I’m stubborn. No, sir. Not ME. I mean it – NOT ME!

The conversations that Kari and I would have about this would circle around and around. Joining the “think of Josie” trope was the “I’m not getting younger” trope. I knew the statistics were less than favorable about having kids later in life. Obviously, when the mother is older, the risks increase. Even in men, as we get older, the DNA begins to break down and the chances for birth problems increase.

But I could not. Pull. The. Trigger. I was so scared that I would have to go through the emotional devastation that I went through with Cathleen that I would not have enough love to go around for Josie, Kari, and Expecting. Reassured repeatedly that I would, that humans are capable of deep wells of love and kindness, particularly to their own offspring, I would retort – usually in my head – that the wrenching of emotions you feel holding your child as she leaves the world makes it harder to summon emotions when you hold a child as he or she comes into it.

And then Kari told me she was pregnant.

(Don’t get too excited. This was a couple years ago.)

We began the rounds of doctors and ultrasound appointments, all the while Kari asking me if I was excited, and me responding that I wasn’t sure. (No, of COURSE I’m not stubborn.)

But over the first few weeks, it became clear from the expressions on the doctor’s and nurse’s faces, usually bracketed by lines of concern on the forehead and around the mouth, that something was amiss. In particular, we saw that there was something in the ultrasound – something that had stopped developing at about four or five weeks.

That was when I was reminded that emotions aren’t summoned. Rather, they are like surprise but not necessarily unwanted guests – they come when they want, stay as long as they want, and it’s up to you to get used to them.

What we saw on the ultrasound screen was nothing more than a lifeless lump of protoplasm. No heartbeat. Nothing would ever grow from it. And as I stared at this mass of dead chromosomal tissue in my wife’s uterus, I felt my breath go out of me and not come back, my heart slow, and a hand squeezing me in the approximate area where my soul might be.

And I felt a crushing sadness, the worst since Cathleen had died. As I felt my insides compress, I knew then that I wanted another baby, wanted one more than anything. I felt cheated again, like something great was going to happen and, once again, it was not to be.

That was two years ago. Since that time, Josie has gotten older and has begun to notice babies and has even begun asking for one. We’ve also had three more miscarriages, one of which had to be dealt with by a painful surgery. Certainly, getting pregnant was not an issue (and getting to THAT point isn’t an issue when your wife looks like mine), but staying pregnant became constant struggle.

I wonder if my stubbornness (not that I am stubborn, mind you) has wrecked my family’s chance for expansion, and has wrecked Kari’s desire to have another baby, which she wants and deserves. I’m 40 now, and Kari will be 42 on her next birthday. I know that prenatal care is exceptional nowadays, when you have access to it like we do, but Mother Nature is the one who has the final say.

At a restaurant the other day, I saw a family with a three-year-old daughter and a baby, maybe six months old or so. In so many ways, I looked at that family and became despondent that that should be how my family looks. Not only losing Cathleen, but four attempts to have that little baby and…nothing.

Both Kari and I are remarkably busy so finding time to, well, get the ball rolling – so to speak – is hard to come by. As stubborn as I am, the clock and the calendar are even more so, remorselessly and ceaselessly marching forward. But as stubborn as I am, I will do what I can to make it work, joining Kari in a jump into that inexorable stream.

Kari deserves it. Josie deserves it. And I’m excited about it.