Third Place: Girlsplaining Grief

As it turns out, a lot of things stopped working that March. Our oven. Our septic tank. My body.

Meal prep for a family of six shifted to an enormous Crock Pot. A loyal workhorse. But there is no countertop substitute for a backed-up septic tank that supports three and a half baths and a lot of drains in a house occupied by six people who use a lot of water. Five of them toilet trained. A story for another time. And to be fair, only part of my body stopped working. An important part. But they are all important parts.

A real jackass of an appliance repair guy arrived for either his third or fourth visit in two weeks. He was tired of crouching on my kitchen floor, tired of mansplaining to me how an oven element works—sensor blah, blah, thermostat, blah, blah, computer chip, blah, blah—and what happens when it doesn’t. He can’t just keep coming here to fix something he can’t figure out, he told me, and, raising his voice, Ma’am, I have done everything I know to do, and you keep placing these repair orders. I have twelve service calls every day . . .

I snapped. In my own kitchen, I snapped like the heaviest, longest, most fed-up branch on a tree in a windstorm. A fed-up branch wearing a stained t-shirt and her husband’s sweatpants. A preschooler and a toddler in the next room. I just lost a baby. I had surgery. Only two days ago.

I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t have to. Top that, jackass.

The jackass couldn’t top that. He turned his head, got back to work. Left an invoice on the kitchen counter an hour later. This was 21 years ago. The jackass of an appliance repair guy has either retired or died by now.

A Friday morning doctor appointment, nearly 12 weeks along. Pain and cramping brought me here. No heartbeat, no life. D&C scheduled for Monday. Rest over the weekend. Call if any of these things happen. Go directly to the ER if these other things happen.

What did I do wrong?

You don’t have that kind of power.

The right words. The perfect words. Of course I didn’t have that kind of power. If I had, I would have breathed all kinds of life into this baby, due in September. But this was March. March Madness, as we came to call it. When everything was falling apart.

We had told no one. The youngest of our four kids was not even two. The oldest, nine. I didn’t want the questions. The comments. The lazy Baptist punchlines. You know what causes this, don’t you? Elbow pokes and stupid grins. After the first doctor appointment, we agreed. That’s when we’ll tell people.

As I slept on a thin hospital mattress in recovery, my doctor reported to my husband I had to be restrained. Of course I did.

The death of an unborn baby is still the death of a baby.

Yet we abbreviate the mourning. Recover. Move on. These are the awkward expectations.

In my imagination, maybe in my heart, perhaps a parallel universe, the baby was a boy. His name was Henry. We would call him Hank, we decided. Just the two of us.

I still write Hank’s story, revise it along the way. It’s one thing I can control. He lives in my mind. In my imagination. In these pages. I let him live in these spaces rent-free.

I check in on him now and then, particularly in September and March. Imagine what he could have been up to, examine the light he might have brought into this world. I tell him I sure would have enjoyed getting to know him, to teach him a few things, to see him seated at the big dining table his dad made. Plenty of room. Clean your plate. Mind your manners. Tell us about your day.

The youngest of five, he would have gotten away with just about anything because we would have been a bit worn down. Not as uptight. He would have been kind like his youngest sister and smart-mouthed and wise-cracking like his older brother. He wouldn’t have walked until he was two because the four siblings would have carried him everywhere.

By the time he would have entered the local high school, math and English teachers would have been equally divided about whether these five kids could possibly come from the same household. Like the fourth kid, the youngest girl, Hank would have learned by watching, listening. She would have taught him to maintain a low profile. Stay under the radar. Take note, she would have told him. Those other three screw up now and then. Follow me. And so it would have been, these younger two of five conspiring in the corner.

He wouldn’t have been perfect. Nobody is. But he would have cleaned the bathroom without being asked. Told funny stories. Asked me about my day. Kept the peace when the peace needed keeping. He would have slipped up now and then, run his mouth a bit. We all do.

These are the stories I write. The stories I control. The milestones I visit.

A physical milestone is a stone or pillar set up beside a road indicating the distance in miles from that point to a particular place. That’s what the OED says. We like our measurements. To see where we have been, to estimate where we are going. To mark and examine the thing we set out to do. I have September and March. My milestones.

The four kids were and are distanced, maybe even immune to this grief. We didn’t dwell on the grief or take its temperature or pick at it like a scab. To acknowledge a life that didn’t live is difficult. Impossible, really. They knew. They know.

The loss is unexplainable. No matter how often it’s explained. I still talk through it and into it. Maybe less frequently than I used to. But a little dream weaving is good for the soul. Especially the soul with a piece missing.

The soul has three parts, says Plato. One part controlled by nobility, a second by desire, a third by wisdom. Which one is my missing piece? Some days I think it’s wisdom—the kind of wisdom required to know when to stop seeking something.

Hank is a ghost, but not ghostly. He makes himself known every March and September. Here I am. Occasional surprise visits in between. I apologize to him, tell him I’m sorry I didn’t do more or less of whatever needed to be done or not done to allow him to walk around in this world.

I sometimes blame him for my inability to part with baby clothes and toys. Bins and bins of washed and organized infant and toddler clothes. Like a consignment shop that never opens. A museum nobody wants to visit. A boring expo of Fisher Price and Mattel plastic. Memories cling to it all—like sticky little barnacles. I hang onto the precious. The tiny sweaters and miniature trucks so heavy with stories and memories I can’t possibly carry them down a flight of stairs, lift them into the car, and haul boxes and bags to the local thrift store to be recirculated. Too heavy, too bulky. Loud stuff, I call these things. Their stories echo, bounce off the sides of cardboard and plastic.

We need to hang onto these things, I say. We can’t donate them. Not yet. I gather the ghosts. Fire up the memories. Mingle them with the what-ifs. We are all friendly here. Plenty of room at the big table.

Every March, in the South, days become intermittently cold and warm. Pollen begins to stir. We feel the early shift from winter into spring. A time of preparation. A measure of hope. And in September, in this part of the world, in my world, the earth tilts a little. It feels a bit unbalanced. The sun dips a little below the horizon. And the shadows—mercy, the shadows—get a little longer.

-Amy Cates

Amy Cates is a full-time instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She writes creative nonfiction and is currently working on a memoir in essays and flash nonfiction. In her previous life as a professional writer, she earned awards from the Associated Press, Alabama Press Association, and other organizations.