May Day May Day

Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides
-Emily Dickenson

May 18, 1980 – Mt. St Helens volcano in Washington State exploded with the force of 500 nuclear Hiroshima bombs, taking lives, destroying homes, spreading 540 million tons of ash over 22,000 square miles, and flattening trees for 220 square miles. It was the worst avalanche in U.S. history. Within two weeks ash had drifted around the globe.

May 18, 1980 – Rick and I were flattened that day, too, all the way across the country in little Newnan, GA by an intensely personal upheaval. As sure as the volcano across the country had done its worst, a tragedy exploded in our lives, too, raining down its own brand of suffocating emotional ash. It was the worst cataclysmic disruption of our young, thirty-year-old lives, leaving us devastated, bewildered, and empty. 

Our first-born son was nearing three years old. Our second son wouldn’t be conceived for almost another two years. They could not know, nor did they suffer when disaster visited our little house on Dixon Street, when time stood still in 1980. But the daughter who should have been their sister, due to be born in August stopped moving in my womb that day in May. 

One perfectly ordinary, sunny day, the same day a mountain shattered across the county, life slipped silently away at our house. I was twenty-six weeks pregnant, carrying our little girl inside of me. My friends were planning a baby shower. The nursery was ready. And in one moment, I felt her go motionless. There was nothing else to signal catastrophe. Only sudden, haunting stillness. Just like that, a living, moving person was taken by a quiet, deadly landslide inside of me. I knew in my heart what was happening. I desperately didn’t want it to be true, but my mother’s instinct was strong, and I knew an unmistakable, epic calamity was at hand. I choked on the ash rising in my throat. I knew in the time it takes to flick a light switch or drop a bomb that everything was instantly different and always would be. The damage was done. Why, exactly, I didn’t know. But I knew I was suddenly carrying a corpse.

My doctor’s answering service told us to come to the hospital ER right away. He would meet us there. Rick was home. It had been a rare, tranquil Sunday. Until it wasn’t. We arranged to send our toddler over to a friend’s house and made our way to Atlanta. We were quiet but hardly calm on the ride up. I was terrified, afraid to speak. So was he. We held hands, tight, all the way. 

We arrived, checked in, took a seat, and waited, sitting close, arm in arm, hand in hand. They called my name, and as I stood to enter the exam room, Rick let his hands gently follow the full length of my arm. I slowly stepped away from him and toward the door. The nurse ushered me through the opening, and I entered a portal that would deliver me into Reality, Questions, and Painful Answers. Could she see the ash rising in a plume above my head from my throat, from my heart, from my child? She turned the ultrasound screen away from me. I squeezed my eyes shut as I lay flat on the table that felt in that moment like a steel slab in a morgue. It did not take her long. Bad sign. She wiped the ultrasound goo from my skin and clicked off the machine without speaking. Trying not to relay the results with her expression, she did not possess a good poker face. Not even close. I was so hoping she would tell me I was not feeling what I was feeling. Or not feeling in this case. I desperately wanted to feel the kicks, the turns, and watch my belly undulate with movement. I did not. Her expression told me I shouldn’t and wouldn’t be expecting that now. Or ever.

When the nurse escorted Rick and me across the hall into the doctor’s office, I searched her face yet again. She avoided my gaze entirely this time, her head down, brows furrowed, and lips tense. Whatever denial is, it is certainly powerful. I already knew the answer in my heart. But until somebody told me out loud what had happened, I would reside in an awful limbo, of shock and disbelief. As long as it remained unspoken, maybe it wouldn’t be real. Like the doctors on television who say out loud, “Time of death: three PM.” Until they do that, death is not official. 

We got our official pronouncement right there in the office. No way around it. The bomb had fallen, indeed, and laid waste our twenty six-week-old fetus who was two thirds of the way to forty weeks and full term. I was bracing for it, expecting it, and yet when it dropped, I could hardly process it. Rick and I held each other, my head bowed, tears brimming then spilling over, rolling in rivulets down my face. I had no words. The doctor couldn’t tell us why, other than to say something about how “this sometimes happens, and we don’t know why,” “This is not your fault,” “I’m so sorry,” and “We’re going to take good care of you.” All I heard after that was a rush of white noise and a far-away voice that sounded like wah-wah as the hum of grief pulsed in my ears. 

What I wasn’t expecting was what to do next. Incredibly, “taking care of me” meant the doctor wanted me to go home and see if I would go into spontaneous labor in a few days, if not weeks. 

“Excuse me?” I shot back, eyes wide, my blouse and slacks now sopping, ropy snot running from my nose. I remember thinking, what is this lunacy? Surely, he doesn’t mean that! My sadness was compounded by astonishment and anger. He repeated himself gently, patiently assuring me he would follow me closely and this would be over “soon.” Define soon, I thought. Today, right now, is soon enough. He would go back to his job and busy himself with pelvic exams and Pap smears and chit chat with pregnant women carrying living babies inside of them, and I would be the one waiting impatiently for “soon.” All I knew for certain was that I was exhausted from the day, from the worry, from the questions, from the answers, from the grief, from the enormity of it all. So I threw my wadded, wet Kleenex into the trash can, pulled a fresh white tissue from the box on the desk and, with a high flourish, waved it in surrender. We came home. Just like that. We just came home.

Thus began our odyssey, an impossible journey requiring me to continue to carry on and wait. It was horrifyingly open-ended. There was the matter of our toddler’s third birthday party coming up only eight days hence. How could I function? I remembered the upcoming baby shower and how I would have to break the news. Of course, I would have to break the news anyway, which would be hard enough, but having to call off an impending baby shower in addition seemed a bridge too far. What would we do with the nursery?

Friends rallied, one of them generously offering to throw the birthday party at her house with cake and balloons for our newly minted three-year-old and a few of his toddler friends. All I had to do was show up and pretend to be sane and smiling in the maternity jumper that belied my actual condition. I was a mobile mausoleum. 

The shower was cancelled, food arrived, sympathy cards replaced congratulatory cards. I felt fragile, and oddly embarrassed. I was now an imposter who looked pregnant but who in reality was grieving the lifeless body inside of me. Naturally, I didn’t go out much. One time I made a quick trip to the little store up the street just to grab some apple juice. The friendly owner behind the counter asked me as I was paying for the juice, “So when are you due?” Abruptly disoriented, my brain went full-stop, full-on mute, catatonic. Straining to produce a cohesive thought, my left frontal lobe re-booted in agonizing slow-motion. Finally, focusing my eyes on the counter I forced a weak smile and stammered, “In…in…Awwww-gust. Well,” I added, expelling a sharp sigh and clearing my throat, “I-I-I-I gotta run.” I picked up my purchase and made my getaway. Surely, he must have thought I was weird. And I guess I was. There was no way I could share with a stranger the news of my dead baby who was, incredibly, still in my womb. It was hard enough to share it with friends and relatives. This guy was not on the list.

Rick went back to work, and while he was sad and shaken, he still had to earn a paycheck. He did the man-thing and went head down, balls to the wall. I knew he was hurting. During his long, arduous work days he got his solace where he could. On his large animal rounds he was often invited to join farmers and their sturdy wives for hearty, home-cooked, southern meals. In their welcoming farmhouse kitchens he spent a bit more time lingering at their tables, savoring their kindnesses along with his second or maybe even third full breakfast or dinner of the day. Often, they sent him on his way with bounties of farm eggs, or fresh picked garden produce for the “missus.” When he got home, whenever that would be on any given evening, he brandished the humble farm gifts proudly. On the rare occasion our toddler was still up, he took over parent duties until bedtime. Later we took time to care for each other, hold each other, talk to each other. He was exhausted, and usually fell asleep long before I was ready for him to, but we did our best. 

Finally, in late June I was still not going into any kind of spontaneous labor. Blessedly, I was brought back to the hospital to make the delivery happen. “Soon” had been long enough.

May 18, 2020 – Forty years later, things are growing again around the mountain in Washington State. Yellow wildflowers and blue Lupines. Animals and insects. Butterflies and bees. The mountain is different now, changed forever. Shorter by over 1,300 ft and burdened with the history of that explosive day four decades earlier, it survives as a sentinel and a witness to death, destruction, and resurrection. It flourishes now with new life. The people who died are still gone, but I like to think some of their children and their children’s children live on to tell the tale of their forebears, to name them and keep them alive in that way.

May 18, 2020 – Forty years later, our first-born son, Scott, turns forty-three on May twenty-sixth; our younger son, Nick, turns thirty-eight on December first. They, too, continue to grow and flourish. They are my heart. She neither grows nor flourishes on this earthly plane. She lives in the soft places of our hearts, minds, memories, and imaginations now transformed by that awful day four decades earlier, that day that changed us – and her - forever. 

Life goes on. She, too, survives - somewhere - as an unseen sentinel and a witness to death, destruction, and resurrection of spirit. She would be forty now. 

Her name is Sarah Kate. 

-Susie Berta

Susie Berta writes a regular food and gardening column with her own byline for her local newspaper in Newnan, GA, a lovely town forty-five miles south of Atlanta. She is currently working on her memoir, "The Veterinarian’s Wife." She has lived in Newnan with her husband, Rick, a veterinarian, since 1977. They raised two boys and have two grandchildren. As an empty nester, she returned to school in 2003 and earned a BFA in Art. Retired from a long career as a professional vocalist/performer, Susie writes full-time about a variety of topics, including motherhood, marriage, life, music, art, writing, cooking, gardening, entertaining, and decorating. She will never retire from writing.