madness, part one

If she had lived to her due date (and beyond) my baby would turn one this month.

I'm not thinking about it too much. I have found that I don't have to. My life has been gutted of all certainty, but in this I trust: at some point this month my missing of her will flatten me like a steamroller.

In the meantime we are moving, at long last, to the country. We have rented a little farmhouse two hours west, where we will be surrounded by farmland and state forests. In three weeks we will be out of this house, which was our first house together. This house that is sandwiched between interstates and malls and manicured lawns. This house where we carried and lost our baby, where we gritted out the building of a stepfamily, where as newlyweds we survived more than is fair.

We will be out of this house with no regrets. The back seat of my car is stacked with empty liquor boxes waiting to be filled with books. It's time to break this place down and move on.

There is plenty to do, this July. Plenty to distract. Packing and unpacking, a wedding, a trip to the Adirondacks. But it's on my mind, this momentous thing: I could, in some alternate universe, have a cute, chubby child who had survived her first year of life. So when I see images of babies on TV, or hear about Roger Federer's 11-month old twins, or am sent baby photos from people I don't know well (but like to assume have easy lives) I think: Oh, fuck you.

Because here is my top concern about my baby right now: where in our new home will I set up her candle and her basket of ashes and blankets? This is what I am turning over in my mind. This what I can never say out loud to my friends. For it is madness. It is madness that this is what parenting should ever look like, for anyone.

I think it, calmly. I write it out loud to you here. But when I step outside myself just a bit, and look inside a life that contains a powdered baby in a little white box who is spoken of as though she were here, as though she were real, in a breathing kind of way, I sometimes think, Yikes! And I imagine that my friends also think, Yikes! And I don't entirely blame them for backing away slowly, and for not asking because they don't want to know. I mean, who wants to know this? I sure don't.

Even though I have lived this reality for over a year, my mind still cannot quite grasp it. This happened to me? I birthed and held and loved a tiny dead baby? My mind and soul quiver. The world appears reflected by a funhouse mirror. I'm not sure of my footing. I make dumb decisions. I obsess over ridiculous things. I say too much. I say too little. I do not reside fully in the land of the living. Oh, I look normal enough, but inside I am half-gone, just gaping at her absence.

Ain't nothing to do about crazy. Breathe in. Breathe out. Pack. Distract. Look forward to the healing that will come from the farms and rivers and forests. The crazy will eventually blow through me and disappear, or seep into me until it just feels like normal. And there are some benefits to crazy. I could care less what others think. I could let go a little. I could cackle more. Fools are both mad and wise. Maybe it takes some madness to look death in the face and live.