Ten

We did this thing for Joseph.

On a cold, sunny day last weekend, we invited some friends and family over to help us yarn bomb the backyard. They came and we put yarn needles in their hands and they crouched down in odd positions or climbed step ladders to sew color all over the trees. Even some of the younger kids helped. And it came together just like we’d planned. The barren yard, the winter trees, the grey and brown and shadows, are bright with rainbow patchwork colors.

This was the culmination of a year-long project. On Joseph’s ninth stillbirthday, we had invited everyone to send us yarn throughout the year: crocheted, knitted, woven. Crooked, uneven, and imperfect, or practiced and masterful. Any size, any color. Pieces came to us throughout the year, as did skeins of yarn, sometimes left on our porch in a bag, and once, serendipitously, brought to my classroom after a coworker acquired someone’s whole stash. 

I learned how to crochet, and I crocheted all year.  I spent more time untangling yarn and wrapping up tail ends of yarn than I ever thought possible. I carried yarn in my purse, yarn on vacation, filled a box with yarn that sat next to me at the dining table. This year, the yarn has become Joseph, in the way that collaging and charcoal sketches, painting or Christmas ornaments have all taken their turns as him.

Bit by bit as friends mailed us their contributions, we went out into the yard to see where they fit. I diagrammed and labeled tree branches, tacked things up temporarily with sticks and took photos. I stitched squares and rectangles together in long scarves, or took big scarves apart and sewed up the loose ends. Then I pinned on coded labels and rolled them up neatly, stuffed them in bags in the closet.

I felt a little tender, a little raw, to work on such a public project like this. Not just to share it with friends and family, but to bring Joseph’s anniversary out from many years’ quiet observance into the light of community. To crochet publicly, to turn our corner lot into a bright installation open for anyone passing by, meant that I talked about Joseph all year. 

I shared his story at school with new coworkers that I might not ever have mentioned my firstborn to. I brought him up to people who knew me then but hadn’t acknowledged the loss in years. I heard from distant friends I hadn’t spoken to in decades. A few friends shared Joseph’s story with other friends they knew in order to commission a piece for the project, because they themselves don’t knit.

I told my second-graders about Joseph, about the yarn. They would see me crochet at recess or during car-rider duty and ask me what I was making. A sweater for a tree, I would say. Or simply, a rectangle, a flower, a square. 

He died before you were even born, I told the seven- and eight-year-olds, and they gaped, eyes wide. To a child, their whole short life is forever. To them, these ten years are as impossibly long as they feel to me. 

He would have been 10, I told them. But I know that’s not exactly right. I still cannot think of Joseph in would-have-beens. I can only mark the time as it passes. I can only count the skeins of yarn, the number of circles and hexagons my fingers have knotted. 

It has been 10 years since my baby died, since we named him, since he became memory. And this year, he has become colors and material and stitches, shapes and circumferences and trees.

I wanted the yarn bombing to have an end, a date complete. But all week we have been taking more pieces outside, extending the color up and out as the limbs branch and spread. And now today is your day and we still have two bags left, could still do more. My fingers itch to unravel and loop, hook and pull. 

I think today I have finally made peace with this, with the undefined boundaries of the project. It will continue to evolve and change into the new year without a final point, the way that Joseph has no end, no finite impact in our lives.

(C) Burning Eye

Six

No new memories are created

except the sharp clarity of who forgets.

F-I-V-E

Five years have gone by, Little One. Grief is small and quiet now, tamed.

I remember that it hurt but not how it hurt.

Visions of your days– your death, your birth, the in-between– come to me

Every day. I still feel you, tucked in my heart.

 

Four

I remember you every day.

Every day.

You were only here for an instant in my life. And yet you were a cataclysm. Just in the way I cannot imagine what you would have been like had you lived, I cannot imagine what I would be like if you’d lived.

The mother I have become, because of you.

The children who live, because of you.

The God who remains distant, because of you.

*             *             *

Tomorrow will be my last post at Glow in the Woods. It has been four years now since my baby boy died and was born, three and a half writing at Glow. Since E’s birth seven months ago, I’ve know this year would be my last at Glow, that Joseph’s fourth stillbirthday would be my last post.

The first months of grief, I couldn’t understand how any of the writers could leave. How I could stop writing about Joseph. How grief could change. How I could learn to live with my firstborn’s absence. But I have lived into all of those once inconceivable things. And I know that leaving Glow is not abandoning the memory of my son. It is just simply time for whatever is next.

© Burning Eye

 

Death and the Woman

Once there was a woman who was good friends with God. They spent time together and talked daily. But Death came for the woman’s firstborn and after that God didn’t come around anymore. And really, who could blame God for staying away while Death was there? The woman didn’t much feel like talking to anyone, anyway.

But soon Death went away, and the woman was alone in her grief. Every now and then, the woman would say God’s name quietly, just to see if she would get an answer. But there was none.

Time passed and soon the woman was pregnant again. She thought surely her old friend would come to visit when the new baby came, so she prepared herself. She thought of what she would say to God, what stories she would tell, and all the other things she’d saved up.

So the days passed and the woman gave birth to a baby girl. And God didn’t come. Not even a phone call or card. The woman was hurt. Angry, even.

“God, where are you?” she called out. “I thought you would be here.”

The woman listened expectantly, rocking her daughter gently in the rocking chair, but she got no answer. She looked out the window and saw Death coming down the road. Bolting out of the chair, her new baby clutched to her chest, she barred the door and locked the windows.

“Get away from here!” she yelled out at Death. “Don’t you come again to this house!”

The woman counted a hundred rapid heartbeats, then, hearing nothing, she peeked back through the window. Death had gone.

A few months went by and the woman delighted in her motherhood, but sometimes things were hard and she felt very lonely. One sleepless night, she called out to God again, irritated, “It sure would be nice to have some help from you!”

A little while later in the early dawn, there was a knock on the door. The woman put down the sleeping baby and peered through the peephole. And there was Death on the porch.

Terrified, the woman threw herself against the door to barricade it. “Go away!” she yelled. “You already took my firstborn. Leave us alone!”

She counted a hundred heartbeats before she slowly put her eye back to the peephole. Death had gone.

By and by, the woman had grown used to God’s absence and didn’t think much about her old friend. But one day she got to missing God again, and she called out, “God, come and visit me! Let’s talk. It’s been so long.”

The woman looked out the window and again she saw Death coming down the road. She ran and barred the door and locked all the windows. “Why do you keep coming by here?” she yelled out as Death came up on the porch. “I already told you, you’re not wanted here!”

This time Death spoke, sounding a little annoyed. “You keep calling me.”

“I didn’t call you,” the woman said. “I was calling for my friend God.”

“Well, here I am!” Death said.

“No,” the woman said firmly. “You’re Death.”

“Ahh,” Death said then. “Open the door. We need to talk.” Death tapped on the door.

“No way,” the woman said, glancing nervously over her shoulder at her baby playing quietly with her toys.

But Death was persistent, and said she had something to explain that could only be understood by showing the woman. Death’s voice was so gentle, there was something almost familiar about it. So, hesitantly, the woman relented and lifted the latch on the door, and opened it.

Death stepped over the threshold and held out her hands, as if to say, “See? I’m not going to hurt you.” Then she waved one hand slowly in front of her face, and suddenly, instead of the old, hollow face of Death, there was the radiant and loving face of God.

“Oh, God, it’s you!’ the woman said, stepping forward to embrace her friend. But the hand dropped and once again the face of Death peered out at the woman from under the dark hood.

“I… I don’t understand,” said the woman, falling back a step.

“I have many faces,” Death said. “And many names.”

The woman still didn’t understand, so Death lifted one hand up and pulled back the hood.

The woman gasped. On Death’s head were three faces, looking in different directions so the other two had been hidden by the hood. One was the face of Death, and one was the face of God. The third she had only a vague recollection of, as if from a long-ago dream. As understanding settled in, she began to feel a bit ill and closed her eyes. Death pulled the hood back up.

“But if you are also my friend God,” the woman asked, “why do I only see you as Death?”

“Once you have seen the face of Death, it’s very hard to forget,” Death said sadly.

“Will it always be this way?” the woman asked. She met Death’s eyes.

“Some have learned to see my other faces again, with time,” Death said.

The woman looked away and down at the floor. “I think I need some time,” she said softly.

Death sighed. “I understand.”

At that moment, the woman’s daughter looked up as if noticing for the first time they had a visitor. She smiled broadly at Death and reached her hand up to give a pudgy wave. Death smiled back, and for a moment, the woman could almost make out the features of the third face.

“Well, I should be going,” Death said, heading towards the door.

“Yes, yes,” the woman mumbled, and went to show Death out.

Death hesitated on the doorstep a moment. “I hope you will call again.”

“I hope so, too,” the woman said.

Death turned to go, and the woman pushed the door gently but firmly shut.

 

I wrote this parable almost a year ago. Some days I think I still need more time. Other days I’m perfectly happy to keep that door shut tight.

© Burning Eye

i think i know you

There is a woman at the park we recognize. Work? City Arts? Our mutual friends introduce us. We swap names. She works at the university. She of course recognizes A., who is thin and blonde with distinct features. She barely looks at me.

I glance at her son.

I think we were in prenatal yoga together.

I follow M. around the playground, help her up the ladder. I glance at her son. 3 and a half years old.

Yes, we were in prenatal yoga together when I was pregnant with…

I ask our mutual friends how old her son is. Quietly. Apart.

He was born in January 2013.

Yes.

I do not look again at her son. At how big he is, how old. How he is climbing on top of the tunnel, listening to his parents’ conversation with three-year-old understanding. I do not look back at his dark hair.

Yes, we were in prenatal yoga together when I was pregnant with Joseph, I do not say to her. He was my first, I do not explain at her bewildered glance at my two daughters, assessing their ages.

He died.

Today is not a brave day.

 

© Burning Eye

heavy

The news comes in the morning:

We lost him.

They did an emergency c-section.

 

It is pouring outside and I

Am nursing our baby

who shared his due date.

She, 8 days early,

Alive.

He, 2 days late,

Dead.

 

Their nightmare opens wide before me

A ton of bricks falling in slow motion, all day,

Piece by piece

On my bruised, heavy heart.

 

Over and over

I relive our own shock,

Our own early days.

Hearts, breasts, eyelids swollen from weeping.

I hear the echo of myself wailing.

 

As if, in reliving,

I could save them from the pain.

 

I go to sleep and wake again.

He is still dead.

 

I nurse our daughter again, alive.

He is still dead.

 

This world is wholly unfair.

One dead, one alive.

 

They will wake each day to the loss of him.

Each day a new insult:

The box of Enfamil samples on the front porch,

The coupon in the mailbox for nursing bras,

The email discounts on their baby registry.

 

I’m sorry, I whisper to each of them in the dark.

Because there is nothing else I can do.

 

© Burning Eye

 

she looks like you

Joseph, your new baby sister E is here. Safe and sound, born alive, still breathing these twelve days later. I wrote this poem for her, for you.

 

 

In the dark she looks like you.

Lips parted, mouth open

Tiny chin sunken.

Asleep

Or dead.

Afraid, I lean closer,

Waiting for a breath,

Peering at swollen newborn eyelids.

They are cracked,

Seeing—what? -–in the dark.

 

My mother tells me of this vision as I go into labor:

An angel bringing her to me.

I am shaken.

I hang up the phone as quickly as I can and try to banish it from my mind,

Thinking only of my father battling Death,

His vivid dream

As you lay dying inside me.

 

She meant well, my mother.

She saw it as cheerful, and safe.

But I do not think of angels this way.

 

I say a swift prayer

cross my fingers

make a sign to ward off the evil eye

 

No, I do none of these things.

I do not see the world this way.

 

I only hold your mother’s hand.

She is my comfort.

 

Maybe it is Joseph, bringing her to us,

Your mother says,

Tears in both our eyes.

I shake my head slightly.

How would I know, if it were you?

 

I search for you in the shadows of your new sister’s eyes and mouth.

I hold her thin body close,

Lips against her forehead.

I never kissed you.

 

How would I know, if she were you?

 

© Burning Eye

outside/inside

This was the first drawing I did after Joseph died. I never published it here. She was too vulnerable, I think.

But she is still with me, and I refer to her in my latest piece on Glow.

© Burning Eye

grief in pictures

A few months ago, I made a little book of water colors. An abstract children’s book about grief. I picture it as a board book, each page spread a new, bright, glossy watercolor, with a simple line of text below. The color saturation here doesn’t quite do it justice, but here it is…

Death, when it comes, cracks everything open.

There is a sharp divide: Before. After.

All life becomes fragile.

Grief covers everything in thick waves.

It has many colors.

Sometimes it feels like drowning.

There is loneliness. The absence of you.

 

 

Love remains.

© Burning Eye