Displacement

It's like revisiting the weeks after Harper was born. The wee hours of the morn, and I am too filled with restless sadness to sleep. So I sit up in my quiet house, thinking and crying and writing. I can't say I miss the breast pump.

Recently, I've begun to feel like I'm leading two parallel lives. The life that is and the one that was meant to be. Maybe it will get better after the period I was supposed to be on maternity leave. Or after the time when we had to think about what to do about daycare because of the heart condition. Or past the time the baby was supposed to have surgery. Or maybe I have to wait all the way past autumn of next year, when I had plans for a family vacation for four - a huge international trip to celebrate 20 years with Lou and his 40th birthday. The trip Lou thought might be too hard with a small child and a baby combined.

Those dates are all inscribed on the mental calendar of the life that was to be, and I can't clear them from my mind. I am slightly displaced in my own life.

Walking between worlds magnifies everything. Everday professional stressers - busy days, tasks that take longer than you expect, difficult people, tedious meetings - don't themselves annoy me, but they do trigger a reflex reaction of, "I'm not supposed to be here." And that's painful. It's true of positive experiences, too - I choke on the words, "I'm happy to be here" because how can I be happy to be somewhere when my presence is only allowed for by the fact that Harper has died? That she was not the baby that was meant to be?

I'm a planner, I think ahead. That is now my downfall. Because I can't escape the eerie sense of those plans, those future visions, walking besides me, overlaid on my actual experiences. Like if I could just turn fast enough, I could see it in my peripheral vision. I could capture that life that was meant to be, where I'm exhausted from having a newborn and a three year old, where I'm happily ignoring the emails piling up from work, where I'm bombarding my pediatrician with questions about whether it's OK to travel with a heart baby, where I'm pitying myself for having to deal with the boots and bar of fixing club feet. It's not that all, or maybe even any, of that sounds all that pleasant. But maybe it's better than not living it.

The email from the vet today made me tear up in the middle of a NIH study section meeting. Not just because its receipt confirms the day we'll be putting my beloved London girl to sleep, but because it's gentle explanation of what to expect brought back many memories of that last night with Harper.

I told Lou that I didn't think there was much else we needed to know to talk to Shea about what was going to happen with London. If nothing else, we know how to talk to a child about death. A hard earned skill set, but one that comes in handy when faced with a pet dying.

This would have happened, on both parallel tracks. London is old, it is her time to go. I try to imagine how it might be different if I was losing her in the absence of losing Harper. I can't do it. It's too abstract, too far from the point on the emotional spectrum where my heart is currently residing.

But I do wish I could lose myself in the soft baby smell of Harper's hair as I weep for my London. I wish these wee hours were spent rocking and nursing, instead of just not sleeping.

Maybe I do kind of miss the breast pump, at least it gave these sleepless nights a purpose.