Missing Harper

Dear Harper bean,

I've spent the past couple of days struggling with the idea of seven months. Starting to write, and then stopping.

I can't decide if 7 months seems unbelievable because it's so short. Or because it's so long.

Seven months since I last held you. Seven months since I last heard you squeak. Seven months since I last lay awake all night worrying about your future and ours. Seven months since I laid my cheek on your fuzzy little head and wondered if you recognized your mommy. Seven months since that nightmarish night when the monitor stopped beeping and we cried and cried over you.

I've been thinking a lot about why it's been so hard lately, why I've been sad all over, bean. And I think it's because I feel surrounded by this sense of moving on. Few ask about you anymore. Everyone is celebrating the holidays like it's the same as always. I don't get to say your name as often.

I think my pregnancy has contributed to this. I've become the woman having another baby, not the woman who has lost her baby. I'm more likely to get asked about names for your brother than to have an opportunity to say your name aloud. I'm forced into conversations about whether four years is a good age gap between children, while inside my whole soul is screaming, but there were three years between the first two!

I sit here in front of your ashes, and I have not moved on.

This is not a replacement baby growing inside me. It is a new baby. One I have finally begun to dream about and wonder about and worry about and feel squirming in quiet moments. But it is not you.

He is not my poor, damaged bean.

Harper, I see you in every baby girl I pass. In every pink, overly feminine baby outfit. In the untouched quilts piled in the crib. I imagine bundling you up on chilly days, and you sitting on my lap besides your brother as I read him a story. In the belly of every pregnant woman I pass. In my own. I watch the video of you so I won't forget the sound of your voice, so I can try to remember what it was like to touch you.

Seven months ago, my child died. And I have not moved on.

I almost miss the manic energy that haunted me during your life and death. Your brother makes me tired, leaches my energy. I think about how nice it would be to spend the next 20 weeks curled up in bed around him, warm and round, letting the rest of the world move on, while we snuggled together.

But Shea needs me. And I am not a lay in bed sort of person.

It won't matter if everyone else in the world stops thinking about you, Harper bean. If they go on with their lives, and I am the only one left who says your name. I will keep counting the months. I will keep holding your hand in my memory. I will not forget.

I'm so sorry your short life was filled with such pain. Although I had no control over it, I think that is a regret I will carry until I myself am ashes. I still wish we could have brought you home.

I recently read an article, I can't remember where, written by a mother who talked about bringing her stillborn son home. Literally bringing his corpse home, showing him his room, taking him outside, cuddling with him, introducing him to all the spaces in his house. I think they kept him for a few days before returning him for his funeral.

Once upon a time, I think I would have regarded such an act with disgust. With incomprehension. I understand it now.

I have reached the point of rambling. Pregnancy brain may transform this blog, this ode to you, Harper bean, into a nonsensical raving worthy of a beat poet.

But I guess the bottom line is that I love you. And I miss you. Has it really been 7 months?