Tears on My Pillow

If we could start anew, I wouldn't hesitate
I'd gladly take you back
And tempt the hand of fate
Tears on my pillow, pain in my heart
Caused by you

“Tears on My Pillow,” Little Anthony

A friend of mine had kindly booked us a photographer through an organization called “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep” since many women cherish keepsake photos of their stillborns. Tung and I had taken some photos from our phones the night she was born. I got the phone call in the morning from the social worker who worked with me in the hospital. “I got in contact with the photographer,” she said, a hint of caution in her voice, “But I hope you’ll understand that while we’ll try our best with the pictures, don’t be too disappointed if you don’t get the ones you envisioned.” I told her of course I understood, and for them to do their best since Tung and I didn’t have a picture with us both together with her.

When the social worker and the photographer visited me that afternoon, they said they had just been to the morgue to try and collect Thi and bring her to me for the photography session, but she was born too early; without the warmth of my womb to protect her, she had largely turned back to liquid, tissue, and blood. I didn’t think my heart could still break when it was already shattered. I didn’t know it was possible to feel the sense of losing someone so dear to me, over and over and over again. On the ultrasound table when we found out. On delivery day. The day after when I asked to see her. I would have kept a mother’s vigil last night with her kept safe in my arms if I had known that was the last time I’d ever lay eyes on her.

“She is but a drop of your blood,” my mother said as she came bedside to pat my back and comfort me. “Painful in losing, but now it is done.” All I could say in acknowledgement of the social worker’s news was a tiny, defeated, “Oh.” I held any other words in because the tears were coming too fast, hot rain on my hospital blanket and pillows.

That evening, after my tray of hospital food was delivered, my mom brushed my hair before leaving for the night. “It’s not too tangled yet,” she mentioned. “We could still work with it.” She twisted the parts into two loose braids and secured them with some rubber bands she saved from the Vietnamese sandwiches we were brought earlier in the day. I felt the love and care through her fingers as they expressed what words could not. I knew in my heart she was grieving for three—her mother-in-law who had just passed, who cared for her when she lay in her own postpartum bed all those years ago. Her granddaughter who had left the world too soon, so wanted and so cherished. But in that moment, most of all she was grieving for me, as I was going through a pain you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy. I stared at the wall and could not say a thing back to comfort her, thinking of how I’d never run my hands through my own daughter’s black curtain of silky hair.