How Could an Angel Break My Heart

How could an angel break my heart
Why didn't she catch my falling star
I wish I didn't wish so hard
Maybe I wished our love apart
How could an angel break my heart

--"How Could an Angel Break My Heart," Declan Galbraith

Dear Thi,

Exactly one year ago, on one of the coldest nights of the year a little past the winter solstice, I was in the hospital to deliver you, numb from mental and emotional shock after hearing that you had passed. Sometimes I wonder how I survived the last year; so many of those days were spent in a perpetual state of grief and darkness. So many of those days keeping up a front at work, in front of family, to the world. After a while, people think you must be okay. They think you've surpassed the trauma and are easily yourself again. They forget.

This month brought on the holidays that passed by last year in a blur. On this night of all nights, I think of you, dear Thi. Just a week ago, you had come to visit me, cloaked in fog as you always do. The stark, barren trees stand against a backdrop of a cloud veil, and I know that you are near.

You've come to join us for the holidays. I know you are often by our side, even if you don't always make your presence known. Every room in the house contains tributes to you.

You grace our tree this year, too, your commemorative ornament hung next to your brother's hand-decorated ones from daycare.

On Christmas Eve, Daddy had to go to work. When he left in the morning, Luc cried, not wanting him to go off. Daddy cut the day short to visit you, sweet girl. As he left, rain dotted the windshield of the car, as if you were crying as well, watching him drive away from you.

We went together to visit you today. We decorated your grave with fresh flowers for your birthday.

My dear girl, not a day goes by in the last year where I hadn't thought about you and wondered what you would have been. You've left an etching so permanently on my heart, and I miss you dearly. It was a hard year to trudge through, but you taught me so much courage and a fair amount of patience and grace. You remind me to be grateful for all the positive things in life, for in an instant all your hopes and dreams could be taken away without a whim or reason.

Winter comes upon us once again, dear Thi, as reminded by the monument in the seasonal garden where we buried you. Winter, with all its trials and bitter winds that we must endure before we can once again see the hopeful buds of spring. Tonight, I imagine rocking you to sleep in my arms as I sing the last lullaby I sang to you on the night you were born. Sleep tight, my angel baby, and happy birthday.

Silver Bells

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks

Dressed in holiday style
In the air there's a feeling of Christmas. . .

And on every street corner you hear

Silver bells, silver bells,
It's Christmas time in the city
Ring-a-ling,
Hear them ring,

Soon it will be Christmas day

--“Silver Bells," Bing Crosby

Dear Thi,

October brought us to All Hallow’s Eve and Dia de Los Muertos, occasions that pay tribute to spirits crossing that fine line between this life in which I live and the next, in which you reside. 

We visited a pumpkin farm, carved a pumpkin, harvested bright-orange persimmons, and spent a night trick-or-treating. 

 November brought us to Thanksgiving, when temperatures drop, we don cozy sweaters, and spend a Thanksgiving weekend in a warm familial atmosphere to get ready for the coming of winter.

December comes upon us soon, and we are exactly one month away from your birthday. As soon as Thanksgiving hits, the shops stock up with merchandise to entice consumers to spend on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Christmas songs start playing on the radio to further push the festive holiday spirit. This season brings on the worst commutes with shoppers eager to get their Christmas shopping done, workers getting back to the swing of things after the gluttonous Thanksgiving break, and students stressing to finish up the fall semester with finals, further aggravated by earlier nightfall as we push our clocks forward to adjust to standard time, and as the first heavy rains of the season flood the parched roads and clogged drains. 

I drive to and from work hearing the song “Silver Bells” several times a day. People have their clear favorites and dislikes when it comes to holiday music. For the record, I hate the slow, droning tune of “White Christmas.” But “Silver Bells” affects me a different way; it always instills within me a sense of melancholy, that we have gotten to the end of another year, punctuated by the hub-bub and rush of holiday shopping, decorating, wrapping. Having lost both my grandmas around Christmas and New Year, the holidays are a reminder of who remain with us, and who have departed. This year in particular, it fills me with a sort of dread and heart-pounding anxiety as your birthday draws ever closer.

Zoning out during the grueling commute home after the sun has long set, or during the middle of the night as your brother and father snore beside me, I am enveloped by the darkness. There is the feel of the cushy leather examination bed covered in a crisp linen sheet under me, a fresh hospital gown on my skin, slippery gel on my belly, your image on the TV screen bobbing about, ever so still. I was convinced you were napping, dear Thi. I was oblivious when the ultrasound tech hinted at something being wrong, not a smile or a joke during the briefer-than-usual sonography session. There is the feel of the doctor’s warm hand on my arm when she paused in her questions to tell me there is bad news, that they couldn’t find your heartbeat. How could that be, when I heard it beating away so strongly at my last ultrasound, that I swear I could still feel your movements just a second ago? How could the only thing I wanted for my birthday, for this Christmas, be taken away in an instant after 20 weeks of gestation? A shiver coursed through me when I heard the news, a feeling of somehow “failing” in the worst way possible. In the days and months that followed, I was numb, as if winter had frosted over my heart, and tears poured relentlessly, as torrential as the rain.

During Thanksgiving weekend, we jumped aboard Christmas festivities earlier and got our tree up, along with our indoor decorations. Everything assaults my senses and memories with bittersweet reminders, from the smell of fresh pine that I came home to after I delivered you, to the garlands that I used to deck the halls, broken-hearted when I pulled them down last year without a daughter to celebrate. I once again hung up the customary four stockings at our fireplace, knowing in my heart that there should’ve been a fifth. 

Luc marvels at the Christmas lights on the fresh tree; we create the magic for him even as it wounds our hearts to remember you. 

Soon we will string up lights on the outside of the house. Soon we will take him to see snow for the first time. It is almost another year gone round, one that we survived by rote repetition of our daily routines, putting one foot in front of the other and going through the motions. The pain ebbs and flows, then crashes back in like a tidal wave as the sights and sounds of the season come upon us once again. Bundle up, sweet Thi, and keep warm through the coming of winter. Brace yourself against the rains and winds that pelt you and threaten to knock you down, for soon it will be Christmas Day.

Candle on the Water

I'll be your candle on the water
'Till every wave is warm and bright
My soul is there beside you
Let this candle guide you
Soon you'll see a golden stream of light

--“Candle on the Water,” Helen Reddy

Dear Thi, 

October is “Infant Loss Awareness” month, and so I think of you. Nine months have passed, enough time to make a whole new you. Mommy and Daddy celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. On that evening of August 25^th, there was a local lantern festival that we didn’t get to attend, but a thoughtful friend had gone and sent a lantern onto the water in commemoration of beloved lost babies like you. 

Lake Almaden came aglow with waxy paper lanterns drifting gently beneath the light of the moon.

I think of you drifting like that lantern to a place where I cannot reel you in but only hope that you will still keep my flame of love burning strongly inside you to guide you. 

The next day, we brought flowers to your grave. Your headstone had been engraved and now has your name and birthday on it. Now you can rest here with some permanency instead of having a laminated piece of paper to mark your place. 

Daddy chose the design for our family headstone: a protective tree standing tall, lending shade and comfort, surrounded by a rustic wooden fence that hearkens back to peaceful evenings spent viewing the sunset, bidding goodbye to a moment in time that we will never experience again. In the skies, I added three birds in flight. The little one flying high ahead is you, dear Thi, with two bigger birds following after.

We found out the baby we lost after you would have been a boy, a little brother for you. After I felt well from the surgery, I took to jogging along the San Tomas Aquino Trail close to my workplace. 

I am not a runner by any means; I am slow and tire easily with redundant exercise and get bored without mental stimulus to keep me going. Aikido is done in bursts with rest in between; my mind was always busy figuring out a technique and how to best execute it. But running is endurance, stamina, sheer willpower to lap up the endless trail ahead of me and put more and more distance behind me. My mind shuts down from the monotonous scenery of dry grass and sludgy creek water choked with algae. 

 Only the occasional flock of mallards or a lone white egret offer something new to look at. But there is something satisfying in it, too, a sense of accomplishment after logging my miles, the push to self-improve, the burn in my lungs and legs as this addicting corporeal pain takes over and pushes aside the cutting emotional hurt of the past months. Sweat trickles down my temples, and my shoulders burn from the summer sun, so uncultivated from indoor exercise before now. I gasp to suck in air after a 5k, feel blood throbbing in my ears, will my jelly legs to carry me back to the company. Funny thing about running—you have to factor in the journey back equidistant to the miles you have already pushed yourself to go. I explore the trail to niches that I have not been to before. I hone my stamina and energy as I chase my shadow across endless miles of concrete. I remind myself what it’s like to strive to be strong when you feel weak. It is a long road ahead, my girl.  

The Sound of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence

 

--"The Sound of Silence," Simon & Garfunkel

I was towel-drying Luc after his bath when he looked up at me and asked, "Where baby?" I stood still and debated for a minute. Usually he asks that question in reference to Thi, followed by his own recollections of where we buried her: "Little Sister sleeping. Near rocks." But instead of bringing on a fresh wave of pain, this time there was hope, a glimmer of excitement so long gone and missed. 

 

I leaned over and whispered in his ear, "Luc, do you want to know a secret?" Tung and I had said we wouldn't tell, what with the shadow of a loss putting anxiety in our hearts. "There IS a baby," I said to Luc, "a new one in Mommy's tummy. But we aren't going to tell anyone yet, ok?" Luc smiled from the tickle of my secret in his ear, weighted with the knowledge that he was in on something special, but not yet able to comprehend its meaning.

Dear Baby, that was my favorite memory of you, in the very brief time we had together. It was like when I took that walk around the townhouses near my old company's location while pregnant with Thi, talking to her as I basked in the late-afternoon sun, worries and insecurities temporarily put aside so that I could enjoy the dreams of what could have been. It wasn't long though, dear Baby, when I noticed spotting over a weekend and called my OB to get an early appointment for a scan. 

It seemed a million years to wait during that half-week until my appointment. I took a walk in between work to calm my nerves, my heart pounding, willing time to pass quicker, wanting to know. But deep in my heart, I already did. This pregnancy was different; I didn't feel it. I felt too...normal. Aside from fatigue, I didn't have nausea or bloat. I felt a little full in the mid-section in my pants, but it didn't change as the days passed. I felt guilt over being so anxious over something going wrong that I couldn't bond with this baby. But most of all, I felt empty, like nothing was there.

We saw the gestational sac right away when the OB performed the ultrasound. "I see the...pregnancy," she said cautiously. Not the baby, because in that oval-shaped womb was only a void of darkness. No yolk sac. No fetal pole. Only "some slight matter" of something arrested in development at 5 weeks when I should have been 7.5 weeks, floating around like debris in space--empty, silent. After getting my Quantitative HCG tested three times in the week to follow and seeing the numbers drop, I was diagnosed with a missed miscarriage from a blighted ovum.

I had my D&C surgery on Friday, August 17, 2018 at 12:30PM. That is your birthday, dear Baby. I went to sleep pregnant and woke up no longer so. I have trouble picturing you because I never saw your form, but I will never forget you. Because the forming placenta continues to produce pregnancy hormones that stay in my blood even after you were removed, my body still thinks it's pregnant. When I take a pregnancy test several days after the D&C, it still shows up positive. What a mind trip, that you seem to be still there, even though you're not, even though you technically never have been. What a strangeness, that the body refuses to yet acknowledge what the mind already knows, what the heart has figured out all on its own. 

Dear Thi, that is the story of your baby sibling, short and brief. I have always felt guilty over you being alone while your father and brother and I get to move forward in our lives together. Yes, in a sense, you are always with us, but often I picture you playing around your gravesite, waiting for us to visit and bring you flowers and toys. Well, now Mama has sent a baby sibling to keep you company, Thi. Take good care of Baby, my girl. I wish I could hold you both in my arms, but that is not my fate. So as your father says, "Be good. Don't cause too much trouble, my loves." One day we will see you again, on the other side of Darkness.