Far Away

This time, this place misused, mistakes
Too long, too late, who was I to make you wait
Just one chance, just one breath
Just in case there's just one left
'Cause you know, you know, you know

That I love you
I've loved you all along
And I miss you
Been far away for far too long

--“Far Away,” Nickel Back

We tend to look for kernels of something “being wrong” in retrospect. We opted to have an autopsy done on Thi, only the hospital wasn’t too clear on how or when the results would be given to us. A few days after the holiday break, I couldn’t shake the feeling of Thi still being in limbo at the hospital, but that we couldn’t collect her for cremation until the autopsy had been performed. I called in and demanded several times to speak to someone about the progress, and finally I got someone from the Medical Records department to tell me that we hadn’t signed a form for the release of the results. Even though we signed everything they gave us to sign during my hospital stay. Even though we are the parents wanting the results for our baby. Tung drove me back to the hospital, and we presented the signed form, which had to download from the website. Somewhere within these buildings, my baby’s lost and confused soul was still wandering. We were then presented with a yellow envelope, which I tore into to read the pathology report. It was full of medical jargon, like how they labeled Thi’s death as a “fetal demise.”

The short of it is that there was a blood clot in her cord that prevented the delivery of oxygen and nutrients. And that early scare with potential Down Syndrome ended up being a fluke. I had to file that away and look at it objectively with a sense of detachment, like watching a morbid crime scene investigation on TV. Just the facts. I tried to feel a small sense of closure from knowing what went wrong. But the next day when I stared again at that yellow envelope, the emotional and psychological side of it gnawed at me. My baby girl—who ended up being genetically healthy—essentially starved to death. For four weeks, all the food I ate didn’t go to her. She was only able to get a fraction of each breath of fresh air I took. 

She stopped thriving. 

She stopped growing. 

Her heart stopped beating.

How obliviously foolish was I through it all? I was running around during the busy holiday season, mailing out cards that doubled up as a pregnancy announcements, decorating, baking, going on team outings—I never gave myself a break to slow down. I felt guilty for not being “in tune” with my body and turning inward for reflection to maybe realize that something WAS wrong.

Even though it’s nothing I could’ve done to prevent it—and nothing we could have done even if we found out as it was happening—the last image of her on the ultrasound, curled inward as if to alleviate the pain of hunger, sears at my mind and sends it reeling back to the Dark Place. I know this pain, as I had been hungry myself through a rough immigration journey. I know this pain, as I struggled to feed Luc the first days after his birth when my milk had not yet come in. I know this pain, and yet I was helpless to it. My heart is breaking over and over again.