When I Get Where I’m Going

So much pain and so much darkness
In this world we stumble through
All these questions I can't answer
So much work to do

--“When I Get Where I’m Going,” Brad Paisley

I sat in the small office of St. Francis Assisi’s Memorial Garden Manager. Her name is Frances, with an “e.” Not Francis, like the patron saint of animals after which the church was named. The memorial garden on the side of the large Catholic church was one of the places we toured in our search for a final resting place for Thi. There were rectangular urn samples on display in the office, along with brochures for grief management and support groups. Frances asked me a question, roughly along the lines of how she could help us. The room was silent, and I needed to answer her. 

“I had a stillborn baby,” I started out. 

It was the first time I had to admit that to another person sitting in front of me, a stranger and not family. The words felt foreign on my tongue, like a language I stumbled through, tripping over the syllables since I could not yet speak it well. Frances expressed her condolences and sympathetically pulled out paperwork with niches still available, along with the costs. As with California real estate, the price for a niche had dramatically increased over the last few years. She then took us on a tour of the memorial garden, explaining the different niche tiers for internment, and how it’d work if a family were to share a niche. I noticed random, insignificant things along the tour: rain water pooling on the walkway; the barrenness of the grape vines and flora surrounding the garden on this winter morning; the way the sun slanted on the walls of names as I squinted to read the inscriptions. I still couldn’t believe that life took me here, having to make decisions for my baby’s resting place. She was supposed to have buried me, not this way around—this unnatural joke of the universe in reverse.                     

I think back to meeting Thi for the first time on ultrasound. Tung had been out of town for a business trip, and I went alone into my OB’s clinic. At work, I found quiet time to secretly stare at the pictures I captured of her, enamored with my perfectly peanut-shaped little bean.

I remembered how different this pregnancy was from Luc’s—whether age-related or because having two somewhat close together was taking a toll on my body, I felt more "wear and tear" this time around with general fatigue and nausea. And yet there were familiar elements to pregnancy that did not make me question the strength and health of my baby. The delicious smell of bread wafting from bakeries that called to me. Junky cravings of chips, cheese Hot Pockets, and ramen. New cravings that put me off with Luc, like chocolate and coffee, the latter of which I struggled not to consume. And the spicy! Luc couldn't stand spicy and gave me terrible heartburn after I ate the slightest spicy thing, but with Thi, I was craving it. Weird how things could be the same, but so different...

I remembered how it felt like to live in bliss. Here I thought my race against time was over, that after my battle with infertility before Luc, life finally cut me a break and sent me my coveted little girl instantly when we started trying again. I made it all the way into half of a fullterm pregnancy after enduring a rough first trimester. But then I failed, with nothing to show for but withered dreams and a cold granite slab of a niche on which to etch my baby’s date of birth and death.