“I'll say it loud here by your grave
Those angels can't
Ever take my place”
-Tori Amos Playboy Mommy
-Tori Amos Playboy Mommy
It was seven years ago today that we learned she was gone. Right now, at 3:55 p.m., on that day I was sleeping. Soon I would wake up from that long nap and have dinner, and then curl up with Kevin on the couch, ready to watch the Lakers vs. Blazers - our teams battling each other. I noticed Riley hadn't been kicking. I wiggled my belly and tried to prompt her to kick. She remained stubbornly still. I drank a tall glass of icy chocolate milk. And still, nothing. Finally, around 7:30 p.m., I went to L&D. And it was there that we found out, that I stared at her still ribcage, and that my world shattered.
Riley was born at 10:22 a.m. on December 14, 2000, 12 hours after we found out she had died. After they told me she was gone, I didn't want to see my round belly - I couldn't even touch it. I wanted all reminders of the horror that we were experiencing to be gone. I wanted them to put me to sleep, to cut me open, and to take her out of me... to pretend none of it had happened. Much as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind I wanted to gather all the pieces of my impending motherhood and hide them in a box, and then strap myself to some kind of miracle machine and have the whole of it taken from me. It was foolish. And it did not take long for those impulses to turn completely, to become an overwhelming need to remember and to hold on. The desire to erase everything was not a desire to erase Riley, but rather a desire to blot out the all encompassing grief that surrounded me and gripped me so tightly. It is an agony that is so intense, it knows no rival. That I have survived it still surprises me. Though the power of it is still with me, I have come to a place where I can breathe through the weight of it most of the time.
That morning when it came time to deliver my daughter, despite the desire I had to close myself off from the experience, to have it over with, I also had this intense urge to hold her inside of me. I knew that once it was over, she would be gone. For a long time, that is how I thought of birth - an ending. It was Jonah who finally taught me that birth is also a beginning; it is meant to be a beginning. But with Riley, I almost hated how easy it was to bring her into the world. My body just let her slip from me. And with that final push that released her, I began to sob. It was so final. I had given her up into a world she would never see. I held her in my arms for a few brief moments, moments that sustain me to this day, and then they took her and she was gone. My body had spent months creating this perfect little being that I would only breathe in for a few soft minutes.
As much as Riley's birth was an ending, it was also a beginning. I became a new person that day. So many parts of who I was died, and all of these new elements of who I would become sprang up in an instant. I was 24 and no longer young. Even though I was a self-professed cynic, there was an innocent optimism that colored my views, and it was gone. My faith in the mundane, in the natural order, in the beauty of a life lived simply - it all turned to liquid and slipped through me. My certainty in my body, in my femininity, in all of the physical things that made me a mother, I still have not recaptured any of that. In place of my belief in a natural progression of life, there exists a scattered sense of chaos and a deep need to cling to those things most precious to me lest the universe try and pull them away. Everything I lost that day was sacred and prized. But I also gained some things that I still carry with me, that are defining parts of who I am, and that I appreciate. I am kinder. I am more compassionate. I am stronger. I am more certain of what matters. I love harder. I cherish more. I hold tighter. Of course, I would give all of that back without a second thought. But that choice is not mine so I embrace what I have been given and think of these things as gifts from Riley. Her legacy.
I can't help, though, and think of my daughter at 7 years old. I remember being 7 years old quite clearly. It was second grade. Miss Jones's class. It was having my tonsils out, and getting my first Cabbage Patch Kid. My best friend was a pretty little Greek girl named Despina, and we loved Cyndi Lauper and Madonna and Boy George. I wonder who Riley would be and what memories she would be creating for herself. She would probably love the same silly things as me, only in their new twenty-first century incarnations... Bratz dolls instead of Cabbage Patch Kids, High School Musical instead of Fame, Hannah Montana instead of Cyndi Lauper. But who would her best friend be? And what would she look like sitting on her bed reading Judy Blume with the sun streaming over her on a crisp, fall Sunday afternoon? I can almost see her, long-limbed and honey colored. She is beautiful in my mind. I can only imagine how she would take my breath away if she lived in more than just my simple and unworthy imagination. I can see whole scenes unfolding. Impossibly simple scenes... Riley running on the soccer field with bows in her hair... Riley with a red backpack over her shoulder walking out of her classroom... Riley giggling with a group of little girls... Riley whispering a secret into my mom's ear... Riley teaching her little brother some new trick, full of infinite patience... I think that's what's hardest to live without. It is a fundamental part of who I am to live without my daughter. But there is something that fills me with hot grief when I think of my son living without his older sister. Even though he never knew her, I can see him with her. Once, maybe a year ago, a little girl Riley's age with soft, wispy brown hair, took Jonah under her wing in a learning store and played little games with him. I hid between aisles because I couldn't stop myself from openly weeping. Before Jonah, I naively thought that having a child might fill some kind of void left by Riley's absence. The thing is, Jonah has given me so much fulfillment and peace. But his life is not a substitute for hers. He is his own being, as she was her own. And in many ways, having a child has shown me all I missed with her. And it has made me miss her more. I miss her for me, for Kevin, for our parents, and especially for Jonah who is a little brother and an only child all at once.
I think that's what gets me. I knew this grief would last a lifetime. I didn't know that it would still be at the front of all my emotions. But it is. I think of her all the time. I miss her all the time. I feel the deepness of her absence every moment of every day. I ache to go back and change everything, to save her, to save all of us. I have not made peace with this loss. I live in spite of it. I am happy in spite of it. I am fortunate that I have joy in the face of what has been such a defining tragedy. But I am still so black with bitterness. When I think of Riley, of losing her, I still see no sense and no purpose in it. When I think back on our journey through infertility, something that was so emotionally devastating for us, I can see a small bit of purpose in our suffering: any child born to us at any other time, would not have been our Jonah. He is the only possible version of himself - sheer perfection. If he is our end result, then there seems to be some sense to those terrible three years of waiting. But I have never found a reason or a purpose or anything at all that makes sense when it comes to losing Riley. And because of that, when I think of it for too long, when I focus on that aspect of it, I just feel this hurricane of rage and frustration. I miss my baby girl. And I shouldn't have to.
I wanted to write something here about Riley that seemed cohesive and peaceful. But I feel like this is so fragmented and full of longing and anger and sorrow. But it is the honest and raw matter that has run from my open heart as I think back to this day, 7 years ago, when for an instant the whole world paused without every really righting itself again. Tomorrow, though, tomorrow I will seek some peace on the edge of a cliff as I let loose a big bundle of yellow balloons and hold tight to the memory of my pretty little daughter and the love that is ours, that not even her death can take from us.
Riley was born at 10:22 a.m. on December 14, 2000, 12 hours after we found out she had died. After they told me she was gone, I didn't want to see my round belly - I couldn't even touch it. I wanted all reminders of the horror that we were experiencing to be gone. I wanted them to put me to sleep, to cut me open, and to take her out of me... to pretend none of it had happened. Much as in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind I wanted to gather all the pieces of my impending motherhood and hide them in a box, and then strap myself to some kind of miracle machine and have the whole of it taken from me. It was foolish. And it did not take long for those impulses to turn completely, to become an overwhelming need to remember and to hold on. The desire to erase everything was not a desire to erase Riley, but rather a desire to blot out the all encompassing grief that surrounded me and gripped me so tightly. It is an agony that is so intense, it knows no rival. That I have survived it still surprises me. Though the power of it is still with me, I have come to a place where I can breathe through the weight of it most of the time.
That morning when it came time to deliver my daughter, despite the desire I had to close myself off from the experience, to have it over with, I also had this intense urge to hold her inside of me. I knew that once it was over, she would be gone. For a long time, that is how I thought of birth - an ending. It was Jonah who finally taught me that birth is also a beginning; it is meant to be a beginning. But with Riley, I almost hated how easy it was to bring her into the world. My body just let her slip from me. And with that final push that released her, I began to sob. It was so final. I had given her up into a world she would never see. I held her in my arms for a few brief moments, moments that sustain me to this day, and then they took her and she was gone. My body had spent months creating this perfect little being that I would only breathe in for a few soft minutes.
As much as Riley's birth was an ending, it was also a beginning. I became a new person that day. So many parts of who I was died, and all of these new elements of who I would become sprang up in an instant. I was 24 and no longer young. Even though I was a self-professed cynic, there was an innocent optimism that colored my views, and it was gone. My faith in the mundane, in the natural order, in the beauty of a life lived simply - it all turned to liquid and slipped through me. My certainty in my body, in my femininity, in all of the physical things that made me a mother, I still have not recaptured any of that. In place of my belief in a natural progression of life, there exists a scattered sense of chaos and a deep need to cling to those things most precious to me lest the universe try and pull them away. Everything I lost that day was sacred and prized. But I also gained some things that I still carry with me, that are defining parts of who I am, and that I appreciate. I am kinder. I am more compassionate. I am stronger. I am more certain of what matters. I love harder. I cherish more. I hold tighter. Of course, I would give all of that back without a second thought. But that choice is not mine so I embrace what I have been given and think of these things as gifts from Riley. Her legacy.
I can't help, though, and think of my daughter at 7 years old. I remember being 7 years old quite clearly. It was second grade. Miss Jones's class. It was having my tonsils out, and getting my first Cabbage Patch Kid. My best friend was a pretty little Greek girl named Despina, and we loved Cyndi Lauper and Madonna and Boy George. I wonder who Riley would be and what memories she would be creating for herself. She would probably love the same silly things as me, only in their new twenty-first century incarnations... Bratz dolls instead of Cabbage Patch Kids, High School Musical instead of Fame, Hannah Montana instead of Cyndi Lauper. But who would her best friend be? And what would she look like sitting on her bed reading Judy Blume with the sun streaming over her on a crisp, fall Sunday afternoon? I can almost see her, long-limbed and honey colored. She is beautiful in my mind. I can only imagine how she would take my breath away if she lived in more than just my simple and unworthy imagination. I can see whole scenes unfolding. Impossibly simple scenes... Riley running on the soccer field with bows in her hair... Riley with a red backpack over her shoulder walking out of her classroom... Riley giggling with a group of little girls... Riley whispering a secret into my mom's ear... Riley teaching her little brother some new trick, full of infinite patience... I think that's what's hardest to live without. It is a fundamental part of who I am to live without my daughter. But there is something that fills me with hot grief when I think of my son living without his older sister. Even though he never knew her, I can see him with her. Once, maybe a year ago, a little girl Riley's age with soft, wispy brown hair, took Jonah under her wing in a learning store and played little games with him. I hid between aisles because I couldn't stop myself from openly weeping. Before Jonah, I naively thought that having a child might fill some kind of void left by Riley's absence. The thing is, Jonah has given me so much fulfillment and peace. But his life is not a substitute for hers. He is his own being, as she was her own. And in many ways, having a child has shown me all I missed with her. And it has made me miss her more. I miss her for me, for Kevin, for our parents, and especially for Jonah who is a little brother and an only child all at once.
I think that's what gets me. I knew this grief would last a lifetime. I didn't know that it would still be at the front of all my emotions. But it is. I think of her all the time. I miss her all the time. I feel the deepness of her absence every moment of every day. I ache to go back and change everything, to save her, to save all of us. I have not made peace with this loss. I live in spite of it. I am happy in spite of it. I am fortunate that I have joy in the face of what has been such a defining tragedy. But I am still so black with bitterness. When I think of Riley, of losing her, I still see no sense and no purpose in it. When I think back on our journey through infertility, something that was so emotionally devastating for us, I can see a small bit of purpose in our suffering: any child born to us at any other time, would not have been our Jonah. He is the only possible version of himself - sheer perfection. If he is our end result, then there seems to be some sense to those terrible three years of waiting. But I have never found a reason or a purpose or anything at all that makes sense when it comes to losing Riley. And because of that, when I think of it for too long, when I focus on that aspect of it, I just feel this hurricane of rage and frustration. I miss my baby girl. And I shouldn't have to.
I wanted to write something here about Riley that seemed cohesive and peaceful. But I feel like this is so fragmented and full of longing and anger and sorrow. But it is the honest and raw matter that has run from my open heart as I think back to this day, 7 years ago, when for an instant the whole world paused without every really righting itself again. Tomorrow, though, tomorrow I will seek some peace on the edge of a cliff as I let loose a big bundle of yellow balloons and hold tight to the memory of my pretty little daughter and the love that is ours, that not even her death can take from us.
2 comments:
Just love to you, my friend, as I remember your Riley too today, and find myself crying for what you all have lost.
(I was thinking how she would now be an age you probably remember being, and thinking that that would be so hard).
Oh Clair. I'm a few days late, but I am thinking of you and your dear, sweet Riley today.
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