“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding.” Psalm 3:5
Can’t breathe.
Can’t move.
Can’t talk.
My heart is pounding in my ears.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t move.
Can’t talk.
Tears are streaming down my face.
“I want to die.”
That is the only thing I can think.
I just want to die.
My midwife, Michelle, left the room for a moment to get a loss bag for me. For maybe 2 minutes I was alone in a box of a room, just empty. All I felt was wanting to die. I wanted to die and escape my sadness. Not in the way of suicide but I can only explain it as wanting to run away from my intense sorrow and devastation. And in that moment the words “I want to die” were the only way I could communicate to my own brain to cope.
Michelle walked back into the room with a small gray bag that was handmade for women like me. Like me… someone like me who was dying inside. Someone like me that had lost a baby they loved so much. Someone like me that was entering a club so many are in and not by choice. She opened the bag and began to tell me some of the things inside.
I crumbled again.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t move.
Can’t talk.
She closed the bag and braced me by the arms. I wept. I wept of such sadness over the son I fought tooth and nail for. But she held me there. She told me to honor where I was. She allowed me to push back the blood work needed as a baseline for pre-op if I chose to go that way to another day. We settled on a time for our coffee chat and I was walked out the back way, to avoid the waiting room.
The medical assistant who walked me out was so sweet. I’m not sure this is something many get “trained” in at the start of a job. But as she walked me through the office, I clutched the loss bag so tightly to my chest that my knuckles turned white. We silently walked down a staff hallway and reached the exit door. When she opened the door, I froze.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t move.
Can’t talk.
I crumbled again.
I wept in this doorway realizing that leaving this office was admitting to myself and to the world that this was real. This was my reality. This was the life and story I had to walk with.
She held me in that doorway. She didn’t let go. This young woman cried with me in my pain.
“I don’t want to leave you like this,” she said.
Me. Either.
Somewhere deep down I mustered all the strength I needed to walk the 100ft to my car. Each step was like moving bricks tied to my legs. Walking to my car was an eternity of pain in every step because this was real. He was gone. The girls had no brother. My husband had no son. There was no baby coming. There was no Porter for us to love.
I got into our car and crumbled again.
Can’t breathe.
Can’t move.
Can’t talk.
Matt held me across the center console with tears streaming down his face. And I wept. I wept for all the things we had lost losing Porter from our lives.
We drove home in silence. My mind was a broken record, “I want to die.” And when we got home, I crawled into my bed and cried until the tears could not come anymore. I embraced my body to hold my baby, my sweet baby who was dead inside me. That is a sentence no one should ever have to hear, say or even think. My dead son in my womb with me here alive. How was that fair?
But his soul was in heaven. His sweet soul was with Jesus. ?
TO BE CONTINUED…