AUGUST 2021
What do you do when your womb won’t sustain life? I’ve taken refuge in a hotel room, armed with my journal, ready to chart my own destiny.
Five years ago I didn’t think to ask why my first child was gone before I knew I was pregnant. Two years later, my second unborn departed within ten weeks. “No cause for concern,” doctors said. The following year my third child developed in me for almost three months, then chose not to be born. No specialist, test, diet, meditation, vitamin, ritual, ceremony, medicine, or prayer could remedy my condition. I've tried.
A tear plops on my page, smearing the ink. Enough journaling for now. That thousand milligrams of ibuprofen is kicking in, so I tighten my bikini strings and get out of bed. My wiry, twenty-four year-old reflection in the mirror still resembles the ambitious newlywed I was, before chronic failure withered my dream of motherhood—a dream deferred until well after it spoiled my marriage. I pick up my journal and pen one more thought before bookmarking my page and heading outside to the courtyard Jacuzzi.
The pandemic was our final undoing, though our bond wasn’t the only casualty. Six months ago I emerged from my COVID isolation room empty, having suffered a fourth miscarriage. Since I hadn’t troubled my husband with the news of my pregnancy, I didn’t bother him with my loss. I didn’t burden anyone. Compassion fatigue was as prevalent as the virus since my miscarriages had become routine. My womb was so acquainted with death, I knew the instant it became a tomb.
When a soul leaves its home, the evaporation feels like a breeze has suddenly stopped caressing your skin. I log my journey in these pages and soak my sorrow in the bath, a shower, a lake, sometimes a pool. Something in the water brings clarity.
With my journal tucked under an arm and a towel around my hips, I enter the courtyard lamenting how my husband tested his virility on another woman, as if to prove he wasn’t at fault for our empty nest. Their baby is due in March. I’ve been quietly carrying ours for fourteen weeks. My longest pregnancy ever! I was ready to tell my husband, but the familiar twisting of my gut led me on a different course. I padded my panties, packed a bag and came to the Hilton to pass our fifth child on my terms.
I remove my towel and sink, chest deep, into the bubbling tub of steamy water. Minutes later, with my aches dulling and my womb weeping red, I document what’s to come.
The evening sun streams through orange maple trees. Wayward leaves drift on cool winds, though autumn doesn’t start for a month. Unusual conditions have caused the trees to stop making food needed to sustain their leaves. So the leaves have changed color and are falling before their time.
I’ve honored the soul of each fallen child who passed through me. When I was nineteen I enshrined the remains of my first one in a potted plant. It bloomed spectacular flowers! My twenty-one year-old womb absorbed my second child’s remains. At twenty-two I commemorated my third unborn in a garden that still bears fruit—something my womb could never do. When COVID coursed through my body, my only reprieve was a cold tub of water where I soaked in the fluids of my fourth unborn to reduce my fever and hopefully replenish me.
Without children my soul is restless. I will find where mine have gone. When I leave this body, this house of transient souls, I’m going to be with my children.
The air turns still. Branches settle mid sway, and a leaf being carried westward suddenly drops beside me. There’s a familiar lack of sensation on my skin. I take the razor blade that bookmarked my journal and drag it across my wrists, opening a passageway for my soul, then sink lower into the stinging water.
Swooning, I watch my unborn’s vital fluids merge with mine and wait for our souls to meet, evaporate, and transition. Together.