Friday, February 29, 2008

Leap Day 2008

There is a soul that belongs to my first child. A perfect soul. A perfect soul requiring a body sufficiently perfect to do it honor. Not perfect, but perfect enough. And the body into which that soul was to be born was not perfect enough. A perfect soul with an insufficiently perfect body.

In the end, I find that I have been unable to accept that my miscarriage represented the end of the opportunity for that child to be born. Coming to believe this (or convincing myself I do) was, in many ways, the only way I got through the miscarriage last fall. Not that believing this made living through and with loss any easier. But it made the loss more like the loss of innocence and the loss of expectation and less like the loss of a child, though there was and is certainly a lot of that mixed in along with it. My heart breaks for women whose own experiences of loss make this belief of mine seem childish and delusional and useless. I am so sorry.

As for me, I lost my first child last fall, and I carry that child within me now.

What's strange to me is how much that ends up sounding like one of those terrible things that people say to you when they hear you've had a miscarriage and don't know what to say.

4 comments:

HereWeGoAJen said...

I've thought the same thing.

Beautiful post.

Sushilover said...

I think we've discussed this before and am so happy that there are others that have the same belief as me. Maybe it's our way of dealing with the grief but deep down I really feel too that it's the soul which lives on ...

niobe said...

I've thought something very much like this. If only I could have another child, it would be one of the twins coming back to me.

Katie said...

My husband feels the same way you do.

He told me his thoughts on this after our last loss. It helped me tremendously. Even if it's not something that a person believes in, it is still a very nice idea and helps to soothe your soul.