September Rain

Early September feels sad to me. Maybe it's because I don't like change and September is all about change. Changing seasons, changing schedules, birthdays, new schools. The days are long and light-filled. The sun still shines, but I can feel it, the cold, the damp, the gloom lurking over my shoulder.

I lost a pregnancy in September. My very first pregnancy. It was a fairly early miscarriage. I don't mourn the baby now, but my cells, my brain waves, my fibers remember the fear, the desperate sugar of hope mixed into the bowl with the clogging flour of despair. For four months in late 2004, I ate that sickly, sticky dough every single day. I woke up knowing exactly what day this was. Day one. Tears. Days 7-14. Sex. Days 14-25. Hope. And then day one. Tears. I wanted to go back so badly that it almost drove me insane. I wanted to be that silly, carefree girl who had no clue about her cycle, who got caught out every month without a tampon because she couldn't be bothered to track her periods. Because she didn't care. Who didn't know if she wanted babies. Who went off the pill just to see what would happen.

In those months I didn't know, how much of my life would be defined by this need, this pain? Gee was conceived four months after the miscarriage. Looking back, it was a laughably short period of time. Compared to what people endure, are enduring all the time, it's enough to make you scoff. Oh, you poor, sad, ridiculously fertile woman who had to try for three whole months before you got what you wanted. How do I unsubscribe? My heart bleeds.

Mine does too. Every time I hear a story about infertility or loss or both. Every time I read a post. Because I lived with that unknown for four short months and I could barely take it.

A woman I love with all my heart, have loved since I was twelve, lost a baby last September. Not a potential baby. Not the hope of a baby. Not like me. Her baby died.

I don't know why babies die. I don't know what makes them leave their warm, soft wombs too early, try to take on the bright lights and harsh cold air too soon.

I suspect there is no reason. Chance. Biology. Random contraction of the stars. I can't dwell too long on it or my vision contracts, my own breath constricts. I flounder in dark fear of the fragility of life, the frailty of lungs and tissue; I have to rush, gasping to see that each of my children still breathes.

I'm afraid, sometimes, GG, to touch the veil that separates your baby girl from us.

I don't know what it means to write into the void like this. Do the numbers mean anything? Do they really represent living souls? On any given day do almost 800 people really glance at my words? I hope so. Today I hope so because I hope it means that they will read her name and know that she was here, if only on one day in September, and is, always, loved. I hope that they will feel, briefly, the grief that you always feel and spare a moment to muster peacefulness and love and strength and hope and send it to you.

Her name is Ella. She lived and left on a single day in September.