What it's like
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“For us what was killing was how nothing had changed. We’d been waiting to be transformed, and now here we were, back in our old life.”
You know that job you applied to? The one you imagined trekking to day after day, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5? You were prepared to do it. The work, the routine. Prepared to give up all that time and energy, rearrange the patterns of your life to make it fit. You wanted work, that work, that job, despite the effort it would take.
The office was in the tall brick building that looked out over the downtown, over the treetops and all the way to the spires of the distant churches. This will be a nice view in spring, when the trees begin to bud, you thought. You went for an interview, then two, discovering the back staircase and the bathroom down the hall. There were a couple of restaurants nearby that looked nice and fast enough to go have lunch on your paid half-hour break. The commute wasn’t bad, a long walk or a shorter bike ride. If you drove, you could find some free parking up the hill. Schedules would fall into place around it, not without effort, but this is what you wanted, right? Some structure to your day?
It was still winter when you interviewed. You came in with heavy snow boots. There was a coat rack by the door and under it, everyone else’s boots — everyone who took for granted the existence of a well-paying, full-time job in a conveniently located office. Oh, I could leave my nicer flats here, those dressy shoes I haven’t had occasion to wear yet, you thought. There is a spot to leave them right under the coat rack and I’ll wear my boots back and forth during the long winter.
You lived in that reality, briefly, waiting to hear from the boss. For a couple of days or weeks you puttered around with normal, everyday life and thought Maybe, probably, maybe, probably not.
Then they offered the job to the other candidate. With one phone call, all the maybes evaporated. The lunch breaks, the podcasts you meant to listen to on your walks to work, the frantic scrambling to get ready every weekday mornings. Those shoes you meant to leave at work are still in your closet, unworn.
That is a little what losing an unborn child is like. That disorientation.
Who am I now, without this structure I had been moving towards?
The maybe-future drops away and you’re left with something that is less than what existed before. It's still winter, but now it's that winter, out of time and out of proportion to every other winter you have lived through. And the city too has changed into a different city. The place you traversed so freely in imagination, the one that your past-self believed in; that city has crumbled before your eyes, and your eyes only.
Every time you pass that tall building with the view above the rooftops, there’s a little echo of the what-ifs, of those past future imaginings. The future that is not and will not be. The future you once believed you could will into being with your energy and drive and blind good luck.
You were ready to be transformed.
I was ready to be transformed.
These questions remain, hanging: Where would he have sat at Thanksgiving? What costume would he have worn for his first Halloween? (a ghost, he was going to be a ghost, just as his sister was her first Halloween). Who would he have become?
And there are so many objects that were also ready to be transformed: All of the 0-3 month clothes already folded in the drawer, the car seat installed, the baby bouncer purchased, all of it waiting to be put to use. So many elephant prints. All those hand-me-down shoes and socks. So many tiny pieces of cloth.
Guest writer Emily is a mother to two beautiful girls and a stillborn son, J., who died of no diagnosed reason at 38 weeks gestation.
How were you expecting to transform? Since loss, how have you unexpectedly transformed?