Thanksgiving
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In this post I write about a new pregnancy, not mine, and how I’m in a place where I can feel happy about and hopeful for the growth of a family. I might have hated to read this kind of thing when my grief was newer, more raw: I hope you skip this one if you know it will hurt.
It’s Thanksgiving in Canada – one of those holidays that was so hard to get through nine, eight, six, five years ago, when the notion of thankfulness was outrageous in its insult, in what seemed its willful blindness to how so many of us felt: broken, unquietly raging, railing against dictates to mourn nicely, count our blessings, be thankful for what we have, for the at leasts of our losses. At least you are healthy. At least you can try again. At least you have a child already.
Thanksgiving now is not so hard for me. It’s as it used to be: a day to be together, just hanging out, a walk in the woods, a delicious meal, no big expectations for presents or decorations, just us, being a family. We visited with another family whose son died six days before Anja, and I am comfortable now feeling grateful for their nearly decade-long friendship; not comfortable about how it started in support group, but glad that we have it, grateful that we’ve stuck together, that we’ve always got each other’s backs, that our girls, even if they don’t talk about it, each have a friend who knows.
E and I spent the morning baking a pie. She’s almost as tall as me. Started high school this year. Made the high school volleyball team and a city-wide rep softball team and is constantly giving me advice on how I’m using my phone wrong. We watch old videos later on in the evening, after the pie and way too much whipped cream (which she used to call ‘whoop’ cream). Videos taken when she was one, two and three years old, before grief visited our family. She was a joyous thing (still is), all blonde ringlets and rosy cheeks and goofy outfits, dancing and belly laughing all the time – that uproarious giggle. It still hurts to watch these videos and know what’s coming. To know how this little girl’s mom would check out for a while, how serious, hard and dark things would become for this pure light. There’s a video where I’m standing at the door to her bedroom asking a question about yams. Thanksgiving 2011, ten whole years ago. I was about four months pregnant, a little pot belly in grubby sweatpants, the video one of those accidental ones that you don’t realize is running: my voice, a little terse, the camera swiping across the room as I turn to go, the slightest glimpse of my pregnant stomach and I think: that was her alive. I think it might be the only video we have with my pregnant belly fully visible. To think that she was alive in there, flipping around, reaching out a tiny hand or tucking it under her chin. I don’t say anything out loud. The kids are laughing at how funny E was, how young their dad looked. We find another photo later, me and E reading on the couch just after Christmas, my belly much bigger. “That’s Anja in there, I say. Your little sister.” E and M go quiet, murmur something. I think about how it’s not true, Anja isn’t M’s little sister, but it doesn’t matter. We mark the moment.
A text dings on my phone. It’s my brother: “A small announcement for Thanksgiving,” he says, and follows with a second text, an ultrasound image, the very first photo of my very first nibling. I literally jump up and down I’m so excited for him and his girlfriend and for our whole family who gets another baby to love. I tell the kids they will be cousins and then think I should’ve waited until The Mandalorian was over so they could be properly excited. I sit back down, buzzing with excitement for my brother and his lovely partner and this new, growing baby. Beneath my excitement, I consider how I’m feeling. I wonder how I can be so excited about a pregnancy that is so early when I know so intimately all the ways pregnancies go wrong. Why am I so happy? Why am I giving myself over to the excitement instead of glowering darkly in my own isolated corner, counting all the bad things that could happen, and did happen to me? And when did I get to this place where I can be happy? Where I can hear of another person’s pregnancy and feel pure joy? (Is this something I should feel thankful for?)
Except…of course, it’s not pure joy. As I settle back on the couch, snuggled in with M’s blanketed feet in my lap, the buzzing continues and it’s not just excitement. My eyes suddenly fill with tears. I think about how much I love my baby brother, remembering his own fat, blonde babyhood, his big drooling smile, his eyes following his big sisters everywhere, and though he is now in his forties, with a bushy beard and a receding hairline, his smile is still big and goofy, and I want to protect him from any pain. I think about how when he and C learned they were pregnant, he knew, too – maybe not as intimately as me, but he knew - all the ways a pregnancy can go wrong, so many ways it can end that aren’t with a live baby to bring home. I hate that he knows this, that his first pregnancy is not just joyous.
I think about how much I love this kid already, the nibling I’ve hoped for for so long, another baby in the family, and I think about how I have, how we all have, six months now. Six months of waiting. Six months of hoping. Six months of this buzzing that is excitement and anxiety. ‘Stay alive, baby,’ I can hear my heart urging as I tuck the kids in, brush my teeth, lay my own head down. ‘Stay alive, baby. Stay alive, baby.’
We weren’t all together for Thanksgiving. My parents and brother and his partner on the Sunshine Coast together, my sister flying in from New York to visit friends in Ontario, my in-laws on the far, far east coast next to the muddy Bay of Fundy and us over hear on the edge of the Pacific. And Anja…where is she? I fall asleep placing everyone on the map, and Anja in the golden light that fell through the evergreen forest we walked in earlier, the nibling in the green, soaking it all in, growing, growing. Stay alive, baby. I’m thankful you’re here.
For the longest time I could not have felt - or even imagined feeling - happy about another person’s pregnancy. Where are you at? Is it harder when it is a family member? Are you hard on yourself about being less than joyous or can you let yourself feel the rage at the unfairness? Have you reached, or can you imagine reaching, a place where it’s possible to feel hope or even (shudder) thankfulness?