Snakes and All

Here’s something that Kate Inglis wrote on this site back before I knew this place, or her, or how I’d need this gathering place she was creating:

"One of us, only half-joking, said this will be a place where (we) medusas can take off our hats, none minding the sight of all the snakes. Because not only can we bear the sight of each other—we crave it."

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And here’s what I wrote on becoming a Medusa, and finding myself here with all of you:

In sixth grade, I played Perseus in the classroom play. I looked backwards in my tin foil shield and beheaded my friend with a cardboard sword. This is how I first learned about the hero’s journey and how we all relate to the hero.

Not to the scary lady hissing in the corner.

Here’s what I couldn’t see then: Medusa sits on her solitary rock, in the middle of the wide ocean, beautiful and mortal. She is not out for blood, she is simply waiting for someone to reflect her experience. Can you see me here? Can you see me? Can you gaze at the reflection of death and loss without losing your head? I have had no choice. I have had to continue to move, and writhe, even as other people are frozen by the horror of this life, this particular life. My child died. Can you say those words with me? Can you enter this darkness to see what you can see? Can you sit with the emptiness and terror that it brings? Most people can’t stand to be around me unless I tidy up my venomous outrage and put on the familiar mask they all expect.

I lost friends after my son died, many friends, people I expected to stick with me through all of life’s challenges. I suppose they needed to protect their easily-pierced skin, they needed to stay away from the horror I represented: Medusa, monster, cursed, ill-fated mother. They froze at the thought of what happened and left me guessing what their silence meant (if it can happen to you, it can happen to anyone, to me, to me, to me). In grief circles this is called a secondary loss and almost all of us experience some form of it: Friends, relatives, bank tellers who say the wrong thing or say nothing at all. I was completely unprepared for this loss-on-top-of-loss, the sideways glances and whispers in the corner. I naively expected old friends to resurface, and my community to rally. I expected a silver lining, an It’s A Wonderful Life narrative, a coming together, a gathering place to pour all the unrealized love my son was meant to receive.

I kept waiting, Still, sometimes, today even, over three years later, I catch myself wondering: will my old friend from high school ever text me on my birthday again? Will my grad school buddy turn up on my doorstep with a suitcase, a can of Trader Joe’s Dolmas and stories of her adventures, like she did for so many years? Will my aunt and uncle ever call or see my daughter again? What is wrong with me? Why have they left? Why?

One friend, who I thought would be there for me, no matter what, excused herself. She said in not-so-many words, “I can’t see you through this thing. I can’t be there in the way you need.” She, along with all the others who disappeared, made me feel so needy. Guilty. Ashamed. The chasm that his death created in my life had already swallowed everything we had in common. When we met that one time, four months after he died, she called my name a little too brightly and asked if we could have lunch. She bought me a bowl of minestrone soup and a giant sourdough roll. We tried to talk around it, the sorrow, but I’m sure my eyes were hollow like my whole world was hollow. I was glad when it was over, and disappointed. I thought she would at least have said, “I’m sorry.” 

Maybe something in my eyes reminded me of her mother, alone in the old country, some ancient mother guilt. Maybe there was some other loss bottled deep inside. Was there a quaver in her voice, way back, when I told her I was pregnant with my first, and she said she never wanted kids?

I thought it could be interesting, then, in the great before, to stand on opposite sides of the motherhood divide. I thought it would be like the other differences we had navigated, the different places we were raised and the language we were raised in, her preference for colorful dresses and mine for yoga pants, how she liked white wine and I preferred beer. I thought maybe my daughter would be influenced by the path she had taken. I thought it took a village and we were in it together. We used to have weekly coffee dates, we played Pictionary, we took her dog for walks on beaches in San Francisco and Monterey and Half Moon Bay. (I remember she said she wanted a dog like some women wanted a baby. I remember her holding my daughter the day after she was born, tears in her eyes. I remember she took my husband and me out for dinner and grilled us on how this event had altered our view of ourselves and each other, what it was like, this new identity. “Will you have new friends now, mom friends?”)

After Jesse died, I never called her to ask for help or called her out on her silence. I know I retreated, maybe she thought I wasn’t keeping up my end of the bargain. Maybe my to-do list should have included asking for help in a specific, easily-fillable way, like a prescription from the pharmacy. But I didn’t even want anything, not even anything to eat. I threw out the eggplant and the cookies and the mac-n-cheese, all the kindnesses that friends and strangers showered on us (although I will remember to my dying day everyone who did show up, with coloring books for my living daughter and sesame chicken takeout; I will remember everyone who sat in the lumpy purple armchair and tried to make conversation, though I can’t remember a word we said). 

The truth of early grief was that I didn’t want pity, I didn’t want casseroles, I didn’t need a hero to rescue me with his flimsy sword. I wanted my son, and barring that, I wanted a rage to mirror my own. 

The secret password, my untested friends, is so simple. You just have to say “I’m sorry” and “this fucking sucks.” You can come join me on this lonely rock, really, I won’t bite. You don’t even have to look me in the eye. We can just throw pebbles out into the waves and see where they land. Medusa will not be pacified with platitudes or minestrone soup. She will force you to see past your own reflection and face the thing you thought would turn you into stone. Can you see me here? Can you see me?

“We crave it,” Kate said. We crave communality, community, we crave the rare friend or stranger who can hold our gaze for longer than a second. When I read your stories, all of your stories, when I learn new-to-me names that never will be fully inhabited by the people they were going to be, and read the dates of impossibly closed lives, I see again how real it was, how long and hard the journey. He was (is) as yours all were (are) present in this achingly beautiful world that we travel through. Through your stories, I am seen, snakes and all. And through the loss, he is seen too, my Jesse; his tiny life again is told, heard, realized, reified, made real. 
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This is Emma’s first post to Glow In The Woods as a contributor and co-editor. Her son, Jesse ,was stillborn at 38 weeks in 2017.

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How have your friends and community rallied or failed to rally around you, post-loss? What would you tell your own untested friends about what you need now that you are in this club that no one wants to join?