"Her"

Have you ever been given something you wanted really bad?  In a word, all wrapped and beautiful and perfect. 

And they told you it was coming, and so you shopped and sang and extolled?  Told big brothers and co workers and baristas and the mailman. 

And the anticipation grew inside you, along with the gift for months.  And so you exhaled and you unwrapped and you assembled.  And you planned and you planned and you planned. 

And then, in an instant it was gone.  Gone from your insides and gone from your arms and gone from their mouths.  As though it had never been. 


The other night I had a dream.  A friend had a baby and I made her a lasagna.  The next day at work she told me her baby died, as though we were discussing the weather.

"We gave him a bite," she told me.  "It must have been the sauce you made."



In December they asked if we wanted to know.   Of course not.  Absolutely not.  There would be no planning this time.  Never again.

Only the wand moved and someone said "her".  Make sure you get the pocket next to her face.  He didn't catch it, but my heart never misses that word anymore. 


The next day I drove to the office for confirmation.  They handed me a sealed envelope, and on the way home I stared at the tape as though it were two hands on a boulder just above me.  At every stoplight I pondered how someone could know such a thing, how anyone tempts fate in this way; how a version of myself exists somewhere, swirling blindly in colors of pink and blue for months on end because they told her she could.  And she never questions what words on envelopes tell her is to happen, what everyone is told is to happen, and she hurries through Saturday mornings with her two beautiful children, and there's never a Doppler in her purse.

My fingers trembled as we opened together.  And my heart skipped and dropped and sang and remembered.  And it felt as though I were back somewhere I'd been before, and I missed her then.  God, I miss her.  And it felt possible and certainly doomed.  And I cried on the bed for two hours straight. 


Since she died I'll be shopping and they'll jump at me from the periphery.   Polka dots and purple and lace and tulle, stripping my thoughts from this life and placing me back in that one.  To those moments in that room.  With her. 

I've gotten so good at blocking them out.  The memories and the fabric, so harsh in my mind and so soft in my hands.  Turning my head and changing the subject and accepting what will not be.  Every item to never grace her skin, sealed somewhere underground in the dark.   Friends who have babies and wrap them in pink, and I press the buttons and I send the flowers.  And my heart screams and my head drops but I proceed, as I always do.

Last week I thought, maybe, maybe just one and so I picked it up.  The tiny navy jumper with the yellow shoulder bow. 

I thought of her then.  Running in the sun, holding someone's hand.  Needing someone's help and making us late that time.  Blowing kisses from the grass and chasing her brothers somewhere and mouthing something to me softly from the carpet some morning,  someday.  Someday. 

The cashier looked at me strangely and then I feel it, white knuckles gripping the navy at my side, so as no one could see. 

Gently she takes it from my hands until they're empty; this most familiar sensation.   And like a lunatic who has learned nothing, I hedge the same.

"It's for her," I say. 

I think of the bin in our basement and I realize that no matter what happens, it's the truth.