Somewhere Only We Know

*Trigger warning: Personal accounts of stillbirth/child loss and grief are mentioned in this post.*

The other day, I ventured into our attic for the first time in over a year. My sister-in-law will be delivering their second baby very soon, and I was looking for the MamaRoo infant swing she had lent us before we lost Ezra. It turns out that my parents placed it in the basement of their house in the days after his death, so I couldn’t find it. What I could find, however, were all of the things that were supposed to be handed down to my son — the things that I had pushed out of my mind over the last 16 months: a different baby swing, a bouncer, a car seat base, three strollers, a pink bathtub, a play mat, two baby walkers, a box of clean bottles and breast pump equipment, and several boxes of clean baby clothes (split ever so painstakingly into different sizes and separated into “boy” and “girl” clothing boxes).

I carefully sifted through the items, thinking about how ready we were for our baby boy to arrive. Everything was covered in a layer of dust. No parent expects to be left with an attic full of their dead child’s unused personal effects when they find out they’re expecting a baby. But, alas, here I am. After failing to find the one thing I went up there to get, I descended the rickety ladder, closed the attic door, washed my hands, and sat down on my bed. And then, I cried.

There is a video from the Star Legacy Foundation (https://www.facebook.com/StarLegacyFoundation/videos/110104136545239/) that I stumbled upon about one month after Ezra’s death. Just an FYI, do not watch it if you are not in a good place, emotionally. It nearly broke me the first time I saw it. In it, a mother and father exit a hospital. The mother is in a wheelchair, pushed by a hospital employee, and the father is carrying a car seat. They drive home in silence. When the couple gets out of the car, the father collects the car seat, they pause to look at one another, and they proceed into their house. It is quiet. They then walk over to the nursery, the father puts down the car seat (which we can now see is empty), and the mother begins to sob. She drops a pink baby blanket on the floor, melts into her husband, and they both crumple to the floor in tears in the doorway of their child’s silent nursery.

We never had a nursery set up for our son. He was going to share his big sister’s room and hand-me-downs. If anything, we were just doing our best to make room for him in our home, and in our lives. And we were trying to do it safely in the midst of the pandemic. To this day, we still feel the void left by our son. It’s hard to ignore, and, honestly, I wouldn’t dream of ignoring it. Compared to other bereaved parents, those who have no other living children, we have a home that is filled with noise. Our four-year-old does a pretty good job of making sure we don’t have too much time to over-analyze the dark thoughts floating through our heads (and I cannot adequately express with words how grateful I am for her), but there is still an uncomfortable silence. It both makes me desperately want to fill it, and, simultaneously, slip into the noiseless void and disappear.

When I was pregnant with my son, I can recall noticing pregnant people all the time. It’s the kind of phenomenon that everyone experiences at one point or another. If you buy a certain kind of car, you suddenly begin to see that car everywhere. After Ezra’s death, pregnant people continue to be ubiquitous. Only, now, the mere sight of them sends me into a full-blown panic. I am part of this dreaded club, and some days it seems like death is all I can see. It is a big, black, billowing cloud hanging above my head, and it grows every day as we get further and further away from the day Ezra was born still.

Add to this the fact that COVID-19 stands like an ominous shadow in every alleyway. At times, I wonder if I’m going insane. I’m sure I must be. I wasn’t exactly considered “normal” even before losing my son. Despite that, I am told that what I feel is not, in any way, unusual. Super encouraging, right?

I don’t really know where I was going with this blog entry. It started with a pile of untouched baby items in my attic, somewhere in the middle is the image of me sobbing and obsessively poring over/editing my old baby registry for my sister-in-law who is due in February, and it ends with the pile of messed up thoughts and feelings festering in my head. Over a year after losing my son. I guess today is National Son’s Day, too, and I’m feeling his absence so keenly this week…