4
Blue balloons are tethered to the porch columns, and a big sign has been pushed into the grass declaring “Celebrate Baby Boy Hayes.”The letters are so big, I’m certain they could be seen from space.They’re also covered in glitter, and a memory of when my cousin Clara sent me a birthday card with glitter all over the front comes back to me.Robbie went to read it and then had glitter stuck to his fingers.He complained for days that he was still finding glitter everywhere, no matter how many times he washed his hands.
My cheeks tug upwards reminding me I can still smile, even if they’re few and far between these days.As painful as they are, I love these kinds of memories.
The front door opens and Clara stands there, her protruding belly covered by a gorgeous navy blue wrap dress with white flowers on it.She’s glowing and looks more beautiful than ever.
“Jolie!I’m so happy you could make it.”She leans forward over her belly and pulls me as close to her as she can to wrap me in a hug, which feels more like two people bending over so only their arms wrap around each other.I squeeze her back and attempt to swallow down the emotion clogging my throat.
“Look at you,” I say.
She pulls back and smiles, rubbing her hand over her belly.With a deprecating roll of her eyes she says, “I know.I’m huge.I’m so ready for this baby to be here already.”
Her eyes widen and then she grabs my hand, and before I can object, she places it on her stomach.“He’s kicking!Can you feel him?”
She watches her stomach, her eyes shining bright, and I’m grateful she can’t see the shine of tears in my eyes which I quickly blink away before they can fall.A thump beats against my palm a few times before stopping, and the tug in my chest isn’t from the pain of losing my husband this time.
There’s a chorus of laughter inside the house that causes Clara to finally look back up at me.“Oh my gosh, why are we still standing out here?Come in, come in!The party is in full swing, and my friend has a game going where you can’t say b-a-b-y,” she says, spelling out the word with her hand over her mouth like she’s filling me in on a secret.
Then she takes my hand and leads me inside.The room is filled with several of our relatives—all with varying degrees of pity on their faces when they see me—and many of Clara’s friends.Some I recognize from her wedding, but others are new faces.The new faces are a relief; they don’t look at me the same way as the others who knew me before Robbie died.This was part of what I was dreading about today.The stares, the pitying embraces, the probing questions about how I’m doing while they inevitably talk about how tragic my life is behind my back.If they only knew how tragic it truly was.
Losing a loved one has a tendency to overshadow everything else because it’s an outward loss everyone can see.But I lost something else after Robbie died.
I was nine weeks along and barely functional from the grief I was experiencing from losing my husband when the bleeding started.I thought nothing could hurt worse than losing Robbie, but losing our baby was like adding insult to injury.It made the loss so much greater because I didn’t even have a piece of him to carry on his legacy, his name, a living symbol of our love for each other.
I had nothing.
Not a fucking thing.
I’ve never been as low as I was then.
We’d tried for years to have a baby, basically from the moment we got married.When I finally got that elusive positive pregnancy test, I was in such disbelief I ended up immediately taking the other two in the box because I was convinced it had to be a false positive.The joy on Robbie’s face when I walked into his home office and told him will forever be burned into my brain.He cried with me and then immediately went and ordered a custom Rapturous Intent onesie for our little peanut.
Apart from our wedding day, it was one of the best days of my life.
We hadn’t told anyone yet.After our struggle to conceive, I wanted to wait until we passed the first trimester, so when I lost the baby, I dealt with my grief mostly in silence.
No one talks about miscarriages.They’re treated as so taboo to talk about there isn’t even a title for a woman who loses a child.
Lose a parent, you’re an orphan.
Lose a spouse, you’re a widow.
Lose a child—born or not—and you’re…no different than before.Life is supposed to carry on as usual.
Newsflash—that’s all bullshit.Everything is different after that kind of loss, and life doesn’t just pick up like nothing happened.You’re forever changed.
“Jo,” my mom’s voice breaks through the cacophony of female voices, and I spin around to see her standing over by the beverage station they have set up on the kitchen counter.
When I reach her, she wraps me up in a hug and whispers in my hair.“Holding up?”She pulls back, and her gaze is gentle with a hint of concern, but not so much it would be obvious to anyone watching us.
She’s the only one who knows about the baby.I called her when I knew what was happening, and she stayed with me for several days as I went through it.I’ll forever be grateful I didn’t have to experience that completely alone.
I give her the slightest nod and a small smile.
“Tell me if you need an excuse to escape.I’ve come up with several ideas, and it gets us away from Molly,” she says, with an annoyed roll of her eyes that makes me smile, bigger this time.My Aunt Molly has the habit of being a giant know-it-all, but because she’s family she gets invited to everything, even though most people can’t stand her holier-than-thou attitude.
“I’ll keep that in mind.”