"Definition of Via: through the medium or agency of; by the way of"

"Definition of Via: through the medium or agency of; by the way of"
This is the medium I choose to grieve in the world. A place where I can clasp my son to my heart, instead of grasping at the thin air into which he has disappeared. Sometimes I may be funny, as sad as hell or as flippant as I damn well please. This is not a place of censorship; it's not where I mind others feelings. It's where I come to find the words for the unspeakable.

8 March 2012

Already Dead

22 September 2010.  Spring Equinox eve, Full Moon. 40 weeks, due date.  5:20 pm. Contractions 8 minutes apart.
 Right here, this moment:
You are already dead.
I do not remember your last kick.
I did not sense your distress.
In just over an hour the midwife would not find your heartbeat..

But right now, contractions 8 minutes apart;
I was picking spring flowers.
Your father was taking photo's- we hadn't taken any belly pictures for a month- this was as big as I was going to get.        
We wanted to capture this moment.
Walking and moaning and laughing through the fruit orchard.
A picture of fecundity.
With you, already dead.
And me, unknowing.

I thought of you seeing the sun like a red orb through my skin.
I thought I was preparing you for the light of this world.

You were already dead.
I did not know. 

I was excited and nervous, empowered and afraid, feeling the pain and focusing on joy.
I expected you to be crying in the world, cradled in my arms, by dawn.

I found these photo's on the eve of your funeral.
My insides erupt.  I am turned inside out.  It claws at my breast and blisters my heart.
I have to live with the acidic and eternal Mother Shame.
My baby was dead and I did not know.



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3 comments:

  1. Catherine W27 June 2012 at 05:57

    This is the one post that I keep coming back to. Mother Shame. Acidic and eternal. I wish I could push her away.

    Because we all know that her presence isn't justified. But no matter how hard we push her away, she persists.

    This is the post that I keep coming back to. And I've opened the comment box a couple of times but I've never written anything in it. But here it is. Inadequate.

    Witnessing and wishing. Neither of which help. I know.

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  2. Via27 June 2012 at 12:50

    Thankyou Catherine. I think writing about Mother Shame is my attempt to pour some balm on those acid burns. To keep that shame unspoken and secret seemed to give it more power. It grew in the darkness.

    Pushing away the thoughts when they came, not allowing myself to speak them out loud was not working. This public baring has helped somewhat. It's almost as if by taking that scorching liquid that I sometimes drowned in and defining it with words and a picture has helped contain it, give it boundaries, so that it doesn't leak through everything..though Mother Shame is still there and I think always will be, it's becoming (slightly) easier to sigh at her and turn away.

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    Replies
    1. Nikki16 July 2012 at 03:46

      I think of every moment that I labored at home, waiting for my contractions to come more frequently, not knowing that my sweet Charlotte was already dead. I've asked myself so many times, "how could I not know that she was dead?" I did not have words for it before, but Mother Shame is exactly it.

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