The story that has no words

This is what I wrote the day we found out there was no heartbeat in my womb any more. We went the next day for a clearer ultrasound that confirmed what we knew: our precious baby had no heartbeat any more. This is the story of my experience the night I sat in grief.

The nurse comes in the room and gives me a hug. 

The nurse I work with every single day... see in the hallway... share patients with...

She comes back in the room..

squeezes me harder than I wanted her to...

And she says I'm so sorry honey. I'm so so sorry.

You can have more. I know you can. Eventually, you can have more. You don't have to wait or anything, you can have more.

I don't want more, I think to myself. I don't want more at all.

I want this one.

And only this one. 

---

Lucy squeezes my neck and rubs my back as I sing her song before bed.

As I whisper Jesus to her to remind her of His presence, 

she consoles me in a way only your baby knows how.

You know me, Lucy. Every part of me is known by my own child.

I want this baby to know me. 

Not a different baby, not more babies, this one. I want this one to know me more than just my womb she lived in for nine weeks.

I wanted him or her to know more. 

To nuzzle me in the middle of the night when only my smell and my touch means everything.

To cry for me in her own unique voice.

To give life to me as much as we gave life to her.

---

My husband is next to me, holding my hand, and he asks me, off in the distance,

How do you feel?

I respond,

I feel nothing.

I don't have another word for this. It isn't even grief. It isn't sadness. 

It's just emptiness with nothingness sprinkled on top, the golden recipe for loss.

I stare off and realize that the nothingness surrounds me and there is nothing I can do to stop it.

I am but a victim to its presence.

---

I wake in the middle of the night and I immediately regret it.

I wanted to sleep the pain the away. 

For tomorrow to come so we can have an answer to this.

to this fetal demise.

The most awful words I could have heard.

But it's still today. And I still wait.

And the nothingness weighs heavily in my room, suffocating me until it's so hard to breathe.

The nothingness sits on my chest and forces me to think about it, forces me to remember my womb will soon be nothing.

There will be nothing.

Nothing.

---

I don't want another one.

I want this one. I want her. I want him.

And the tears sting my eyes and my breath is gone and I have no other words.

There are no other words for nothing.