Parenting & Loss

  Keira, my five-year-old daugh­ter, whined, “I don’t want to talk to any­one,” from under her pur­ple, fuzzy blan­ket. She did not want start going to therapy. She had recently returned from school one too many times, say­ing “nobody likes me,” or “I’m not smart,” or “nobody wants to be my friend.” But that was as far as the con­ver­sa­tion ever went. She really didn’t want to talk to any­one. Not even me. I pulled the cov­ers back, expos­ing her angry, brown eyes. “That’s just it, honey. It isn’t good if you don’t talk about your feelings.” She wrapped her front teeth around the base of her thumb’s cuti­cle and chewed on the skin. “I don’t have any feelings.” “Honey, you’ll be going to see Steve....

Tatiana, my eight-year-old daugh­ter, begins to cry. “Mom-my! I’m not talk­ing to you. You are mak­ing me so sad.” Her curly blonde hair flies every­where, as if being blown by a fan. She stomps into the bath­room, slams the door, and locks her­self in. All morn­ing, Tatiana has not been lis­ten­ing, and I’m fed up with hav­ing to repeat my words six times just to be heard. Deep breath, I tell myself. I call through the bath­room door, “Honey, come out here.” To my sur­prise, she twists the knob right away, but her sobs con­tinue ris­ing like a helicopter. “Come sit here.” Tatiana curls in my lap, mak­ing her lanky body com­pact. She blows her nose on her orange sun­flower dress. “I know we’ve all had colds and that...

Guilt. Mommy guilt. Daddy died guilt. Always the guilt. Each morn­ing, at 6 AM, Julian, 2, calls out, “Ma Ma. Ma Ma? Ma Ma,” and the race begins. Ugh! I shouldn’t have stayed up so late. Four kids, like newly hatched spi­ders, crawl up my skin. They nip at my arms, my shoul­ders, my feet, and I want to flick them off. I want five min­utes, just five freak­ing min­utes, to make my cof­fee, before I get them ready for school. “Clothes on, hair brushed, then come to the table for break­fast,” I com­mand, but they con­tinue to swarm, com­pletely ignor­ing my orders. “Ewwwwwww!” Tatiana, 8, screams, as she holds her Hello Kitty tooth­brush an inch from my swollen brown eyes. “Tati, WHAT are you doing?” “Mommy, Juju just put...

Erik told me about his dad, Hay­den, when we first started dat­ing. We were both 20, both stu­dents at Florida State Uni­ver­sity. Erik majored in com­puter sci­ence while I stud­ied cre­ative writ­ing. Within days of know­ing one another, it was obvi­ous that Erik’s ratio­nal, orga­nized side would com­pli­ment the artist in me. Erik spoke slowly, with quiet inten­sity. “We were on vacation.” I sat cross-legged, on Erik’s bed­room floor, soak­ing in the mas­cu­line whis­per of his words. My atten­tion was focused entirely on him. He stretched out on his back and put his head in my lap, his eyes directed at the cir­cu­lat­ing ceil­ing fan. “We were on vaca­tion, at the beach … I was eleven. It was just me, my mom,...

I give Troy the bur­gundy vel­vet bag that con­tains Erik’s ashes. “Do you mind hold­ing them? I may need to run down to the beach by myself.” “I’ll put them in my back pack.” Troy rests the gray sack by his feet and slides the ashes in. He starts to zip up the back­pack, but pauses. “Jeanette, I might be able to fit yours in, too.” Jeanette hugs her pine box closer to her chest. “No, I want to hold him. Hayden’s fine right here.” My mother-in-law, Jeanette, has held on to her husband’s ashes for 17 years now. When we talked about scat­ter­ing Erik’s ashes, she said, “We’ll scat­ter them together. It’s never felt right to do it before, but it feels right now. Erik can be with his daddy. They can finally be ...

My body is as still as a corpse while my obste­tri­cian shaves the rest of my pubic hair, so that she can neatly slice my womb open. I stare at my right hand, into the dark eyes of the black and white pho­to­graph I am hold­ing of my hus­band, Erik. I study his black hair, his defined jaw, his young 29-year-old skin, prob­ing his face for answers, but the pic­ture has no reply. He should be here. How can he not be here for Keira’s birth? Instead, my mom posi­tions her­self to the right of the steel oper­at­ing table, a piece of her curly black hair stray­ing from her cap. Mom speaks in a whis­per. “I am going to be next to you the whole time.” She lightly inter­twines her fin­gers with mine, leav­ing enough space for Erik’s...