Parenting & Loss

I folded our warm white tow­els while Tatiana, only twelve months old then, napped in her bed­room. Erik and I had been mar­ried just over two years and, already, I was four months preg­nant with our sec­ond daugh­ter, Keira. Erik and I both felt the same intense love for Tatiana and were excited to have another baby right away. But there was no excite­ment in the house that day. The house was quiet, except for the annoyed thoughts I could hear myself think­ing about Erik. Sick of his crap. We had not been speak­ing to each other for hours. I stacked the tow­els neatly into the closet, pass­ing Erik in the hall. I did not look at his brown eyes or admire his thick black hair. Instead, I grabbed a new set of sheets and I walked away...

I walked in slow-motion towards Erik’s closed, mahogany casket. The old stone chapel was filled with famil­iar faces. There were faces from Sky­walker Ranch and other Lucas par­ties, faces I had pho­tographed in my stu­dio, faces from my bridal shower, my wed­ding, and Tatiana’s birth. I kept my head down. As the preg­nant widow, all eyes were on me, but I did not want to be seen. Direct eye con­tact would break me open in a way that I would not be ready to be bro­ken open for years. Dressed in an ankle-length mater­nity skirt, long-sleeve black shirt, and the com­fort­able three-inch heels that had taken me hours to find just the day before, I sat in the front pew. My brother, Troy, and his wife, Jen, sat next to me. Only ten feet ...

I admired Erik in the shower that Easter Sun­day morn­ing. Salt and pep­per hair. Deep brown eyes. Broad mas­cu­line shoul­ders cov­ered by smooth olive skin. Steam had filled the bath­room, like the fog that fre­quently hov­ered over the Golden Gate Bridge. I could only see parts of his body through the hazy, glass shower doors. He sat against the cor­ner of the tub, as he always did, care­fully scrap­ing the skin off of his well-manicured feet. I pulled out an assort­ment of mater­nity clothes from the closet and set them on the bath­room counter. Know­ing we’d be tak­ing tons of fam­ily pho­tos dur­ing Tatiana’s first real Easter egg hunt, I wanted to look bet­ter than I felt at seven months pregnant. “Ugh!”...

I heaved my preg­nant body onto the exam table. “What about the baby?” I asked Lizellen. She leaned against a small wooden desk, arms folded in front of her pink blouse. “What about her? She’ll be fine. Bet­ter than fine. Babies are resilient.” It had only been twelve hours since my husband’s death. My mom had called Lizellen to give her the news. “Lizellen wants you to come in as soon as you’re able,” she said. “You don’t need an appoint­ment. She said she’ll make her­self avail­able when we get there.” As my obste­tri­cian, I knew Lizellen needed to stay in the loop. She needed to make sure things with my preg­nancy con­tin­ued normally. And I needed more med­ica­tion. Much more med­ica­tion. The five...