The Summit
When love beckons to you, follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.
– Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, “On Love”
“All these years, all these memories, there was you. You pulled me through time.”
– Tom Creo, The Fountain
The July night enfolds us, the sheets a silken tent grazing our bodies, my husband’s arms surrounding me, his hand resting upon the tiny, fluttering presence awake and pulsing in my womb. Warmth upon warmth, the radiance of his heat–the night outside, the house around, the bed within, and then him–and us–encompassing, circle within circle, the life that we created together. Cece sleeps peacefully in the next room, a paper-thin wall the only barrier to hearing her laughing gurgle singing Sandra Boynton’s “Pajama Time” song or her quiet chirp repeating, “Fuzzy, fuzzy blankie.” I trace the contours of my husband’s back, his shoulder, and his forearm, ridged muscles swelling and relaxing beneath my fingertips as he pulls me closer. His breath has become the rhythm of my nights, his steady presence beside me standing as a bulwark between me and my fear. Silently, I touch his lips, the short, bristled fur of his beard, his eyebrow, jaw and ears, feeling him smile softly beneath my touch. I feel his presence beside me–in Cece’s giggling voice chastising, “Silly Daddy,” in the bright and throbbing presence of the child growing inside of me. But more–and deeper–I feel him standing sentinel in the deep and hollow places inside of me, the places where the darkness gulps and swallows, the places where isolation creeps in to cast its bruised shadows and otherworldly frigidity. In the places where I once hated myself most, I find him standing, unyielding and unafraid, his body like a shield, his belief in me shining like starlight.
To have been so alone–to have been mother perpetually without father, wife perpetually without husband–and now to know the bliss of companionship, the bone-shuddering knowledge of a fidelity that cannot break or fail–the perfect joy of feeling the beloved so profoundly present . . . words fail. The Irish call it anamchara, Gaelic for “soul friend.” I want to invent words like “with-ness” and titles like “He Without Whom You Cannot Be You.” Aragorn says to Arwen, “It was a dream, nothing more,” before attempting to give her back the Evenstar. And yet I find myself waking to this dream every night and every dawn. My nightmares no longer open to the silent, unforgiving dark and another day of fighting for sanity, for Cecilia’s life, for a purpose that eclipses the child in my arms. Now I open terrified and blinking eyes to the unspeakable solace of his ever-presence, the sheltered grotto of his protection, the shocking and fantastical realization that here–with him, within the world we create together–I can belong. Nightmares fade. Joy washes in like the tide in a calm sunrise, glorious streaks of lavender and conch-shell pink streaming to caress my skin, my face turning to the vermillion-rimmed disc dripping gold, calling to the blood still coursing from my heart, the air still inflating my lungs, promising, whispering, thundering–For this did you survive, for this are you destined, for this must you strive until your time runs dim!
The presence in my womb quiets, drifting off to sleep in its primordial and airless sea. His hand on my womb remains, issuing heat like a forge, spreading through my limbs, beckoning a lassitude to lull the humming awareness that tingles through my cells, pattering like a summer shower across my neurons. Lizzy dances through my mind, her arms filled with flowers, her little face radiant, her oceanic eyes shining. Tears from my own eyes, forest-green and full of shadows, slip salty rivers down my cheeks as I think once again of what Lizzy would look like at five years old. My husband’s eyes, blurred with his own tears, come back to me in memory as he looks at the pictures of Lizzy on our living room wall. “The more time that passes,” he says, “the more it feels like she was always mine. Mine like Cece is mine.” And grief threatens to swell and drown the joy that is so buoyant it cannot be encompassed. And I am feeling both, drowning in both, rising on the crests of both, until I cannot know where one starts and the other begins, or if I will ever reach a harbor protected from the storm. Cece breathes and walks and laughs and says goodnight prayers to her saint of a big sister. Her little brother or sister grows inside of me with each day that passes, sharing with her the living cells that Lizzy left behind within me and Cece. And yet Lizzy is not here. She is the saint of our home, the saint of our dreams, the light towards which my heart remains fixed. But she is not here.
I have long known that my grief for Lizzy was inseparable from my love for her. What I am still learning is that love educates–all the time. I was born the day you were born, and I died the day you died. These were the final words of my eulogy for Lizzy, and really, no other words needed to be said. When she entered the world, I became myself, a self I had always dreamed and suspected was present but somehow could not actualize without my first daughter. Lizzy was born, and I was born as a mother. As her mother–yes–but, what I am coming to understand is that Lizzy also shaped me to be Cecilia’s mother, the mother of this new child growing inside of me, and the mother of every child to come. Lizzy is why I am mother. Lizzy is why I am me. Loving Lizzy has made it impossible for me to close my heart to love. And so when God sent me this profound gift–this amazing man who wants to dedicate his life to me, to our children, and to our dreams–I could no more stop myself from loving him and giving myself to him than I could stop myself from loving my daughters.
Some part of me knows and fears that I may one day lose him to tragedy, to disease, or death. But even that fear is incapable of making me turn from this path. Each child that we create together, each life that makes me more alive–more wife, more woman, and more mother–is a testament to Lizzy’s life, to what she made me choose to become. If I can live every moment as a canticle of praise, of joy, and yes–of grief too–for love cannot exist without grief–then my life can itself serve as Lizzy’s legacy. I am mother because she lived. I am warrior and survivor because she died. But more than anything, and most of everything, I am loved–so deeply loved that I feel humbled and desperate, unable to believe that this is real.
My cheeks are wet, my tears have pooled into my ears. The house has descended into a deep silence, my husband, my daughter and my unborn child asleep around and within me. I breathe in deeply, still marveling at the miracle that keeps my lungs inflating, my heart beating, my neurons firing. I watched Lizzy’s lungs and heart and brain stop, and now the lungs and heart and brain of her little brother or sister are forming inside of me, growing with Lizzy’s cells, using my strength and life to become and become and become. How is it that through the death of my child, I have become more mother? How is it that my two-year-old–who can never grow older–continues to teach me what it means to love?
I expel my breath in small gasping shudders, unable to contain the racing of my heart, the pulsing of my brain, the desire, the joy, the fullness. . . the gratitude. My husband stirs, half-asleep, and presses a soft kiss to my lips, eyes closed and whispering, “Is everything okay?”
“Yes,” I whisper back. “Everything’s okay.”