Diapers: An Essay About Rory

Grief won’t be willed into the background. 
It claws to the surface without consent. 

I avoid triggers and dread the empty feelings that they leave behind. 
Also, I beg for opportunities to proclaim that he was here and his life mattered.

Grieving is a life of paradox. 
I am sandpaper kissed by reminders that he was real. He, with auburn locks, heard the pulsing of the heart monitor and the cadence of his mother’s voice.

–

I started preparing for Rory’s baby room at a respectable five months along. The open staircase led to a loft-like second bedroom we outfitted for a nursery. A large, outside-facing window greeted entry and removed the need for fluorescents. The centerpiece, an espresso–not black–crib, stood indulgently, opposite the window. A low-sitting antique window sat on the furthest wall, untouched from the renovation. Without a child in mind, it precariously opened to the living room below. Rory’s large dresser, built by his grandfather, was strategically placed in-front of this window to protect him. 

What futile effort we expended to ensure safety.

I had inventoried teething toys and diapers. 
The latest clothing haul from grammy was still lying over the chair with tags on.
Evidence liters the room from his gender-reveal shower, diaper cake included.
There is a monogrammed blanket I made draped over the crib. 
His great grandmother’s evergreen rocker sat in the natural light. Even a pumping station with nipple cream awaited. 

I remember the way I slowly disintegrated when his room morphed from a nursery into a multipurpose room. 

There was no more thoughtful arranging.
There was haphazard stacking. 

The diapers got old.
Did you know diapers go bad?
I did not. 

The elaborate baby play gym that was, “completely worth it, even if it took up a lot of space,” was now violently flattened into the closet. 

His dinosaur car seat cover remained stiff in the package. The wipe warmer was thrown to the top of the shelf. It rejected me everytime I adjusted it to fit something else. The crinkled cord came unwound and fell through the shelf slot. I never used that wipe warmer. I don’t understand why room temperature wipes are so inferior. I don’t think Rory would have minded. Someone bought us a wipe warmer for our youngest several years later. I never could bring myself to use it. 

Did he wear a diaper? 

In a teal-accented and oversized hospital room, I am labor positioned on the bed, surrounded by a new dad, my best friend, an anxious nurse, and a new-to-me doctor.

The kids to follow were birthed in a fraction of the square feet. Apparently Wisconsin hoards the maternity footage. 

Rory was born over a cement floor.
Ill-prepared staff, despite a long labor, forgot to pull the table underneath.
My stomach collapsed and my cells hit the floor. His plump body was barely caught by a doctor with a chaotic pony and a sloppy strand stuck to her face. They took him immediately to a separate table after he left the canal.

I lay immobilized from the episiotomy I didn’t consent to. That’s scissors to the tender wall of my vagina. Those scissors reminded me of the silver ones my mom used for sewing, the heavy ones. They reminded me of the wipe warmer. I just couldn’t use the damn wipe warmer. 

Rory was the quietest person in the room.
His care soon escalated to another room and his dad followed. 

My dear friend remained with the breast pump in hand, determined to keep me, eyeball to eyeball, on task. As she pep-talked me through the stitches, I lay faded and dejected, staring inside the absence of a crying baby. 

Separately, we were sent to the nearby Children’s Hospital. Rory by helicopter, dad by car, mom by ambulance. What cruel policy maker has lived so detached that this is the non-negotiable policy for a new family?

Was Rory scared? Does separation anxiety show up in infants?

For the first time in his life, he couldn’t hear the rhythm of his mother’s heartbeat and her obsession with NPR. No doubt his vagus nerve needed his mom to support his first feat with the wide-open world. 

–

I was the last to arrive at the nearby Children’s Hospital.

Unable to locate my stomach and rolling down a tunnel of lights, the staff acknowledged my arrival with arrested pity.

My body responded to the transparent facial cues. 
My heart attached to an anchor and sank to the bottom of the ocean. 

On ice and searching for new microexpressions. I sat wishing for the first time I could be exhausted, eight-months pregnant and accidentally waking my baby after flipping on my commercial-grade blender. He erupted into a star position, clearly startled. I laughed out loud for my unannounced disturbance. I expressed regrets audibly, amused at this surprising bond already forming. 

–

In far less footage, an army of staff surrounded Rory. 
Cords weaved between bodies. 
Sounds instructed my nervous system. 

The sea parted and my hand wove between cords to receive him. After three hours of trying to save his life, his lungs stopped expanding.

Years later, I learned that my introverted aunt, filling in for my mother, re-aligned the staff when they weren’t going to let me hold him. It is the crumbs of comfort at the bottom of the rubble.

–

In a sterile room–far from the place where mothers and fathers watched newborn startles–he was presented to me for the second time, but lifeless. Rory was strategically bundled in a stiff, scratchy blue blanket. The offensive texture ignited me. Pulled to affix all of my pent-up maternal energy onto a blanket, yet I yielded. I hunched over his body and resigned. 

We were left with instructions to take as much time as we needed to say goodbye.

My, how long is that? 

I was planning to count in decades.
I was going to teach him to run.
I wanted to help him learn how to dance.
I had plans of watching my husband’s sense of humor develop in him.

No. Now I am asked to know when to put a period on motherhood.
With a vanished belly and accepting pain dosages, I am supposed to know when it’s okay to give him back to the nurse.

I flailed between dissociation and despondently present. This human in front of me had been warm for 39 weeks and 5 days. Now, lips on his forehead, I sat grasping and holding his fading warmth. 

–

I have a lot of questions.
I have fewer answers.
My anger remains, clearly.

For me, grief will remain a perpetual paradox.
I will avoid pain and I will move the earth to say his name again.

Rory, my being will never live without a heads-up display acknowledging where and who you would be in this room.

–

Abundantly aware that I am far from the only one who has been robbed and ran over by horrendous grief.
I see you in what was supposed to be. 
I see you in what needed to be.