My wife miscarried last weekend. She was somewhere around 5 weeks pregnant. We’re both really sad about it. It’s weird. I’m ardently pro-choice and don’t think human life begins at conception, but emotionally I was responding as if this were the case. The feeling of loss is big. Definitely a grieving process. I can’t remember if I’d posted here that we’d start trying (in late May). I didn’t want to mention this on the blog but I also want to start letting folk know a bit more.
Mostly it’s that I want to write about this. One part as a way to get it out of my head some more, and one part to reflect a bit as part of getting more distance and processing.
I’ve only told a few people, and mostly by email. I feel bad for this, given how impersonal that medium is. It’s a control thing. I have a lot on my plate with school and all, and have times when I have to be keyed in to what I’m doing - like when I’m teaching and so on. So I feel the need to maintain a high level of control (I feel that generally anyway but right now I feel pressure externally - or at least fear of external consequences - and to a higher level of control), like a sort of feelings on/off switch, or rather a “expressing my feelings” or “reflecting my feelings in my demeanor” on/off switch. As part of this, I don’t want unexpected phone calls or conversation about the miscarriage. It’s not that I don’t want to talk, it’s that I want my road map of my day to have the times and places where I’ll be talking about this very clearly marked, if that makes sense. I want control over when and where and under what circumstances I talk about this. Hence the resort to email.
I’ve mostly just told folks I have responsibilities toward with political work, to say I won’t be fulfilling them well or perhaps at all for a while. (I’ve called my mom too.) This has tipped the scales into the big step back from political work that I’d been thinking for a while that maybe I should try to take. I need to put energy and time into my partner, and to myself. At the same time, I want to keep up with some stuff, to maintain a sense of normalcy. I dunno.
Let me also just say I don’t like the term miscarriage or the way the verb “to miscarry” makes it sound like something my wife did. And like I said despite my views on stuff, I had started to feel (not so much to think in words but to feel the way that the words would reflect emotionally) like the pregnancy was “our baby”, so “miscarriage” feels something like “loss of our baby.”
Hard stuff. I’m not good at grief generally. I tend to try to solve it or treat it as a problem; that’s generally my reaction to negative emotions (I’ve learned to not act on this reaction so much, to just listen to others and so on when they have bad feelings, but I still feel this way about feelings). I’ve been telling myself, it’s okay to not feel okay about this. I don’t owe anyone my feeling okay. And it’s also okay to not pretend to feel okay, that I can just say “yeah I’m not doing so hot” then when I want to stop talking, just change the subject even if it’s obvious and clumsy (”so, looks like an early winter, eh?”) I’ve also been reminding myself - we will have a baby eventually, a perfect and beautiful one - not as a like “get out of grief free card” but just to remind myself that while this sucks quite a bit it’s a specific loss, not an “I will never be a parent” kind of thing.
Grief is odd. I remember getting very angry at my grandpa’s funeral when I was 11 or so, because people were laughing at the reception thing afterward. Looking back it makes sense, though it didn’t at the time - my grandpa was funny, and part of grieving is remember what you had and what you no longer have, so it’s possible to feel good and really bad at the same time, in a way. We were incredibly happy about being pregnant, and will be again. A part of the grief is the loss of that happiness. When I think hard about it I can sort of feel that feeling again, at the same time that I feel sad.
There’s also this sort of “everything should stop” sort of feeling. Like … buses and cars. What are people doing commuting when I feel all rotten like this? How dare the world keep moving? That’s not right, really, it’s not even “how dare” so much as “how strange that” - it’s not so much a sense of indignation as it is a sense of confusion. And a bit of going through the motions to the degree that I need to keep moving in and through the world while feeling down.
Sad. Very sad. Not much more to say about that right now.
So… looks like an early winter here in Minnesota. Or at least a cold fall. The state fair was neat, eh? Read any good books lately? Got any thoughts about possible musical supergroups?
Just wanted to say, inadequately, sorry… Be gentle with yourself…
Comment by N. Pepperell — September 13, 2008 @ 3:24 am
I’m sorry, Nate. There are people thinking about you, and ready to support you when and however you need.
Comment by errico — September 13, 2008 @ 9:47 am
Hey Nate,
I’m really sorry to hear about this. You’re good people, nothing less is clear from your writings here. For what it’s worth, I don’t think your feelings are uncommon among those who are ardently pro-life. It seems perfect normal to treat something that is potential, or expected, as if it were a reality now. People engage in prospective thinking of this sort all the time. It’s not a failing at all. Quite the contrary.
Like NP said, go easy on yourself. Things will get better.
Comment by Jasper — September 13, 2008 @ 6:15 pm
This sounds really hard and sad. Look after yourselves. And I’m glad that you’re writing about it here, because if anything can, writing can make some sense of it, somehow. Or allow you a space to process on your own terms.
Comment by az — September 13, 2008 @ 8:20 pm
I’m so, so sorry, Nate. Many hugs. It’s hard when a particular something has become a part of how you experience the world, how you think it, how you orient yourself. And then it’s gone, and the world feels strange, and like it slips sideways out of your grasp. My feelings, in relation to loss, is that really, the last thing you can do for what was is to grieve properly - whatever needs to be given over to the grief to feel that it is done properly, let it be given over. IME, it makes that grief a part of how one goes on: makes it a matter of life, not just of endings and death. But you know, that’s just me, and like we all know, we’re all different…
And in other, less loss-related news: I have been indulging in trashy vampire fiction, half in honour of Alan Ball and Anna Paquin and half justified through an interest in the way that vampires are used to configure otherness (a long-standing interest of mine, thanks to Sue Ellen Case). I am also about to start Kavalier and Clay. Oh, and the Dispossessed (that’d be Az’s recommendation, a while ago now). And I have, now, a couple of Jeanette Wintersons waiting to be read. I read another Elizabeth Knox book, called something like ‘the Longest Road’? Mmm. I will review that one over at mine soon. OH! And I finished ‘Bioshock’, which was touted as the best FPS in like forever. It was a present to myself for post-PhD. It was orright. It tried to be clever with Ayn Rand, which I found less clever than it might have been (but kudos for trying). I liked the art deco, but the Half Life series still has me enthralled. And I should really get ‘Oblivion’ back off a friend of mine so I can finish it, if only so that it’s *done*.
Comment by WildlyParenthetical — September 15, 2008 @ 7:21 am
Thanks friends, I appreciate it.
Wildly, I played Bioshock once at a friend’s house. That’s some scary stuff! Speaking of scary, I bought a US Civil War themed computer game and a North American colonization themed game for ten bucks each in the clearance bin the other day, haven’t played either yet, too much school work.
What Jeannette Winterson you reading?
Comment by Nate — September 16, 2008 @ 1:17 am
Me likes scary, methinks. Although it’s very bad for my already-tense shoulders!
I’m never quite sure how I feel about war games. I’d probably love them if I tried, but I haven’t really yet. It’s nice when you get ‘em cheap though. I love love love ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ (which hilariously has nothing at all to do with Nietzsche) which was a bargain bin purchase for me. It’s oldish, too, so it’s good for when you don’t want to update your computer ;-P And sympathies over the schoolwork!
The Jeanette Wintersons which are waiting are ‘Sexing the Cherry’ (I know! How can I call myself a Winterson fan without having read that book??), and ‘The Stone Gods’ which is her latest, I think. I finished ‘Gut Symmetries’ not so long ago, which was pretty cool… who doesn’t love a bit of kabbalah and physics all mush-ied up together? I saw her speak at a Writers’ Festival once and you know, I don’t care how arrogant she is, I’m going to marry that woman
(I announced this to my mum. I think she was a little taken aback… but if the British press is to be believed (and are they ever?) Jeanette likes married women, so no such luck for me!). Got any fiction on the go at the mo, Nate, or are you stuck with schoolwork?
Comment by WildlyParenthetical — September 17, 2008 @ 2:44 am
i’m so sorry, guys. you are in my thoughts, pretty much always, but especially today. just dropping in for my semi-annual ‘i’m still here’ moment.
if ya need a word or want to chat, our cell phones are around here somewhere…
Comment by kerri — September 18, 2008 @ 8:41 am
My heart goes out to you, its not the same but I can only imagine - we had fear of loosing our 3rd child at 31 weeks, but she has pulled thru, and fingers crossed for the birth in next weeks - all will be ok.
take care of yourselves.
Comment by woooo — September 23, 2008 @ 11:13 pm
guess who is way behind on your life? oh its me, and i am so sorry.
also, for what it’s worth, this shook me up and almost made ME cry. i thought that might be validating.
Comment by jim — November 3, 2008 @ 2:14 pm