The Promise

Warning: contains mentions of miscarriage and themes of loss (but mostly hope)

There are some stories that you just know are somewhere inside you, probably fully formed, simply waiting. I couldn’t tell you where they live. Your heart, if you’re a romantic; your brain, if you’re not. Maybe your gut. I don’t know. But they’re somewhere in you, and you can sort of feel their presence, pressing against your noggin or ribcage or whatever, wanting to come out. Stories always want to come out, don’t you know? From your mouth, your hands, the ink of your favorite pen or the keyboard of a computer. In songs, music, fingers splayed over keys and strings. In sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, friends. The good kind.

I’m not sure where this is going. I mean, I do, because there’s this story, fully formed, like I said, and, because I’m a romantic when it comes to words and a realist when it comes to life, it’s in all of me. My brain, my heart, my eyes and hands, and my stomach, where it hurts. Probably because it wants to come out so desperately. But somehow I think it would hurt more to let it out. 

How many people have told their stories, desperately painful stories, in the most beautiful way? In songs that make you cry, books that give you that tiny, terrible dose of real sadness. Sometimes it feels good, like a drug. And then sometimes it just feels too real. We hate reality. Me, too. But I’m a writer, so I see it. Don’t all writers– I’d call it a curse, but it’s more than that. Worse. It’s called life. Or death. Take your pick. 

This story in me, it ends with this promise, and that’s all I really want to write, but you need something else to get there. And that’s the worst part. The longest part. Or so it seems. 

I wish I made sense, for both our sakes. But I don’t.

I should just write it.

We’ll give it some time.

You know, I was going to start the story. Really. Or at least I thought I was. 

But you know, I do this thing, this stupid thing, where I let the words take over the tale, the place, the time, the situation, down to my every emotion, and carry it away. It’s a story then, a well-spun tale, not my life, because, you know, it’s easier that way. Even a little dose of sadness is so much better than a big one. 

When my great-grandpa died, for example – and see, now I’m going to have to say it all in very plain language lest the words take over – we were riding to the hospital to see him, and in my head I was beginning to narrate it. Add a little bit of description here, a bit of simplification there. Stop. I finally said to myself. It’s just death. It doesn’t deserve to be romanticized. It’s not romantic. 

So you see, words let me both see the world for how it truly is and disguise its horrors. And that day – no, not that day. Yesterday. It was just yesterday and ‘that day’ sounds better, sounds more – yesterday, in the car with my mom, I was already narrating, already pulling myself out of the pain. Running away, I guess. Oh, it’s so easy. It makes me feel so wonderfully detached from all of it. Words can both reveal and hide. Because words, though they have so much power sometimes, make something like raw, brutal emotion, or little, indescribable aches, seem… easier to manage. Giving words to it makes it less powerful. When the monster speaks your own language, you’re less afraid of it, you know?

So maybe I shouldn’t write it all.

Maybe I won’t.

But I will. Even this is just the narrator again, not Eden. 

Words never belong to us. Words have no master.

Have you ever noticed that there’s sadness everywhere?

Look closer.

There is. 

I could help you see it. At least for a little while. 

Am I that mean? I guess. Truth is mean. 

I hate truth. Especially since I can hardly ever understand it.

I’ll tell it plain, like I did when I was little kid to my friends: 

I had a twin.

You did?

Yep. It died when it was still in my mom’s stomach.

Oh. Was it a boy or girl?

We don’t know. It was too little.

I’m really sorry. That’s really sad.

I know.

It was sad. It is sad.

I’m sad.

Maybe if I write it I won’t be sad anymore.

Do they have a term for when you’re just a little sad, but all the time? It’s not depression, I know that much. But I don’t think it’s just normal sadness anymore, either. It’s like a cloudy day – not a thunderstorm or even a rain, and not a sunny day, either. It’s somewhere in between. 

Nobody likes cloudy days.

Metaphors are stupid. 

Okay, but if no one ever used their sadness as writing material, where would we be? I mean, you have to use some emotion and it seems like sadness is a general favorite. People call it all sorts of things. Heartbreak, anger, frustration… Love.

No   No   No

Not love. 

Love and sadness are still separate. Right?

I mean, maybe not our love. But God’s is. God’s love is separate.

Oh, I get it now. That’s why they call it holy. God’s love is holy.

What is the biblical meaning of the word "holy"?

The Hebrew word for “holy” literally means “separate” or “set apart.”

Love… set apart from sadness. Can you imagine such a thing?

Only in words. Not in my heart. Not in real life.

Real life right now, that is.

We’ll come back to this.

It’s funny, writers have to feel their emotions briefly, harness them, then do away with them and let the words do the work. Like now, a real emotion shined through. Pain. And anger, I guess, at myself:

Just stop. Just stop, Eden. Stop being a writer for just one second. Just stop.

But here I am, writing, because isn’t that good writing material? Isn’t feeling pain and shame and hurt and anger and your heart beating and your brain just screaming at itself to shut up and just let your heart do all the stupid, obnoxious stuff it was supposed to do like feel even though maybe you don’t want to, you know, didn’t you consider that? Maybe I don’t want to feel because I feel so stupid for feeling this awful pain over somebody who hardly even existed. We’re all just little blinks in comparison to all of time but they weren’t even that. 

And now I’m crying.

Maybe words can express emotions, if you just don’t use commas.

Oh, shut up.

Can we get to the promise? This is all so bleak.

Hope shines best in the bleak.

What is that supposed to mean?

I don’t know. That we need a build-up, I guess.

Just say that, then.

From the blog, written by Ma:

Today as we were driving to the zoo Eden again spoke up suddenly, saying, "Mama, when Jesus comes back he'll make our baby alive again.  That's why I love him."  It is almost impossible for me to say how happy I am that when Eden thinks of her twin brother or sister, she does so in the context of resurrection, and that at three years old she is able to articulate that that is the reason she loves Jesus -- because he brings life out of death.

I think little me was wiser than I am now. I had forgotten about this.

I forgot about it last night, while we were driving, and in human development class, and all that time since which has seemed like so long, you know, because I’ve kind of been thinking and acting for two, me as I am, and the me I imagined I would be if my twin hadn’t died. Waking up, making breakfast, shopping, all these things… and forgetting the whole time that, someday, I would be reunited with them, and I would know what they were like. Because God already has the plan laid out. I mean, He didn’t just have a half-formed idea for how this baby, this person, would be and then scrapped it. God doesn’t work that way.

So then why did they die? Why did He just let them die?

You know how much people ask that question? So much. It’s ridiculous. You’d think we’d know the answer by now, or at least get that there isn’t an answer, not yet. Just a promise. 

People love answers. They don’t trust promises. 

I can’t help but be the same, can I? I mean, if I could, would I still be leaking sadness? 

But I guess, no matter what I believe, I’m broken. That’s just how sin works. And broken things leak.

There’s your answer, Eden.

…

I still don’t get it.

Here I go, forgetting again.

Jesus. Will. Make. Them. Alive. Again.

Every day we have to say it. Is that what ma does? Does she forget, too? She says she thinks about them every day. 

How often do you think about them?

Oh… maybe around once a day. Sometimes more.

That’s what she had said, in the car. 

That’s when I had started to cry. Big, fat tears that rolled silently down my face. The romantic kind. The kind you see on beautiful people’s faces in beautiful movies. But I didn’t feel beautiful. I felt ugly and wrong.

There’s nothing romantic about death.

There’s nothing romantic about a dead baby

There. I said it. I wrenched it out. Wasn’t that the whole purpose of this stupid thing? Getting the story out?

Only that’s not the whole story. Not the beginning or the end. 

I keep forgetting.

I’m going to tell it now, beginning to end, in as plain language as I can manage.

So, I’m in a class this year called human development, where we learn about just that: human development, both the physical and psychological parts of it. This unit is about the physical part of a baby developing in the womb. Prenatal development, it’s called. 

We watched a little video that was mainly disgusting to me and my friends, since we are thirteen and it was about reproduction. The baby looked like a little alien. And the soundtrack for the thing was, for some bizarre reason, celtic music, which only added to the strangeness of it all. Not that it needed any additions – it was plenty strange all by itself. 

Part of my emotions were, probably just because I felt it was due, awe at the miracle of life, and the other part was… sadness. Just a tiny bit, but in some parts I just kept thinking “I did this with my twin. Our hearts beat together.” A little red lump of a heart, but it was still beating. And maybe around, oh, I don’t know, the end of the first trimester, I thought “this is where they died, and I started doing all this development on my own.”

And then another day we learned about how it affects the mom, pregnancy, I mean, and I said, “this must be a form of torture, or something.” Not just to myself, either. Out loud, to the whole class. I mean, no sushi, no deli meats, no ibuprofen, morning sickness, and stress… so much stress. That’s when the fear came in. When I had a baby, would I ever not be terrified for every second that I would lose it? Especially if I had twins. Would I be able to bear the loss if it did happen? This I didn’t say out loud, of course, but I did say to Lydia, “if I ever say I want to have a baby, tell me no.” I mean, it was supposed to be a joke, but maybe I was serious?

“No, you’re going to have a baby, Eden.” She said simply. Lydia’s a romantic, and she insists that I will someday find the perfect guy, marry him, and have anything from two to twelve children. She believes this for herself, too, of course.

But how could any person think of having a baby when there was the possibility of it dying? A likelihood, even? And then the weight of that… the weight that I now know my mother carries with her every single day. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Last night, while we were driving home, the questions came to me suddenly and I just wanted to know the answers so badly. Like I said, people love answers. But I was scared of hurting ma, of making her think about things she didn’t want to think about. I didn’t know that she had probably already thought about them that day, maybe even more than once. Finally, though, I just needed to say something, so I asked: “Ma, how did you know you were going to have twins?”

“Well…” she said slowly, and explained to me how it had happened. Some of the terms she used I recognized from class, but it was still confusing. She finished with how the doctor had told her and daddy that they were having twins, and how her heart had been beating so fast. Then she stopped. I knew another question was needed to get the rest of the story but I wanted to ask this one even less than I had wanted to prompt her with the first one. We were driving past Granite at this point, so we were perhaps five minutes from home. I guess if I hadn’t asked we could have gotten home and left it at that one part, saved the rest for later, or never talked about it at all, and maybe that would have been easier. Or harder. I don’t know. 

But sometimes you just know that a question is going to eat you up from the inside out until it escapes, like in Aliens, even if it isn’t yet, so I asked, in a very quiet voice, almost like I was hoping ma wouldn’t hear me and wouldn’t answer and I could say, “oh well, at least I tried,” and “maybe she actually heard and didn’t want to answer, so I shouldn’t ask again,”: “How did you know that it had died?”

Isn’t it awful that I have to call the baby, my sister or brother, ‘it’?

My mother faced the question like a soldier facing the battlefield, square-shouldered and expecting. She’s strong like that. There was still a pause, but just a little one. Then she explained that to me, too. How the doctor had done another ultrasound. How they saw that one little red lump of a heart, one little life, had stopped. Just like that. “No reason in specific,” I’m sure they had said. “Nothing you did,” in comforting, apologetic voices, like it mattered. Either way, one baby was dead. And my mother would think about it every day, like she told me. 

And I started crying, just staring out the window, narrating just enough to keep away the sobs. And I didn’t look at ma, maybe because I didn’t want her to see me crying. I guess I was still a little ashamed of how sad I was for something that didn’t even seem like a real death, almost. Moms always know when you’re crying, though. They have plenty of practice from when you’re still a baby and that’s all you do. So she took my hand and didn’t say anything. Just drove home where there was a dad and a brother waiting for us, but not a twin. 

And because it suddenly hurt so bad, and I needed comfort so desperately, more than just this other broken, helpless person’s soft hand, I said to God, begged, really: Promise you’ll fix it, God. Promise you’ll fix it.

I don’t know what, exactly, I had been expecting him to say. Maybe a reprimand: “I already have,” or just “be patient”. Or just silence. But instead I heard, in my heart more than my head, because everything about God is beautiful and romantic, the words my Father knew I needed to hear right then.

I promise.

So there it is, the promise I said was coming. Isn’t it wonderful? I think so. Just a plain promise, not excuses or reprimands. No explanations, either. But, someday, the time of pain will seem so short that it will be like two minutes in the plan when everything seemed like chaos before it got righted, you know?

And there’s the story. I told you it would come out, and it did, not exactly like I expected.

I am a little less sad now. Not because of the words, though. Because of God. Because of his love. Perfect, set apart from sadness, promising and promise-keeping love. And I just had to write a bit to remember it. 

I’ll have to keep remembering every day, especially as the death toll just keeps adding up, which it will. I don’t doubt that it will. It does for all of us.

And that’s the curse. Death. 

Life is the blessing, though. God’s eternal blessing.

The promise.