Letters to the Forgotten Ones I Still Love
Dear Inklings,
I wrote a version of this essay at the end of 2021, after my son, Ren, died. It was raw and ugly in the way grief is in those early months. In revising my memoir, I’ve reworked it a bit and added my last miscarriage to the list.
For my inklings who have been broken by miscarriage and/or child loss, this one is for you.
With Love,
I find myself wondering often who they were, who they could have been.
It’s a little bit funny-in-a-not-funny-way to me how in the span of one year, we could have lost so much. It’s a little funny-in-a-not-funny-way how each of these mirrored the other in each other.
February 13, 2020
May 4, 2020
February 9, 2021
May 25, 2021
April 26, 2022
One. Two. Three. Four. Five.
One.
The first time, we didn’t even know. We’d been trying for a year by then. It seemed like just another failed month. Yet the bleeding wouldn’t cease after a week, then weeks. The doctor kept dismissing my fears. “It’s probably normal for people with irregular periods,” she said in response to my, “But I’ve never bled like this before.” Not until my ob-gyn friend advised me to take a pregnancy test did we know. You were already gone by the time we found out you were even there.
For (maybe) seven weeks, you existed.
Two.
We found out about you right away this time, but you were barely there long enough to make an imprint on anything other than our hearts. And we no longer had the will to think about another.
For five weeks, you existed.
Three.
After the first two, we became too scared to try again for a while. We didn’t think much of it when we did start again. It had taken so long the first time, but still you came. And we were nervous. So nervous. But a week went by. Then another. then another. We thought, maybe you would make it. But suddenly things didn’t feel right, and at the hospital they said you had gotten lost on the way and gotten yourself stuck in a tube. They said there was already internal bleeding, and that you would kill me. First, you were a baby, then you were a “growth that had to be removed.” It’s funny-in-a-not-funny-way, that the things that were supposed to create life could cause death instead, and what is intended as the safest place—a mother’s womb—became a graveyard.
For eight weeks, you existed.
Four.
It’s funny-in-a-not-funny-way how each loss became harder and harder to bear. And this one the worst of all, because you were here, and you had a name, and we had a bond. We met in a strange sort of way that we can only attribute to divine providence. After a lifetime of abandonment and abuse and neglect, you found a safe place here—happiness. You once said you didn’t think God loved you, but then you said to me, “God gave you to me, showed me what love is.” And because of that, you found Him. When circumstances seemed to line up that you would become part of our family, that, too, seemed like divine providence. And I told God, if we could give you a home in which you can be safe and happy, I will consider the previous losses worth the cost. But even such happiness was short-lived, and before you could come home to us, God took you too. The one I loved most: my Renley, my Kochan.
For eighteen years, you existed.
Five.
By chance, you came. After the end of all things. We weren’t trying and weren’t preventing. Just as quickly, you left—another one of those “blips” that wouldn’t have registered if we weren’t now so attuned to cycles and mucus. I didn’t know I could still care, but when the blood came again, I locked myself in the public bathroom and cried in the way that feels like it will tear your entire body apart.
For five weeks, you existed.
I suppose normally now would be the moment to place some epilogue of good feeling, of how I see the way God is working, how I’m sure it will all make sense one day, of the good that has come from it. But I do not, and I don’t know why, and in truth, no “why” could ever excuse or justify the pain. There seems to be no sense or reason for any of it. Even if there was good to come of this, I’d rather not have endured it at all.
One day I know the sadness might not wrap its claws around my soul as it does now.
But for now let me remember. Because you were real to me.
The voiceless.
I will help you now be heard.
02.13.20 // 05.04.20 // 02.09.21 // 05.25.21 // 04.26.22
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you so much.
About Me: I’m Tiffany, a literary fiction, fantasy, and memoir author. My writing has been published by The Cultivation Project and Renewal Missions. I’ve been writing this publication, The Untangling, since 2023. Order my books here or here.