March 19, 2011

D.on Dr.aper Joins Me For Breakfast



This morning I found myself standing in front of my open refrigerator, pondering its contents and wondering what would make a good breakfast for the baby.  As the metaphorical anvil fell on my head I realized the baby, both babies in fact, were dead and gone from my body.  

I am now beginning to think of my life in terms of Before the Miscarriage (BM) or After the Miscarriage (AM). Kind of like how the Histor.y Channel narrator talks about events in time as BCE (Before the Common Era).  My inner narrator now reminds me of my own little marker in the history of time.  The pain this realization brings is kind of like what I imagine a jolt from a Taser gun might feel like.  

So, as I stood there this morning, feeling the cold air surround my bare legs, I flashed back to an episode of M.ad M.en called "The Wheel".  In this episode Don has the Koda.k account and is tasked with developing a campaign for the new wheel-shaped slide deck for photographs.  In the darkened Sterlin.g Cooper conference room Don presses the button to start the deck and his life advances around the wheel and appears on the screen, one slide, one milestone, one memory at a time.  Per his usual brilliance, he delivers a sales pitch that leaves the Koda.k executives slack-jawed:  

"Nostalgia - it's delicate, but potent. Teddy told me that in Greek, "nostalgia" literally means "the pain from an old wound." It's a twinge in your heart far more powerful than memory alone. This device isn't a spaceship, it's a time machine. It goes backwards, and forwards... it takes us to a place where we ache to go again. It's not called the wheel, it's called the carousel. It let's us travel the way a child travels - around and around, and back home again, to a place where we know are loved."

The "nostalgia" I have for my life before my miscarriage is everything described in the first two sentences.  This pain, this twinge in my heart, will forever remain a part of my consciousness.  Potent and painful, it is indeed more powerful than the memory of all the days between my BM and AM

I, too, ache to return "back home again".  Back to that place where I felt a love more powerful than any I've felt before. 

I can't help but wonder if I'll be allowed another trip around.  How does one cope with that?


1 comment:

  1. I totally hear you. I think something broke in me when I miscarried. And then it happened again when I miscarried again. Also, Mad Men rocks and Jon Hamm is hottt.

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