Photo by Dan Freeman on Unsplash
Day one of not being pregnant anymore consisted largely of lying on the sofa. My sore stomach and lower-back made walking or sitting upright difficult and so Axe Man took care of me. God I’m so grateful for that man. The night before I had called mum and dad and listened to their murmurs of love intertwining with my sobs as I briefly shared the details. When a new day dawned however, the sadness of the previous few hours had subsided and, other than the physical pain, I was largely numb.
We buried our little strawberry in the roots of the Japanese Maple in front of Axe Man’s house. It was his idea and I couldn’t think of anything more perfect, given that he makes wooden furniture and I’m an unabashed tree-hugger. Though I’m glad we did it, the action itself felt slightly jarring. Axe Man’s 12 year-old son joined us, peering in at the mess of blood and tissue that I held out to him before handing it to his father, who poured the contents into the ground. The hole turned out to be slightly too small and so we stood, numbly and awkwardly as he used a tiny blade of grass to encourage the remnants of my pregnancy into the earth. Then he placed a piece of quartz to mark the spot and we went inside to eat lunch.
The silence of Axe Man’s cabin in the woods was perfect. As I lay on the couch, I sipped tea and watched chickadees and starlings flitting in and out of sight. Books and laptops felt wrong, so I slept or sat and stared. Occasionally I felt like talking and would call my family or a friend and, as I began to inform my network the feeling of being wrapped in a blanket of love and support grew warm around me. In fact, as the day progressed my numbness gave way to an all-pervading sense of gratitude and an awareness of just how incredible humans are in a crisis. Though the event itself was sad beyond belief, it was also - if I’m really being honest about this - stunningly beautiful and sacred. Perhaps this is because I have a faith that all things happen for a reason but on a much more practical level, my gut tells me that it’s because I was not alone. Axe Man was there, holding me through it and today I have circles upon circles of people freely offering themselves to me.
People are wonderful; not exactly the take-away I was expecting to emerge with.