After you’ve crossed the divide of ‘Authority Figure’ to ‘Friend + Confidant’,
Only to watch the life you ushered in leave their chest.
Certainly that is not a good time.
Is it better to lay your teen in the ground?
After some great sickness, or some unexpected car ride?
There they were, full of piss + vinegar + fear + insecurity + raw talent + arrogant foolhardiness + timidity + most of all hope.
And then you have to lower their casket, and find lost report cards, and fold clothes they’ll never wear again, and eat casseroles for a month.
Surely this is a bad time.
How about their first spelling bee?
Maybe the first time they make one of those godawful handprint turkeys with a backwards ‘N’ on it or an ‘R’ with an overstretched limb?Or after their 5th grade production of the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy’s shoes are too big and the scarecrow forgot his costume?
Do any of those sound like a good time to lose a child to you?
Probably not.
Easier, I suppose, if the kid is a baby, or maybe not even a baby. Maybe it’s a good time in utero.
After all, at that point, they’re all potential;
Room colors, clever names, doll-sized-onesies, and the best of intentions.
But then again a miscarriage is a bloody business.
I’ve been in every room that has welcomed my children.
Only one has been a bathroom.
With hair clippings and shit stains, nail polish on the walls, and despair clinging to the cobwebs.
There.
With no pomp, with zero circumstance, with little warning, and with birthing cramps:
My little girl.
Two centimeters. Fully grown.
There she is, floating in mucus on a maxi pad in hastily-discarded underwear.
Or, no, wait, maybe that’s her, floating in the toilet above the water stained bowl.
Wait, is that her? Floating on the floor of the shower?
