Ten years. (from Dad)

[A guest post written by D.]

To my daughter, Mila….

Today would have been your 10th birthday. 

I used to think about what you’d be like at 5. Or 10. Or 18. But with the passage of time, I no longer think about who you would have been. I think about who you were and what you mean to me today and forever.

You are our first child. As much as your sister likes to argue the merits of her being the “oldest”, you were our first. When Mama was pregnant with you, we were so excited. We waited for you for 9 whole months, building to a crescendo of new-parent anticipation, love, and yes, preparation. And then, in an instant, we lost you. 

And even though we held you for only a few hours before we had to say goodbye, you will forever be our first child. We love you always.

You are the foundation on which our family is built. Your death was like an earthquake. It was so disorienting. The life path we were on wasn’t altered…it didn’t come to an abrupt dead end…  It completely disappeared. 

Suddenly we were in the middle of a dense jungle with no path or purpose in sight. We had no choice but to start over and carve our way out. But which direction should we go? Any direction we could pick was as good (or as bad) as the next. What more did we have to lose?

So we took some risks. We moved abroad. The entire trajectory of our family was changed by you.

And even more importantly, you changed who we are as parents. How I am as a dad. How Mama is as a mom. When I see your brother and sister and how close they are, I’d like to think you had something to do with that too. Who would they be without you? Would they even be?

You are not just part of our family; we grew out of you.

You changed me fundamentally for the better. For me, there is a before you and an after you. You were born lifeless, but the ways you have affected my life are profound and permanent. My whole world changed on December 23, 2013. Losing you stripped me emotionally to the bone. 

Before you, I spent way too much time in my own head regretting the past or worrying about the future. So much so that I missed out on years of living in the present. Unfortunately, nothing could have brought me more violently into the “now” than losing you.

So I have spent the better part of a decade “after you” trying to rebuild myself into a better person. That would not have happened if it weren’t for you. You forced a self-reckoning. 

There are so many ways that I can continue to grow personally, but today feels like a good day to acknowledge how far I’ve come. I hate that losing you had to be the reason for who I’ve become, but I am so grateful for it.

To Mila’s mama….

You are the love of my life and the most amazing mother in the world. I’ll never forget how you were with Mila that day. In the deepest throes of emotional and physical agony a woman can endure, you were above all else, Mila’s mama. I don’t know how you did it. And 10 years later, I am still marveling at you. You are the strongest person I have ever met.

Losing Mila could have easily broken us in ways that were impossible to repair. Instead, it deepened our love for each other. For a while there, it was just the two of us, wandering in the world lost and alone. But we had each other. And somehow we managed to put one foot in front of the other until we found joy in life again. Now I wake up everyday knowing that no matter what life throws at us, we will persevere together.

I also want to thank you for this blog. You have left our family and the world such a beautiful tribute to Mila and a vivid testimony of grief, anger, fear, hope, and rebirth. It is truly a gift.

I feel so much warmth reading your posts now–even through the sadness. My favorites: Mila’s Life, Mila’s Birth Story, your travelogs of our escaping the world in Japan, finding hope and happiness again at the end of the world in Chile and Argentina (and parts 2, 3, 4), physically and emotionally moving on from the west coast; and more recently, your eulogy for my Dad. 

I hope that one day when they are older, our children will read this blog and learn from it.

To the World….

Having a stillborn baby is excruciatingly isolating. People don’t know what to say. Let’s face it, no one likes talking about dead babies. So they say nothing. Or they ignore you. Or even worse, they say something like “don’t worry, you’ll have another”.

Mila’s mom has documented that isolation in this blog. It’s a tough read. But as rare as it is to hear a mother talk so honestly about having a stillborn child, it’s even rarer to hear a father do the same. Maybe one day I’ll work up the courage to talk about what that’s like in more detail.

Every 16 seconds, a baby is stillborn. Today I think about the many parents around the world who will have to endure that isolation with little or no support network. Or even worse, be actively stigmatized by their community.

Which is why I am so grateful for our family and friends and the doctors, nurses, and support groups who helped us through those early years. Many friends were there for us 10 years ago and continue to be by our side today. Some of you didn’t know us then but have become the closest of friends. 

Two of the first people to rush to our side in San Francisco after we lost Mila are gone now too.

I miss them.

And so life goes on.

On Mila's 10th birthday.

Although I haven't written here regularly for a long time, this blog will always be special to me.

Today I don't find myself compelled to say much and that is because, for me, this blog serves its purpose. I have said what I had to say. I wrote this as a record of Mila's brief but beautiful life; and of all the experiences in the wake of her stillbirth that I couldn't allow to be forgotten, but that I also could not bear to carry myself. This was a place to set those things down for safekeeping. That brings me a lot of peace.

When I started this blog, I called it "After Mila" with the blind hope that someday, I would get to a place in my life that truly would feel like an "after." And I have. I'm here. I made it.

So today, all there is for me to say is:

Happy 10th birthday, my girl. Thank you for everything you have given me. I love you, endlessly. xo Mama

This body is not me; I am not caught in this body,

I am life without boundaries,
I have never been born and I have never died.
Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies
All manifests from the basis of consciousness.
Since beginningless time I have always been free.
Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out.
Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek.
So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye.
Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before.
We shall always be meeting again at the true source,

Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.

-- Thích Nhất Hạnh

Labor Day.

Happy Labor Day! And appropriately enough, happy induction day to me. D and I will be heading off to the hospital for a 10AM appointment. I'm scared and anxious but cautiously excited, and I keep checking on the Nut to make sure she's still there. It's a surreal feeling, having something as momentous and normally unpredictable as a birth scheduled like this. Amidst all the packing, fridge cleanout, dogsitter planning, and well wishes, it almost feels like we're preparing to get on a flight. We're even going to take an Uber to the "airport."

Everybody gird your loins. You too, Schmorgy.

Where is u going? Wut is a baby? Is like hooman puppie?

On the calendar.

I'm officially on the calendar at UCSF L&D for an induction on Monday, September 7th, 10AM. I will be exactly 37 weeks along.

Omfgomfgomfgomfgomfgomfg!!!1!!!!

It was as simple as Dr. R making a one-minute phone call at my appointment last week, as D and I traded bug-eyed astonished glances at each other behind her turned back.

As if spurred on by this development, the next day I started having contractions that were mild but uncomfortable and so frequent that I went in to be seen. As I lay there hooked up to the monitor, I wondered ruefully if I'd be admitted, caught unawares in the hospital for a chaotic delivery for the second time, after all these months of quiet, clenched-fist waiting and planning. I wound up being watched in L&D for eight hours before the contractions started to subside and the doctors sent me home with instructions to avoid exerting myself and to stay hydrated.

My number one hope is to come out of this healthy and with a healthy baby, and my second desperate hope is for all this to just -- go -- according to plan, this time. I would dearly love to just be able to pack and prepare at my leisure, drop off my dog with his sitter as discussed, show up calmly at the hospital at the appointed time with a bag carefully packed with all my toiletries and comforts, and be monitored by medical staff from minute one of my fast, smooth, and relatively pain-free labor. No surprises. Please.

Little sister.

It's a little sister for Mila and Schmorgy. She's got all her bits, so far as can be determined via ultrasound at this point, and a normal cord insertion. D and I are happy and cautiously relieved. I'll let Schmorgy be the one to be unreservedly, no-holds-barred excited and optimistic. :)

Somebody asked me how it felt to have the anatomy scan done for the Nut (as we're calling her until she has a proper name). It was confusing -- scary and happy and sad all at once.

Scary because every pregnancy ultrasound I'll have for the rest of my life will be terrifying in the moments while the tech applies the gel and moves the wand, before the picture comes into focus and I can see movement and a heartbeat.

Happy because she proved to be alive and well -- unmistakably human with developed little hands, big feet like Mila's and D's, four pumping chambers in her heart, a spine with every vertebra clear on the screen, shapely quads and hamstrings wrapped around two strong femur bones, an umbilical cord and placenta that are wonderfully unremarkable. Because she moved vigorously, kicking and squirming and doing flips like her big sister did. And because she is a she, who will give me another shot at doing all the sweet little girl things that I didn't get to do with Mila.

Sad because still, still, Mila doesn't ever get to do those sweet little girl things, or play with the toys we bought her, or sleep in the crib that D put together for her. It feels like she was shortchanged. Some cell on some random, careless whim divided or implanted in some funky way that led some other cells down some narrow path, further and further, until they all turned into a velamentous cord insertion. Which everybody said would work out fine, until it didn't. And just as randomly, just as obliviously, the Nut's earliest cells went down some other path and gave her a normal one. The membrane separating the two paths feels so thin. Why, why, why? There is no reason why. Sometimes the universe is random. Atoms and molecules and cells move about in the dark.

Here is my strongest, dearest, sincerest wish that they all come together in just the right way for the Nut.

Change.

The switch flipped.  I'm pregnant again -- 16 weeks and 2 days today, which gives me a due date in September.

We'd just come back from Argentina when we found out.  I was late, but I'd been late before.  I went about my life for four days in a mild state of denial, not wanting to test and see that single line again.  After ten months I'd started to become resigned and begun to think, why would this time be any different?  Then suddenly, inexplicably, it was.

I'm really happy about it, of course.  I remember lying with my eyes closed shortly after we found out, marveling about it.  I think about Mila now as being part of the fabric of the universe, and in the same way I thought about this new baby as another wisp of that infinity that has taken up temporary residence in me; slowly growing, adding matter, and waking up into a tiny embodied part of the everything that there is.

But it also took me a while to digest this.  I'd gone a full year being not-pregnant.  I had, after a time, returned to feeling like my body was my own -- strong, predictable, mine to do what I wanted with.  Pregnancy this time, without the novelty or blind optimism of last time, just feels like watching my body slowly going haywire.  I feel frustrated when it's physically harder for me to do things that I did easily four months ago, and when my clothes don't fit right, and when all I want is carbs.  My body doesn't feel like the same one that walked the W, although I still have a pair of fucked-up pinky toenails to prove it.

So it is taking a little mental rearrangement.  I'd really like for September to arrive and to be finished with the pregnancy, but I'm not as scared or anxious as I thought I would be, at least not yet.  It helps that D and I adopted a rescue dog last month, who is the best pup we could ask for.  All we do is give him a home and something to eat; and in return he gives us endless smiles and butt wiggles and fun and lightness.  It's the best therapy I can imagine.

He sleeps in a little dog bed in our bedroom.  At night I listen to D breathing in his sleep to my right, the pup breathing in his sleep to my left, and sometimes I feel what might be the slightest little bounce from baby Peanut; and I feel comforted amidst my pack.  It's finally growing again.

Atacama and Patagonia, part 3: Argentina.

On the bus to El Chaltén.

Few things are better than your first shower after a backpacking trip.  We returned to Puerto Natales from Torres del Paine with a sack full of irredeemably dirty laundry and flies buzzing around our ripe heads, and headed straight for our shower at Hotel Indigo.

My favorite thing about Hotel Indigo: it does away with the tiny bar soaps and mini toiletries, and instead equips its rainfall showers with full-size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and liquid soap.  This setup could not have come at a better time.

The next day we boarded a six-and-a-half hour bus ride bound for El Calafate, Argentina.  The ride was long, stuffy, and smelly, and made even longer by two immigration stops at the Chile-Argentina border, so I entertained myself by watching pasture after pasture of sheep go by, seemingly without end, and preparing to do my part by eating some lamb.  My memory of that bus ride is endless sheep.

Rolling into El Calafate was a rude awakening.  I had pictured an idyllic little nothing town, but it almost felt like being in Berkeley.  There were pizza joints, rental car places, tour agencies, a North Face store, a Patagonia store, and an overpriced bookshop.  Places were packed and there was not a single Perito Moreno glacier tour or rental car to be had for the next day.  I missed the emptiness of Puerto Natales and dusty red compactness of San Pedro, but we made the best of our unplanned rest day with a cheap but excellent bottle of malbec, some kind of half-sweet dulce de leche spread on breakfast toast, and cordera patagonica served over coals at La Tablita, that tasted almost more like suckling pig or carnitas than lamb.

El Chaltén.

The following day we got on a double-decker bus to El Chaltén, snagging the top front row for premier views of the three-hour ride.  Unfortunately it was overcast and spitting rain on the drive in, so there wasn't much to see beyond the borders of the town.  El Chaltén was built in 1985 and calls itself the trekking capital of Argentina.  Sure enough, the town is tiny, only half-paved, and its main strip consists of services for hikers and climbers: gear shops, hostels, coin laundromats, and a sparsely-stocked supermercado containing primarily dry pasta.  We settled into the treehouse-like room on our hilltop hotel and hoped for good weather for our New Year's Eve hike to Cerro Torre.

The fat caracara.

I could hear rain pounding against our windows even before I opened my eyes the next morning.  Not a good sign for the last day of 2014.  We went to breakfast, hoping the rain would clear out.  It did, a bit, but as we walked the two hours to Laguna Torre, hoping for at least partial views of Cerro Torrre, it only got colder and rainier.  We arrived at the end of the trail to see a gray lake and a glacier in the distance obscured by shroud of mist.  A few other hikers sat around the lake, their rain shells zipped up to the chin, munching rather miserably on their snacks.  An unafraid white-throated caracara (a type of falcon), fat on hiker cracker crumbs, touched down among us.

Thwarted, we returned to town.  After a shower and a nap, we woke to a surprise: blinding sun which lit up, for the first time since we'd arrived in El Chaltén, the Fitz Roy range for which the town is named.  We went to the local cervezeria for empanadas and locro, a thick stew of hominy, beef, and bacon - and, fortified, then climbed up to the mirador just above the town.  Overlooking El Chaltén and Fitz Roy beyond it, we popped a bottle of cheap bubbly, toasted the end of 2014, and waited for the sun to set below the mountains before climbing back down.  We spent the hour before midnight in our bed, drowsily watching a South Park marathon in our darkened room.  I must have fallen asleep, because the sound of shouts and cheers outside woke me.  We exchanged New Year's wishes and a kiss, and fell back asleep.

View from Mirador Los Condores.

New Year's Day dawned even clearer and calmer than the evening before, with barely a wisp in the sky or a breath of wind.  Climbers who had been waiting for weeks to scale the face of Fitz Roy sprang into action, and the locals told us that a day like that came at most three or four times a month.  D and I set off towards Laguna de los Tres, the glacial lake at the foot of Fitz Roy, in what would be our longest trek day of this trip - seven and a half miles up, through forest, hugging hillsides, and straight up the last scramble; and seven and a half miles back down to town.  We got our first unobstructed view of Fitz Roy about an hour in.  It was huge, immediate, and didn't even look real.  The spires of the range thrust out of the ground arrogantly, without context, visible and unmistakable for miles around.

On the way to Laguna de los Tres.

After a hard (for me) scramble up to Laguna de los Tres, we stood at the edge of the lake and looked straight up at Fitz Roy's face.  No matter how close or far we stood from it, its hugeness seemed unchanged.  In both photos and in reality, it looked like a green screen.  The sun was intense up there, without shade or cloud cover to temper it, beating down insistently into my skin and eyes.  I thought happily about what I'd already accomplished in 2015, and smiled.

Feliz año.

Fitz Roy.

Related posts:
First birthday.
At the end of the world.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 1: The Atacama Desert.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 2: Torres del Paine.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 4: Our trip in lists.

Atacama and Patagonia, part 2: Torres del Paine.

View from the Glacier Grey mirador.

The W route in Torres del Paine.
(view at full size)

The day before Mila's first birthday, we got on a van and a plane and a bus to get to Puerto Natales.  Puerto Natales is the gateway to Torres del Paine at the southern tip of Chile, where we planned a kind of spirit walk along the W route from west to east, stopping and making camp for four nights along the way.  Like San Pedro de Atacama, Puerto Natales is a small town, but instead of hot dry red dust and sunshine, it was all misty windblown emptiness along a bay dotted with black-necked swans.  We stayed in a little b&b on an isolated point a couple miles outside of town, and lit Mila's yahrzeit candle around 11PM that night, shortly after the sun went down.

D and Gustavo, the stern-faced proprietor of our b&b, spent the next day applying pressure to our airline trying to get our packs back after they had been separated from us in transit.  Gustavo warned us that the last guest who had lost his bags had waited for five days before they were returned.  I sat in the living room looking out the panoramic windows, anxiously hoping that our luggage snafu wouldn't cause the cancellation of the centerpiece of our trip, listening to the wind, watching the horses gallop around the field next door, and writing this post.  Mila's candle kept a comforting vigil all day, a stoic little presence in our room unruffled by the screaming winds outside or luggage logistics.

Puerto Bories in Puerto Natales.

As dinner approached, a van pulled up to the b&b with our packs - a birthday miracle!  D and I did a happy luggage dance, proclaimed it a narrowly averted disaster, and had celebratory dinner and drinks.  As it got dark, we packed and got ready for our last night in a real bed and the official close of one year.  I waited for Mila's candle to burn out at the twenty-four hour mark, but by the time I climbed into bed that night, it was still burning.  I answered well wishes from friends and shut down my phone, and it was still burning.  I closed my eyes but I hardly slept that night.  At 2AM, 3AM, 4AM, I cracked open an eye and saw the warm glow from Mila's candle continuing to cast a flickering circle of candlelight on the ceiling.  It was still burning when we woke up early the next morning, going on thirty-two hours.

Bridge to Campamento Italiano.

We left the b&b and a few hours' bus ride and catamaran ride later, we disembarked at our starting point at Refugio Paine Grande, at the bottom of the first stroke of the W.  It was a clear afternoon but tremendously windy.  The wind howled in my ears, blowing away all other sounds and the warmth of the sun, and pushing me from side to side along the trail.

The first couple of days on the trail felt hard.  My pack was heavy.  My new boots still pinched.  The winds pushed me off course.  The trail was rocky and uneven.  I was footsore.  I was too cold and then too hot.  I wasn't yet familiar with all my gear.  Although our first two days were our shortest, it felt like it took forever to get to our first two camps.

Lago Grey.

That first day we hiked up to Refugio Grey to get to the true "start" of the west-to-east W route.  I limped in, feeling a little desperate as I saw the roof of the refugio finally appear among the trees.  I hauled myself up the steps onto the deck and set down my pack with relief as D went into the office to secure a campsite.  I was stuffing a Clif bar into my mouth when D returned and told me he had discovered the refugio was hosting a "buffet sorpresa de Navidad" for Christmas Eve.  I'd forgotten it was Christmas Eve.  There were a few spots left for the feast, which he snatched up.  When you're in the woods and someone asks you if you'd like chicken, beef, or lamb, you accept.  All three.  We pitched our tent, got changed, and crowded into the packed lodge dining room with our fellow campers, where the staff had laid out a huge spread of salads, roasted meats, rice, and boxed wine.  It started out civilized enough, but soon ravenous hikers were going up for thirds and fourths and dessert, elbowing, self-serving, and pulling progressively larger chunks out of what one of the servers told D was supposed to be purely decorative bread.

The second day we backtracked back down to Refugio Paine Grande and continued along the bottom of the W to Campamento Italiano.  I was still feeling slow and sore, and when we arrived at camp and saw signs that the next leg of our hike into Valle Francés - the middle stroke of the W - was closed due to inclement weather, I secretly thought it might not be so bad if we didn't have to go.

View from the first mirador in Valle Francés.

Bound for Campamento Torres.

D, however, wouldn't hear of not completing the full W.  The morning of the third day he pestered the guardaparque for updates.  Shortly after 8AM the trail into Valle Francés reopened, though the guardaparque warned us that there might be snow, rain, and not much of a view.  We hiked into Valle Francés with a Dutch couple, Maartje and Gert, who had pitched their tent next to ours at Campamento Italiano.  It was blustery and snowing in the valley that morning, and parts of the trail were steep boulder scrambles.  But despite the poor visibility and chill, once we arrived at the midpoint of the W something clicked.  As we climbed back down and moved on towards Refugio Los Cuernos, the weather started to clear and pulled back to reveal high mountaintops, deeply aquamarine glacial lakes, stony beaches, and rolling meadows covered end to end with round yellow shrubs.  My pack started to feel lighter as I got used to carrying the load, and I liked the feeling of carrying everything I needed on my back.  My footing felt more secure.  I loved walking the dirt paths through the woods and drinking straight from the glacial streams.  Our tent gradually started to feel more roomy as we figured out the best configuration of our stuff.  We saw wildlife - eagles, mice, and a bare-assed couple near Refugio Los Cuernos who looked to be about to start shooting a trailside porn with a selfie stick.

On the shore of Lago Nordenskjöld.

Heading from Refugio Los Cuernos to Campamento Torres.

At the end of each day there was camp, a hot meal that D would cook up on our camp stove, and faces that started to become familiar --  Chileans, Israelis, Germans, the Cocky American Bitch with her henpecked husband (who we saw at every campground where we stopped, but never, ever saw on the trail), and Maartje and Gert, who we kept running into all through TDP, and later, in Argentina.  And at the end of the evening, there was my sleeping bag in the warm tent with D.

D, my búho espíritu, at the base of Las Torres.

The fourth day was our longest day, hiking roughly twelve miles mostly uphill from Refugio Los Cuernos to Campamento Torres, where we planned to sleep and get up early the next morning to hike the last ascent to the mirador at the base of Las Torres.  Campamento Torres was a cool and shady campground with a small clear brook running through it.  We arrived there mid-afternoon, ahead of the wave of other campers, and pitched our tent in a private spot next to the brook, where we stashed a few beers D had sherpa'ed up from Refugio Chileno.  We changed into our night clothes and dozed off for a few hours.

Around 6PM, D rustled out of the tent to look around.  I was dreaming of hot chili and Oreos for dinner, with my brain solidly in end-of-the-day mode, when he returned, poked his head into the tent, and exclaimed that it was clear enough to see Las Torres and that we should go - now.

I scrambled to get my hiking clothes back on and get my head back into gear.  D stood waiting for me in the sun-dappled woods at the campground entrance, and as I approached, he looked, to me at least, like some kind of forest spirit guide.  I told him so, and he said, "Yeah, some people thought I was the campground greeter or something."

The beginning of trail to the base of Las Torres wound through the woods, scattered with the occasional rocks and roots.  We crossed small bridges over shallow, bubbling streams.  We passed maybe a hundred people who were climbing their way back down.  The trail wound around and up, and after about 20 minutes we rose above the trees and the trail changed from dirt to small rocks.  As we ascended, the rocks grew larger.  The last part of the ascent was a scramble over a large rock field, scattered with stones ranging in size from as small as a fist to some as large and flat as a dining table.  We picked our way over the boulders, turned a corner, and there they were.

Mist floated around the top of Las Torres, but we could see all three of the towers as well as the glacier whose snowmelt cut crevices into the rock and fed into a crystal blue lake in a basin at the foot of the towers.  We'd come after the rush, and the place was nearly deserted.

We found a big flat rock to sit on, pulled on our gloves and jackets against the cool breeze, cracked open a beer, and just looked.  I thought about what it meant to have made it to Las Torres after roughly fifty miles on foot, following the trail through uphill and downhill, through switchbacks and backtracking, through forest and meadow and rock field, and to feel like I could still keep going.  I thought about what it meant to have gone through a whole year without Mila, and to be still alive and strong and able to laugh.  I felt 2014 gradually stitching itself closed and wondered what would come in 2015.  We stank, we were hungry, and we were happy.

After a time, the sun broke through the mist.  It shone brightly through two of Las Torres and lit up the lake below.  The beam hit the middle of the lake, dispersed across the water, intensified for a bright minute, and then faded away again behind the mist.  I don't know if that was Mila, but in any case I like to think there's a little bit of her in everything beautiful: every soft breeze, every tree in the woods, every wildflower, every rolling hill, every mountain range, every stone, every stream, every calm blue lake, every mighty ocean, every great glacier, every starry sky, every sunrise, every sunset.

Related posts:
First birthday.
At the end of the world.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 1: The Atacama Desert.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 3: Argentina.
Atacama and Patagonia, part 4: Our trip in lists.

Keep running.

I'm having a bad day, guys.

A year ago this April my hometown of Boston was attacked.  D and I had been living in SF for eight months and I was sad to be missing the marathon for the first time in a long time.  We used to live on the course at mile 23, and hosted a viewing party every year.  I was at work when I got a text from my sister.  Miss your marathon parties. :(  I texted back, Me too :(

Almost an hour later, she texted again.  Explosions at the finish line.  Is everyone you know who ran it ok??

I spent the rest of the day Googling and following the news.  The confusion quickly gave way to horror.  We waited anxiously to hear from D’s brother and our friends who were there.  At home, I switched on the TV and familiar places lit up the screen.  I watched that downtown stretch of Boylston Street, a scene of celebration and personal victory, a scene I knew so well, explode into chaos.  People screaming.  Blood all over the sidewalk.  Body parts littering the street.  I watched it over and over and over.  I could not stop crying.

Three nights later, news of a shooting at MIT flickered across the screen.  Then a carjacking in Allston.  A car chase into the suburbs.  The MIT police officer pronounced dead.  A firefight in the middle of Watertown.  The entire city of Boston and surrounding towns going into lockdown.  I remember wondering if the world were about to end.  Somewhere in all this, it became clear that these were the activities of the marathon bombers.  We spent hours glued to the TV and the internet, getting annoyed as CNN mispronounced the names of familiar towns and streets.  The lockdown stretched into the next day, a Friday.  I spent the workday following the events, unable to think of anything else.  Shortly after 5:30PM Pacific time, the suspect was apprehended and taken into custody.

After four harrowing days, I exhaled.  The city of Boston exhaled.  And then there was celebration.  Crowds came pouring out of their homes in the middle of the night and gathered at the finish line and in Boston Common to pay tribute to the people who had been injured and killed, the heroes who came to their aid, the medical professionals who cared for them, and the police who captured the bombers.  D and I and some friends visiting from Boston had a big drink and celebrated along with them from SF.

That was the weekend Mila was conceived.  A week later, I went home and visited the finish line myself, as her cells divided secretly inside me.  I chose to think of her conception as a sign of hope.  A light in the darkness.  Good triumphing over evil.

Now it's a year later, an April later.  Boston is gearing up for the marathon again.  Mila should be 3 months old.  But Mila is gone, and it is so, so dark.

This morning I made the mistake of looking through old pictures on my phone.  I saw months and months of belly pictures scroll by, and I actually smiled.  After the very last belly picture, which showed me standing in our kitchen and smiling on December 22nd, the belly pictures suddenly gave way to a screenshot of a list of funeral homes.  I’d forgotten that was there.

I wanted to throw my phone across the room.  These last few weeks, I thought I was doing okay.  I’ve been downright cheerful.  But watching her life end like that on the tiny screen of my phone made me realize I still, still cannot believe she is dead.  She is supposed to be here.  This wasn't supposed to happen.

I’ve done a lot of thinking about what I want our lives to look like in a year, and have been thinking about ways to make my work schedule more accommodating of a family in the near future.  It’s scary, thinking about making choices that are not career-maximizing.  I’ve never made those choices before.  Today that started to get to me.  What am I doing, looking for working mom hours, when I don’t even have a baby to look after?  It’s hard not to feel very, very bad about myself.  Lame.  Unambitious.  Stupid.  Can't hack it, can’t do anything right.

This afternoon I was sitting in my parked car and came across this photography/film project to honor the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15.  The photographer, Robert Fogarty, photographed and filmed the survivors coming back to the finish line.  I read some of the interview quotes; they were beautiful.

My message is “Still Standing.” I wrote still standing because the bombers hurt me—they took my legs—but I can still stand on them. 

I’m still standing. 

This is the first time that I was back at the finish line. I had never been back, and this was about reclaiming it. That finish line has been a negative space since the marathon. This was about reclaiming that space in a positive way. I chose to be there. I took back control. I chose to do this and the heck with everybody else.  Celeste Corcoran

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I think that the experience of losing my leg has made me become more compassionate, so I may have less of a leg now, but I think my heart is bigger because of it.  Heather Abbott

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We have deformities to our bodies, but I think it makes us stronger to be so open with it. I think it’s part of our therapy to get through what happened to us.  Roseann Sdoia

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I read a quote, and it said “Never be ashamed of a scar. That it only means you are stronger than what tried to hurt you.” And it really resonated with me. I am strong, and this is just a little token.  Lee Ann Yanni

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“Love this life” has been my motto since the bombing. I spent a lot of time prior to the bombing always seeking out the next thing in my career and putting the majority of my focus on finding the right career for myself and on school. I didn’t always take time to focus on those around me —my family and friends, the ones who I’d want to spend my last days with. Since the bombing, I’ve decided to spend each day as if it were my last. This to me means focusing on and acting more graciously to all of those around me. It also means spending as much time with friends and family as possible and viewing those I love as the center of my universe.  Brittany Loring

I started the video, and as I watched it, I sat in the car and cried.

Keep running.  Boston Strong.

Dear World, a love letter from Boston marathon bombing survivors. from Dear World on Vimeo.

On balance.

Things continue go up and down.  I laugh, I cry, I sit quietly.  I think about Mila, but I also think about what to make for dinner, my friends’ love lives, work, and what shoes to buy.  Sometimes I talk about Mila at length and am completely composed; other times I talk and I realize, too late, that my own words are bringing on tears.  The balance of happy and sad fluctuates; but for the first time there are moments when I am, on balance, cheerful.

Mila is always, always on my mind, but this week the sadness only bubbled up to the surface with very specific triggers.  Coming across D’s race shirt from last December while folding the laundry.  Seeing Mila’s tiny, unworn Converses in the back of the closet.  Talking about her with someone new.  Reading through Dr. R’s angry letter to my insurance company (as validating as that also felt).

But other times, I see beauty in the world, I think of her, and rather than feeling broken, I smile.  Wednesday, it rained briefly in San Francisco.  After the rain stopped, the sun lit up the thinning cloud cover and bathed the city in a post-rain glow.  The air smelled clean.  I thought of her, and I smiled.  Friday, I sat on patios drinking wine with friends in the sunshine, flowers spilled out onto the sidewalks, and dogwalkers and their packs of dogs roamed the trails.  I thought of her, and I smiled.  Today, I stood in the sun at the very end of the city, at the end of the world.  The wind blew and I watched the sailboats in the bay beneath the Golden Gate.  I thought of her, and I smiled.

Trying again.

People tell me they can’t imagine what it would be like to lose their babies.  “I’m so sorry, I just can’t imagine.”

Well, before, I couldn’t imagine it either.  And I didn’t think I needed to.  In my prenatal reading, I briefly came across a single article about stillbirth, the story of a woman who discovered her baby was dead in the womb and was then faced with the unimaginable task of birthing her dead child.  I glossed over the article.  A horrible story, but filed squarely under Not Applicable.

That was in the Before.

From where I stand now, I actually have trouble imagining having a living child.  Despite all evidence to the contrary, I have trouble believing that pregnancies don’t all end in disaster.  I am surprised when other people have perfectly healthy babies, so easily, like it’s nothing.  I see pictures of pregnant friends and acquaintances nearing their due dates and I think, oh god, it’s going to be so horrible when the baby dies.  But then a few weeks pass and their belly photos promptly, magically, turn into photos of beautiful, healthy babies.  How do they do it?

It’s hard to have faith in the statistics once you’ve been the 1 in 160.  Once you’ve been the 1 in 160, the statistics all become meaningless.  1% might as well be 100% for all the good it does you.

But, but.  Some part of us must still believe, because we aren't giving up.  There are two types of newly bereaved mothers.  Those who can't even think of getting pregnant again anytime soon, and those who can't get pregnant again soon enough.  I fall into the second category.  I wanted to be pregnant again as soon as I got home from the hospital.  I knew even then that it was just a way of missing Mila - for nine months, even when I was alone, I wasn't really alone; and I couldn’t stand the sudden, total emptiness.  I know the next child will not be her.  We will not get her back.  But we still want a family, so at least we can work towards that.

The next pregnancy will be hard.  We will be so happy, but also so terrified, for nine long months.  And I can’t help but feel frustrated that we are in this place.  We’re not even back at square one - we are at a place worse than square one.  A year ago, my body was in its best shape ever and our hearts were untouched.  Now I worry that I am, maybe, a little depleted.  I worry that I still haven’t lost the last twelve pounds.  And I worry about how I am possibly going to love another baby as much as Mila.  She occupies so much room in my heart; it scares me to think that I might not have enough for the next baby.

But I think back on my pregnancy with Mila, and I realize that even as she made my belly and butt bigger, she did the same for my heart.  As she grew, my heart grew to accommodate her.  To pump more blood, more nutrients; to give more love.  So I trust that that will happen again.

So, fuck it.  This is clearly kind of a crapshoot.  And I choose to believe that things will work out.

An evolution.

In the beginning, I felt everything.  All of the feelings, I felt them.  Disbelief, emptiness, anger, guilt, confusion, self-doubt, fear, what-ifs, and incredible, incredible sadness.  The sadness of losing her, and of feeling like I had somehow failed her when she needed me.  Sitting in the dead silence of our apartment with all of those feelings was too much to bear.  It was a relief when 6PM rolled around every day so that I could focus on making dinner and just going to sleep.

We did a lot to try to distract ourselves in those first few weeks.  Three weeks after Mila was born, we ran away to Japan.  Japan, in all its unfamiliarity, was frankly less foreign and terrifying than the new Mila-less San Francisco that we found ourselves in, which is full of parks where I planned to take her, shops where I had bought her 12-month clothes in anticipation of a lifetime together, and other parents pushing the same model of baby jogger we had gotten her.

We wanted to be lost in translation, to disappear for a while.  Japan felt like a friendly refuge.  The lights were bright and the food tasted good.  There was good running for D, who has been channeling his negative energy into long, long runs.  People smiled at us, and the sound of Japanese chatter was a cheerful background buzzing that didn’t intrude into my thoughts.  I liked the Shinto shrines, especially Fushimi Inari-taisha with its thousands of red torii gates winding up Mount Inari, which were contemplative and integrated into their natural surroundings.

I couldn't escape completely, even there.  I saw kawaii stuffed animals I wished I could take home for Mila.  At a drugstore in Kyoto I saw a basal thermometer, of all things.  At the bullet train station, a dark-haired, pink-cheeked baby girl, bundled up against the cold, giggled and smiled at me intently.  I smiled back at her for a minute before I had to turn away.

But it helped, even though we knew it wouldn’t actually help us “work through” our grief, whatever that means.

Getting the autopsy report and all of Mila’s genetic test results after we returned from Japan helped, too.  D warned me against reading the autopsy report, but there was never any question in my mind that I would.  I’m her mom; in good or in bad, I cannot turn away from her.  In a strange way, I almost liked reading it - ten solid pages all about her, written by someone who had taken the time to observe every detail of her.  And it confirmed that she was normal, and whatever happened was probably sudden and unpreventable.  That went a long way towards putting our guilt and what-ifs to rest.  We tired ourselves out on all our medical questions, and we’ve turned to our philosophical ones.

Six or seven weeks out, my mom told me she’d had a dream about Mila as a little crawling, laughing baby.  She told me that this was about the time that souls came to visit their loved ones before going on to be reborn.  I don’t and didn’t believe this, at least not in any literal sense - but nevertheless, I felt a little miffed that I hadn’t had any dreams about Mila.  That night, I went to bed and I did dream about her.  In it I was trying, unsuccessfully, to help her pass gas.  After a moment she cooed as if to say that she actually felt fine, so I turned her over and rubbed her back.  And she smiled.

These days the grief still feels heavy, but it also feels less complicated.  Now it’s mostly just the sadness, of missing her and wishing she were here.  In the first weeks, I couldn’t take any pleasure in the sushi that I had been looking forward to eating again, having free time felt wrong, and the first beer tasted like a transgression.  I didn’t want to be able to do all those things.  Nowadays, I eat sushi and undercooked eggs, I snowboard at Tahoe, I drink Hendrick's & tonics at Lion Pub with D and my friends and we laugh - and while it’s not what we thought we’d be doing, and I miss her intensely, I don’t feel like running away anymore.