Life & Other Profanities

Sitting beside Kelly's head facing a large blue curtain was how I met both of my sons. It was in the exact same room, undergoing the same procedure, having just come from the same triage room in which we were first told of the circumstances of Rhys' impending birth. The hallway was the same hallway. The smells were the same. I was just as nervous and confused; just as scared. In the wake of Rhys' birth, no one was confused or alarmed by my general quietness and displays of sadness. That was not the case when I displayed those same feelings after Adryn's birth. There was a common refrain from others telling me how excited I should be or how wonderful all of this was, and the reel that keep playing in my head was the night we were told we had lost Rhys' twin just a few months after finding out our IVF procedure had been successful.

We were looking forward to that new year. We were finally pregnant, with two, the shock and joy of which was lost on neither of us. The entire day following we sat in a sort of stunned silence. We were excited but it had quickly dawned on us the amount of work and money two at the same time was going to cost. And after all of the needles and ultrasounds and doctor visits we had undergone to get there, even in spite of those things, we were happy. Which made sitting in the ultrasound room with the ultrasound tech taking pictures of what we had assumed would be two healthy growing babies all the more difficult and heart-wrenching.  It was painfully obvious something was wrong, painfully obvious that one baby was big with arms and legs flailing and the other wasn't. There wasn't any joy in that room. I saw the healthy one, I watched it move, I knew it was there but the only thing I felt was the empty stillness of the other one. And it's not like I didn't try to be happy. After I realized what was happening and allowed myself to say it in my head I tried to look at the other one and search for some relief or happiness or something in the situation that would make it feel better, but it never came. It still doesn't.

In the weeks that followed, replaying that moment in my mind, I spent a great deal of time dwelling on my feelings in that room, trying to justify and rationalize my inability to feel happy. As if this was something I could run probabilities on and explain with some mathematical equation. That exercise eventually wore itself out thanks, in part, to choosing to listen to my feelings rather than be ashamed by or rationalize them. At that moment, in that room, happiness couldn't be the important part of my experience. The important part was rooted in sadness watching one baby punch and kick and roll while the other one didn't. That place of sadness brought healing and growth.

The similarities and differences of Adryn and Rhys' births sit as starkly now in my memory as they did the day they happened. Until I heard him cry on the other side of that blue sheet in the operating room I couldn't fully believe that Adryn was going to arrive without problems. Something had to go wrong, that's how these things worked, but he came; loudly and bloated, he came. When Rhys was born the room was full of medical alarms and silence. Adryn managed to enter life in a relatively routine c-section, Rhys's was rushed. I followed Adryn into the recovery room to help clean him up a little for Kelly before she was closed up and moved over to join us and I followed Rhys down a different hallway into another room where even more doctors and nurses continued to work on him for hours. We brought Adryn home with us and we made a decision to take Rhys off of life support so we could hold him while he died. When I met Rhys, it was heavy and painful, just like the day we found out his twin hadn't survived. When I met Adryn it was joyous and still heavy and still painful. Most people aren't interested in hearing that, but there it is.

I don't have a problem with happiness in theory. I categorize it, generally, as a helpful and productive thing. There is, however, a part of me that is both exhausted and confused by the notion that happiness embodies the pinnacle of human experience, that we should always want and strive to exist in a state of happiness. There are myriad theories, ideologies, and theologies that pedal those wares and I've never been able to be anything more than skeptical in those types of conversations. This is not to say that I dislike happiness or happy people or am unable to celebrate my own joy and that of others, it's just always hit me as artificial. I don't like that life gets boiled down to a pursuit of happiness. Doesn't living mean we try to be present in all moments of life?

In my experience, all of this emotion stuff is indicative of a culture that is incredibly insecure about anything that isn't easy and outright hostile towards things that challenge, upset or even dare to change the status-quo of happy is good and sad is bad. Sad equals depression. Sad equals a deficiency in one's basic ability to be a human. Sad means you're not trying hard enough to see the good in life or not thankful enough for the blessings in one's life. Again, I think happiness is a helpful thing. But so is sadness and anger and even fear. I think we do ourselves a huge disservice when we seek to exist in a single state of emotional being. When happiness is the only way we allow ourselves to approach the world we miss a great deal of the actual stuff of life going on around us.

I believe, wholeheartedly that humans are spiritual beings and by that I mean we derive meaning from the events of life. We are driven by more than instinct. There is passion and heartache and love; there is sharing and learning; there is loss and gain; there is hate and death and pain and hurt; all of which is felt and remembered and passed on in the stories we tell and the lives we live. The holidays have come and gone. They were busy. They were full. They were colored by the memories and experiences of a happy healthy son who, seemingly over night, became very vocal and interested in the world around him. And they were colored by a son who died. Both of whom continue to color the experience of life and both of whom continue to teach me more about myself and the world around me. In the end, I've learned that it requires far more energy and effort to act happy than to live my feelings honestly. I'm sad that makes some people uncomfortable and I'm learning to be okay with that.