They say holidays are hard times for those who’ve lost loved ones. I’m 33, happily married, and we still visit my grandparents’ homes on Christmas day. Death has not been a big part of my life. But, two years ago, I miscarried on Christmas Day.

The uncles, aunts, cousins and vibrant grandparents sat around the fireplace, in the dining room, eating pie with fresh whipped cream. Because my mother’s a nurse and my sister’s an NP, I laid in a bed in a home instead of in a hospital. When the contractions were bad, Mom and Mindy helped me slink to the searing bathtub. My other sister made sure my then-two-year old got some food. My mom told everyone I wasn’t feeling well and pretended not to hear when my cousin asked if it was contagious.

It’s been difficult to figure out how to mark this loss. We never had a body to bury, or even a gender. Giving a name felt dishonest; I’d never even felt this child move. It’s a loss so abstract, but anchored deeply in time. Christmas Day.

Trying to figure out how to mourn, I weigh my loss against the loss of other mothers: mothers who knew their children, held them, spoke with them. On the heavy scales of reality, mine hardly seems a loss.

And yet, driving home from an errand on Sunday, I drove through a wave of grief. There was no prompt, no tip-off, no trickling tributary of memory. Yet, there they were. Tears. And the chest-hollowing presence of loss.

This mourning isn’t a biological clock ticking or the yearning for another newborn. I’m still nursing my 10-month old daughter and we’ve scheduled the vasectomy. And, I know it’s still recent; there are likely to be years ahead where I don’t remember the anniversary until it’s passed.

But for all the grace in an early miscarriage, the mercy of spared suffering, there’s also the haunting of questions. As small ghosts, they fit easily in pockets, corners— in all the spaces too small for a child but too large to be ignored.

I know there’s plenty of mourning in mothering, even living children. Already, I’ve had to put to rest some of my dreams for the two young bodies in my care. But when my children are here before me, I get new dreams every time I bury one that doesn’t fit. Their existence—as trying and dissident as it can be—is something. And while it may not give me the answers I want, I get answers. After the miscarriage, I sit holding the questions.
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After the Miscarriage
After the miscarriage, the two year-old kept saying
“Pop! Come out. No more baby in mommy’s you-er-us.”

The hospital bills came, asking for the anniversary trip money.

The doctor, innocently, used the word abortion.

And I kept thinking, What was it that I mis-carried? Somehow failing
to transfer, leaving something over but not undone?