Yesterday on the way home from school, Isaac pointed out to me that there was a Jacob's ladder. It was out of my line of sight and took me a few minutes to see it, while not crashing the minivan. But when I did see it, pouring down through a hole in the heavy clouds, I thought it was beautiful. Also, poignant. Jacob's ladders always remind me of Jacob, our first born baby who died seven years ago after 38 minutes of life ex utero.
I've told Isaac about Jacob already. In fact, I wanted to make sure that he heard about it from us, seeing as he has older cousins who know about it. A fear of mine was that through some weird conversational twists, one of his cousins would mention it to Isaac and it would be much weirder and disturbing to learn of it that way.
So when I saw the Jacob's ladder yesterday, I said, "That's beautiful. Do you remember about the baby that we had before you were born, who didn't survive?"
Isaac: Yes.
Me: Well, Jacob's ladders always remind me of him because his name was Jacob.
Isaac: Why did he die?
Me: Well, he was too small to live when he came out of my body.
Isaac: You should've kept him inside you longer. Why did you make him come out?
Me: I tried not to! I tried everything. And a lot doctors tried too. No one could stop it from happening.
Isaac: So, you had one failure.
Me: [I did feel it was a failure at the time, and for a long time afterwards, so this was a particularly wounding word choice. But I defended the actions of my bicornuate uterus and abrupting placenta.] Well, it wasn't a FAILURE. It was more like a disease, or a broken arm.
Isaac: But WHY? Why did it have to happen like that?
Me: [I've asked the same question many times.] Well, do you know what a blood clot is? Like a scab? There was a huge one of those inside there with the baby. And it was very dangerous, because I was bleeding a lot inside there. That's called internal bleeding and it's a bad thing.
Isaac: Why?
Me: because you know your blood is supposed to go around your body and bring oxygen to your fingertips and things like that, and if it's all going someplace else…
Isaac: why didn't you just put him in an incubator? [Isaac himself was in an incubator.]
Me: they did have an incubator there, but it was no use. He couldn't breathe even with all the help in the world.
Isaac: you should've gone closer to it! You should've worked faster. You didn't get him there fast enough.
Me: There were so many doctors there, Isaac, you wouldn't believe it. There must have been twenty doctors there to help him and to help me, and still they could not save him. They saved me, which was good, but they couldn't save him.
Isaac: [finally done talking about this, thank god]: I think he's an angel up in heaven looking down on us.
Me: me, too. [sort of]
Isaac: I think he's like cupid!
Me: but you know the danger when you have a naked baby flying around up in the sky?
Isaac: what?
Me: He might pee on your head!… no diapers!
Isaac: [delighted by this idea] what if he shoots an arrow into your heart and then pees on your head!
Me: then you'd be like, "I'm in love– hey, someone peed on my head!"
Both: [giggling.]
Thus a very difficult conversation ended on a light note, as we drove through the countryside with Jacob's ladders striking the earth all around us.