Arella

I am not exactly sure where I am. A funeral home, I think. I know this is the memorial service for my daughter but it’s not like most. There are no pictures of remembrance. No life stories. No PowerPoint on the screen with baby shots, graduation, wedding. People are just milling around, chatting.

Occasionally someone approaches me, “We’re so sorry.”

“You have our sympathies.”

The well-meaning condolences are echoing around me eerily causing no reaction.

No recognition.

Devoid of meaning.

Devoid of comfort.

Nothing is registering.

I have retreated behind my veil of tears withdrawing into a cavernous stone-cold chamber of grief. Who are these people? I can’t see them clearly through the veil.

I really don’t want to.

I just want this funeral to be over with. I can’t endure it any longer.

“It will be OK. You’ll get through this. You can always have another one.”

Oooo, that last one. The mean girl in me could have snipped back, “Sure! I heard there’s a sale on babies at Walmart tomorrow. I’ll just run right down there and REPLACE THE ONE THAT BROKE.” But even the mean girl in me is silent. Anesthetized.

In the distance I hear the words “thank you” pass through my lips. I have no idea where those words came from.

My outside is on automatic. My inside is cold. Numb. Outside I am going through the motions. Inside I have collapsed in a heap like a pile of laundry on a slate-grey floor in a growing pool of tears.

I think back to when she was born. It was in a rural small-town Catholic hospital. I had been in labor for a long time and it was not progressing. My baby was close to crowning but wasn’t quite there. The attending nurse reached over and the pressed the “call” button.

“Cindy? Can you send Sister Mary Margaret in here?”

“Sure, Deb, I’ll go get her.”

When the nun came in, she smiled, introduced herself, then quietly, calmly, discussed the situation with Deb. Sister Mary Margaret examined me and I felt my baby kick, and kick hard. She did it one more time and the baby kicked again.

In hushed but calm voices I overheard the two nurses, “Did you see that?”

Deb nodded.

The nun whispered “Anencephaly.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I knew something was wrong. Horribly wrong. Propped up on my pillow, I could see the expressions on both nurses faces turn from a calm discussion of facts to genuine concern. The Sister approached my side and laid her hand gently on my shoulder.

“We are going to have to help your baby along with a forceps.”

She demonstrated the procedure with flowing, graceful gestures. Her well-aged hands testified that she had delivered thousands of babies before mine. I was comforted by her voice of experience.

A few minutes later my daughter was born. The nun took her across the room, washed her up a little, wrapped her up in a blanket, and put a little bonnet on her head that Deb had fashioned out of a four-by-four bandage. They handed her back to me.

“She is so beautiful … so peaceful looking.”

The nurses agreed as they both pulled up chairs on either side of me. They were only half smiling – joy was straining to make itself known through deep concern. I looked back at my daughter in my arms. I stroked her cheek. She wrapped her little hand around my finger.

The nurses gave me all the time I needed to connect with my daughter. There was no sense of urgency. There was no hurry.

I eventually looked up at them and asked, “But there is something wrong, isn’t there?”

The nun explained, “Yes. Your daughter is anencephalic. She doesn’t have the big part of the brain that we have. Most of her head is empty. That’s why we covered it up.”

“But she looks fine. She’ll be OK, won’t she?”

Sister Mary Margaret placed her hand on my hand and gently continued, “I have been an OB nurse for over 40 years and I have only seen this once before. Your baby might live for a few hours, a day at the most.” And then she firmly squeezed my hand and I looked into her face. Tears had welled up in the corners of her eyes. She was obviously straining to hold them back.

The tears in my own eyes had yet to arrive. The freight train of reality had yet to hit me.

The nun looked at Deb and raised an eyebrow as if to say, “Are you OK?” Deb nodded.

“Deb will stay here with you as long as you are comforted by her being here.”

Sister Mary Margaret then said her “good-byes” and left the room.

Deb sat by my side and we carried on a normal conversation – you, know, like new friends would. “How long have you been a nurse?” “Are you married?” “Do you have any boyfriends?” Stuff like that. She was tall, slender, brunette with hair down to her shoulders. Great hair, actually. Her low alto voice was one I could listen to for hours and never tire of. She carried herself professionally and was friendly, appealing, attractive. I immediately sensed that she knew what she was doing and passionately loved her work. I immediately sensed that we could become close friends.

At one point Deb asked, “Have you thought about a name?”

“No. Not really. I want to give her a name that’s not too common, but not one that’s too weird either. I thought about Ariel but really don’t like that one much.”

“How about Arella? It’s a Hebrew name which means ‘Messenger of God’. It means ‘angel’.”

“Oooo. I like that! It sounds sort of Italian, too, or maybe Spanish.” I spoke the name rolling the R’s and lingering on the L’s. I liked how it sounded. It made me smile.

I tried that name out on my daughter. She seemed to like it. “And so, that’s that! Your name is Arella!”

“Deb? I’d like you to meet Arella. Arella? Meet Deb.” I held my daughter’s hand out while Deb “shook” it with the tip of her little finger. We laughed.

We went on like this for several hours. We laughed some. We cried some. We joked about the false advertising of “waterproof” mascara. But mostly, we just hung out.

“Deb? If you need to go … “

“It’s OK. I just live across the street. My shift ended hours ago. I can stay here as long as you want. I actually have nothing I would rather be doing. I want to stay here with you and Arella, if that’s OK.”

Of course it was OK. Even though she didn’t say it, I mean not explicitly, she wanted to hang out with us until, well, you know, until it was over. I knew somewhere inside that Arella’s life would end sometime soon, but I wanted so much for us to live on together for a long time. She was part of my body for nine months. She was part of who I was. She was part of who I wanted so much to become.

I had envied the moms wearing their babies while out walking the dog. It took all my strength to keep from asking a stranger, “Can I push the stroller down the aisle for you?” Heck, I’d love to be a hockey mom or a soccer mom or a ballet or gymnastics mom. I looked forward to the frenetic pace of raising kids, of feeding them, driving them all over, getting them off to school. I even longed for a day when I would walk down the aisle as the beaming and beautiful mother of the bride.

But I knew that the future I had dreamed of for the last nine months would never come to be. I knew I was standing on the tracks and the freight train was going to hit me hard. I never realized how hard.

And then it happened. Arella gave a little shudder and her little body lost its warmth. I didn’t expect her to grow so cold so fast. Deb choked back her tears, laid one hand on Arella, held my hand with the other, and said simply, “She’s gone.” I handed Arella to Deb and was broadsided by reality: she was dead. I would never hold my baby again. I broke into uncontrollable wails of grief. I could barely breathe.

I don’t remember much of what happened over the next few days. Somehow I told my relatives. Somehow I ended up at this funeral. Somehow I ended up on this dark side of the veil of tears.

I want this all to end. I mean all of it. Why not just check out now? How bad could it be? This is hell. Can’t I just join her on the other side?

I look out through the veil again. I don’t know exactly where I am. I have no recollection of how I got here. I am standing watching a baby casket being lowered into a grave. I feel another hand on my shoulder. I don’t look up. Another sympathizer? But no, wait. I know this touch. This one is different. I lift my head. I see her face.

“DEB!”

We throw our arms around each other. I can see that she has been crying. I can see her so clearly! It’s like she’s on my side of the veil of tears. She is inside here with me, alongside me.

“You look so different without the white shoes!” My joke works, if only for a moment.

She looks kindly, deeply, lovingly into my eyes, handing me something and urging me to “head toward the light. Carry Arella to the other side of life and gently let her go.”

I close my eyes for a moment to listen again to what she just said. I take one last look around inside me as I pick myself up, head away from the cold, away from the numbness. I pass through the veil of tears, away from the grey, and allow the color-drenched bouquet of flowers she gave me drop lightly into the grave onto the tiny casket.

I whisper, “Good-bye my little angel” and stand there arm-in-arm with Deb watching as the shovelfuls of earth fill the grave.

I slide my arm around Deb’s waist. She does the same with mine. Sniffling, with tears dripping slowly off my cheek I sigh, “You know what? I was privileged to carry her from this world to the next. She wasn’t meant for this world anyway. I’m OK with that.”

And Deb replied, “And you know what else? Arella is OK with that too.”