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“I don’t want to.” Andie obviously didn’t care if she sounded like a petulant child. She probably felt like a petulant child right now.
“Neither do I,” Sharon called after them as they all marched down the stairs determinedly. “I hate nature. Give me a stroll down a well-laid sidewalk lit by neon and the warm glow of a Neiman Marcus showroom window any day. Dirt, bugs, and snakes are so not my thing. I’m going to go find Christy and Logan and see if they saved me any lunch.” She smiled gently at Andie, gave her a fierce hug, and told her; “You call me whenever. I’m here for you. There’s always going to be setbacks and bad days, and I’ll be here if ever you need me. Okay?” A solid kiss on her cheek, another full-body hug, a sweet smile for Kiki, and then she turned and headed for the barn.
Kiki then frog-marched the reluctant Andie toward the small orchard and garden patch. The closer they came, the more Andie dug in her heels.
“Not this way,” Andie said, an edge of panic in her quiet voice. “Not this way.” When Kiki kept marching and tugging, Andie’s struggled in earnest. She shoved at Kiki’s shoulder with her left hand as she tried to free her right. “Not in that orchard! I’m never going in there again. No! That’s where it happened. That’s where… where—” But she didn’t finish. Andie just trailed off and stared toward the lovely garden patch like she was gaping into the jowls of hell, and Kiki felt her resolve crumble under the onslaught of her best friend’s grief.
“Oh, honey.” She stopped the struggles by the simple act of enfolding her in a tight embrace. Andie wasn’t having it. She wiggled and strained to free herself, so Kiki tightened her grip and held firm. “The garden didn’t cause this. Don’t fall into that trap. You start locking yourself out of places because they remind you of her, and you’ll be locked on that porch swing for the next twenty years. It’s a trap, sweet momma, I promise. Just a trap that’ll keep you locked in a cage of grief. Marking off places like this beautiful spot is like settling the bars for your own cell.”
“But, I c-c-can’t!” Andie sobbed into her shoulder, clinging now instead of fighting to be free. “I can’t. She’s everywhere. Everywhere.”
“Everywhere, huh?” Kiki cosseted her like she would a child. The woman was pumping out so much grief and pain it was a wonder they both didn’t drown in it. “I thought as much. No wonder you never move from that swing.”
“It’s the only place. The only safe place.”
“Sure, it’s not.” Kiki scoffed and eased the other woman back with a hand on each shoulder to meet her tear-ravaged eyes. “Look around you. Nothing here hurt you. This is a beautiful spot. A place that feeds you and offers you shade from the sun and flowers for your table. Look at it all. It’s lovely here, and you’re only losing more if you make this spot taboo.”
Under the shade of the apple trees whose leaves were just starting to turn, Andie stilled and looked up. Tears continued to swim in her eyes, but they were quiet ones now.
“I had to fill out a death certificate.”
Kiki firmed her lips and nodded solemnly. She knew this, had been there quietly sobbing alongside her as she completed the hated red-tape processes that were required. It’d been hellish. “Can you believe I had to do that? They gave me a death certificate, Kik. But they never gave me a birth certificate.”
“Oh, honey.” The bite of fresh tears stung Kiki’s eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“How is that fair? How is that right?” Andie demanded in watery outrage. “She wasborn!She was alive and moving when she came into this world, but they didn’t give me a birth certificate. No! Nothing to mark that she was here, that she existed. Only something to prove she’s gone.”
And the bereaved mother sank to her knees, her hands fisted in her own hair as she wept angrily over the injustice of it all. Kiki crouched down in front of her, elbows braced on knees, and she ached to wrap Andie up in her embrace and coddle her pain away. Experience—hard won over these last two months—had taught her that no amount of affection would reach where Andie’s pain was coming from.
“There’s nothing fair about that. It’s awful.” Andie’s sobs caught on a hitch and she opened her eyes to look into Kiki’s face. “Thing is, nothing is going to change the way things are. We’re stuck here, for the rest of our lives, without her. We can’t do anything about that. As much as we wish it weren’t so, we can’t justwillthings to be any different.” Kiki knew her words had a razor’s edge; she knew too that, like a festering wound, sometimes sharp words were needed to let the poisons out so true healing could begin. Her hand shook a little when she used it to brush the hair from Andie’s pale cheek.
“She’s gone. Your sweet baby girl died, and that’s a terrible thing. But you didn’t die with her. You’re still here. Sweetheart, you can’t bring her back no matter how long you sit on that front porch and wish things were different. Life is happening all around you. It’s time to join in again.” Kiki’s fingers brushed the worn hospital band still on Andie’s wrist. They both looked down at the crinkled plastic, and Andie’s fingers closed over it protectively.
“I can’t seem to take this off,” she said in a hushed tone. “I have nothing. Nothing to show that she lived. That she was here. She’s gone. I feel like, if I take this off, then it’ll be over. For real. She’ll really be gone, and there’s nothing left to show she ever existed at all. Nothing to show she was real. That she grew inside me and kicked and lived.” Fresh tears spilled on the last word, and she gripped Kiki’s hands with both hers and squeezed with her urgency to be understood. “Don’t you see? She lived. She was alive, inside me and out. But… there’s nothing. Nothing. I’ve got nothing but this. A stupid hospital ID bracelet. There’s no more tummy. No more cravings or nausea or wiggles or kicks. All that is gone. And there’s no baby. The only thing I’ve got is this stupid strip of plastic on my stupid wrist, and once I take it off, that’s it. It’s over. She’s gone, and there is nothing left on earth to show that she was ever here.” Fresh tears bit at her own eyes at Andie’s words.
“Everything about this is wrong. I know you feel like the whole world should just curl up and go away, because she won’t be here. But there are no options here.” Andie met her eyes, and Kiki watched them widen in dismay at what she heard. “Live.”
“What?” she asked in a whisper.
“Live,” Kiki said bluntly. “You didn’t die; you survived. Period. It’s that simple. People will throw all the clichés at you like, ‘life goes on’ and ‘you have to live for her now,’ and a bunch of other life-affirming bullshit. But that’s exactly what that is, bullshit.”
“I don’t understand what you’re saying to me right now.” Andie looked confused, but she also looked engaged, and that told Kiki she was on the right path.
“You’re still here.” She cupped her friend’s face gently. “Life is still precious. Life still has hope. There is still joy to be had, I promise. I promise. The hardest lesson I ever learned in my whole life is that death is a part of it. I always thought that saying meant it would only be a part of my life when I died, and that’s it. But I was missing the whole point. Death is an everyday part of life for all of us. Only when I learned to accept that, absorb that, was I able to step back into living mine again.”
Understanding and fresh grief welled in Andie’s eyes as Kiki continued. “Our plants die. Farm animals die so we can eat. Our pets die, and so do our grandparents and parents. And we accept all of that, understand it. Those losses are expected. Hard, sure, but expected. To lose our babies though. That’s a blow we never see coming. The thing is, we should. Since you lost your sweet girl, I’ve been obsessed with finding out why. What could’ve been done to save her. And you know what I’ve found out? One in three pregnancies end the way yours did. One in three. Almost every other woman you meet is carrying this loss inside her, and yet no one ever talks about it. No one ever knows. So, of course you feel shattered when it happens to you. Singled out and all alone. At least that’s how it feels, right? But, honey, you’re not alone. I’m here, and Sharon. She knows the flavor of your pain. She knows the ache and the blame and the confusion you have in your heart. She has it in hers too.”
Kiki’s legs were killing her in this squat, so she sat down next to Andie and pulled the other woman’s head down to rest on her shoulder. “But look around you now. Take stock of what you have, my love, because for me, sometimes that’s the only thing that keeps me putting one foot in front of the other. Look at this beautiful little garden right here. Bursting with flowers and fruit trees and your own vegetable patch. And this is just a tiny corner of all that is waiting for you. You got people who love you too. People who are hurting and wanting to help. Let them. Open to them. Isolating yourself the way you have been only makes coming back harder and take longer. So, open back up. Let the love surrounding you in. I promise you; life is still worth living. I promise.”
“It’s so heavy,” Andie said, a hand pressing against her heart. “The pain, it’s actually like a weight right here. Sometimes, I don’t know how I can breathe under the weight of it.”
Kiki squeezed her shoulders and kissed the top of her head. “That weight isn’t ever going to get lighter, I’m sorry to tell you. But you will get stronger. After some time—how long is different for everyone—but one day, you’re going to realize that though your burden isn’t any lighter, you’ve grown strong enough that carrying it is no longer crippling. It’ll be just a part of you.”
“This may sound odd, but that actually makes me feel better.” Andie sat back, wiped at her eyes, and sniffed. “I like knowing that what happened will stay with me. That she’ll leave her mark after all. I’ll always have her with me.”
“Of course, you will. No wonder you didn’t want to take off that bracelet. You think it’d be the last you have of her.” Kiki wanted to coddle and soothe Andie, but she’d been doing that for the last two months, and nothing they had done reached past her fog of misery.
“I feel like I’ve cried enough tears to fill a bathtub.” Andie swiped at her cheeks with vigor and released a deep huff. “And maybe, I think, I can move now. I mean, it still hurts—God, it feels like it’s always going to hurt—but… I don’t know. I feel like maybe I can at least start to breathe again.”
