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ByLevita D. Mondie-Sapp
Web Exclusive
For me
You are life
So I asked for yourremains
Despite their policy to keep and examine
After all, youwere sent through me
And for at least sixty-three days I knew youwere coming
And only the day before yesterday
I imagined yousitting
in a high chair
at the dinner table
with me, daddy,and your sisters
making slobbery faces
But this morning theysucked out all the traces
And planned to discard the“material”
But I asked for you
For ceremony andritual:
Libation at dawn
Names called from Great GrandmaWillie
To Grandpa Tom
Seeds of my favorite fruit tree
forall those who have come
Planted with water in fertile ground
Accompanied by sacred sounds
of jimbe
played by gifted hands
that will pick and eat from you again and again and again. . .
The day after mother’s day I suffered my second miscarriage. OnMother’s Day, I actually imagined his face sitting at the tablesmiling with his big sisters. Or were we going to have another beautifuldaughter? I was excited and joyous at the thought of bearing a thirdchild. I had begun to tell almost every other person whom I met“we’re expecting another one.”
“Congratulations,” was the most common response. On Sundaynight I finally told my mother-in-law. We talked for almost two hoursthat night about all kinds of stuff. The last thirty minutes of ourconversation were about my being pregnant. We talked about thepossibility of me taking time off from my job to be with this baby.“I can’t see myself going back to work after threemonths,” I had declared to several people. I had even begunwriting a proposal for my school on how to better accommodate thosefaculty members who have children. . .Plans around my baby.
Thesmell of fresh blood. . .my baby seeping out of me red drop by red drop.. .
“There is a fetal pole but no heart motion,”the ultra sound technician informs me.
“The baby isdead,” the doctor bluntly states in response to my husband’squestion about the medical jargon used to explain the result of my testsand ultra sound.
I begin to cry to the point of sobbing. Myhusband is there to hold my hand, embrace me, and assure me that it isnot my fault.
The doctor tells me that at age 33, I’myoung, and I can have another one. But I wanted this one and the onebefore that. . . But there is a baby lifeless inside of me right now. Iknow that because the red drops continue to seep. While everyone elsearound me is focused on my future, my thoughts cradle the now demisedfetus that is already trying to expel itself from my body. AlthoughI’m almost eleven weeks pregnant, the fetus appears to be at sevenweeks of development the doctor says. For over twenty days my body hasbeen a walking tomb housing a body whose heart had long stoppedbeating.
“I don’t feel pregnant,” I said tomy husband just days before the first red drop.
“How faralong are you?” asked my little sister Ashley on Mother’sDay, just one day before the blood stained tissue. “Are you pastthe point where something can go wrong?”
On Saturday Iwoke up with this strange feeling like I needed to be alone but that Idesperately needed to be around my family. Tomorrow was going to beMother’s Day and I was feeling sadness. I knew it had to do withmemories of Diane, my own mother, who died four days afterMother’s Day in 1996. It was like she was holding on just for mytwo sisters and me. One last mother’s day she must have said toherself. Four days later the ambulance brought her home.“You’re at home,” we told her as the paramedics rolledher in.
“I’m home?” she asked.
“You’re home,” we assured her.
With thecomfort of knowing this, she transitioned less than three hours later.
Seven days later we had her funeral and burial. . .ceremonies thatcelebrate the life that the person lived; closure is what they aresupposed to initiate.
Before being released from the ER at 11p.m. Monday, the doctor instructs me to contact my OBGYN the next dayfor a follow-up. I do just that, and in the process I learn about theoptions that I have of a DNC in the office or at the hospital or, heexplains, I can have four tablets put in my vagina and the fetus willexpel itself in 24 hours.
“There can be severe bleedingand cramping and you could still end up at the hospital in need of aDNC,” he explains. I opt for the DNC.
The ER doctor informedme Monday night that I should save any material that comes out of mybody and return it to the hospital to examine. But I would like to keepit and bury it in a ceremony that recognizes that a baby once livedinside of me and had transitioned to the other side before beingactualized on this side. I need closure. Closure that I never quiteexperienced with the spontaneous abortion (miscarriage) that Iexperienced two years ago. The more I mentioned my miscarriage to otherwomen the more I realized that countless numbers of us have experiencedsimilar pain without any closure.
“I had a miscarriage atfive months. . .I used the bathroom and the baby came out in thetoilet,” a colleague over fifty years of age told me.
“My sister has four children but she had five miscarriages alongthe way. . .” another colleague shared.
Many of us havelost our unborn babies. And many of us had no ritual to acknowledge thebabies that once were because we had to get back to our mates, back toour children, back to work, back to everyone and everything exceptourselves.
Having had two beautiful daughters before twomiscarriages I know what life inside of me feels like, and after twomiscarriages I know death too. I felt them growing and then theydidn’t exist anymore. Spontaneously (divinely) their developmentceased. There is matter to prove that they existed and yet noacknowledgment that they departed.
And so I’m left toenvision a ceremony.
Just as I’d requested the placentafrom Yetunde and Niara’s births, I would request the remnants ofmy last baby. I’d take it home, gather the seeds of myfavorite fruit tree, I’d buy some actual fruit of the tree that Iam going to plant. The fruit would represent he harvest, the future thatwas to come forth as a result of this spirit coming. Water. A rock.Incense. Pictures of my ancestors would all be part of the ceremony.Those who had acknowledged the presence of this baby would be there, myhusband T’Chaka, our daughters Yetunde and Niara who had beguntelling people three months before I was pregnant that I was having ababy, my sister Ashley, my sister-in-law Carla, my children’s godparents David and Linda, and my friends Phyllis and Jennifer, the spiritof our family and friends who couldn’t make it, and the spirit ofour ancestors watching over us.
I’ll have the ceremonyin my yard. I’ll plant four trees on that day. One for my oldestdaughter Yetunde with the placenta that nurtured her and came out on theday she was born. One for Niara planted with the placenta that nurturedher and that came out of me when she first suckled at my breasts. Thethird tree would be planted in honor of the first baby that Imiscarried. The fourth would be planted in honor of the baby that isbeing removed from me today with the matter that will be removed. Theceremony would end with an affirmation about life, death, and rebirth.An affirmation for me and the life that I am blessed to live, thechildren, husband, sisters, family, and friends that I am blessed tohave, the release (death) of those things that I no longer need, and thebirth of new things in their place.
Every year when those treesbloom and bear fruit, I’ll be reminded of the life that once grewinside of me. . . I’ll do it on the Thursday after Mother’sDay, the anniversary of the day my mother transitioned. Some how Iimagined myself taking that day off. . .
Levita D. Mondie-Sapp lives in Washington, D.C. withher husband T’Chaka and their two lovely daughters, Yetunde andNiara. She teaches courses on American Literature and Race, Gender, andReligion at the Maret School. In memory of her late mother Diane Mondie,Levita started a vegetarian cooking service called Vita’s Eaterythat provides cooking lessons, personal chef services, and catering forsmall groups.
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