So it’s been building up in me, this approaching time of year.  It presses upon me like a swelling river, bulging out upon its banks and pushing rocks and wood and debris along with it.  It was this time last year that we learned I was pregnant from my August IVF.  In fact, my first ultrasound appointment was on September the 1st.

I remember feeling great happiness, though it was muffled with an overcoat of fear.  Fear of an early loss, fear of a difficult pregnancy, fear of the unknown, fear of losing something that we worked so hard to achieve.  I told myself, “You’re being silly.  Why do you assume the worst?  What are the odds?  Just be happy and enjoy the ride.”  And then, of course, the ride sucked, and Will died.

There is no satisfaction in the fulfillment of a fear.

Instead it makes you question everything.  It makes you see the people you love strung delicately on a strand of web, vulnerable to be broken off with a casual sweep of a hand.  It makes you feel unsafe, exposed, and out of control.

It has gotten so much better for me since we learned of Will’s death in January and we rejoiced in Abby’s birth in April.  I feel less like I’m about to rocket off into space with no reason or warning.  I feel more as if I trust gravity again.  I feel slightly more convinced that statistics are on my side, though I don’t think I will ever cling to them as fact.

Statistics are only guesses.

Mark told me, once, that he had the 50/50 life’s philosophy despite well researched statistics and it is this:  it will either happen, or it won’t.  I thought that was a pretty black and white way to see the world.  I also thought it smacked of a disinterested life, as if one should feel about life the way one feels about the rain.

Although time is grinding off the sharpest edges of Will’s loss, it remains a lumpy tumor in my chest – evidence that things can and do go wrong, very wrong.  And though I remind myself of so many things that have gone RIGHT in my life (Sam and Abby, for example), it doesn’t provide complete reassurance.

When I hear that someone is pregnant, I stop myself from telling them that I hope beyond all hope that their baby doesn’t die.  I may not be a genius, but I’m smart enough to know that this particular wish is one I should keep to myself.   And, to be perfectly honest, I’m jealous of those who seem to effortlessly skate through pregnancy.

Now I feel like I’m living in two times at once:  my pregnancy and the present.  I’m constantly shifting back and forth between the times, remembering how I felt, questioning every twinge, regretting little decisions.  But more than anything, I’m reaching back to last year when Will lived in me, first just a tiny dot, then a gummy bear encasing a translucent flickering heart, a jerky wiggling shrimp, and finally a fully formed little boy who was real and was wanted and was loved…

so, so much.